Category: Thoughts on music
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Improvisation, Jazz and Education
I recently ran an ‘ask me anything‘ thread on my blog – the questions and the answers were posted in the comments, and I had intended to reblog the answers at some point. The first of them to leap out at me was one that fits better here than on stevelawson.net – a question from…
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Memory and Music
At the moment, I’m in the middle of a three-day Artists Research Lab on Memory, organised by Motiroti – you can read more about it on the Amplified Site. Here’s a fabulous TED talk, exploring the different between our experiencing selves and our remembering selves. The implications of this for musicians are huge – how…
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Words From The Wise – David Torn
Well, it’s been a while. Please be assured, there’ll be some Beyond Bass Camp news coming very soon. I promise 🙂 But in the meantime, here’s some smart thinking on music. One of the big mistakes instrumentalists make is to go looking to practitioners of their chosen instrument for wisdom on the subject of music.…
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The Convergence Pyramid
This post was partly inspired by Michael Manring‘s masterclass last week at Chappell’s Music Shop in London, and the conversation he and I had after it. The catalyst was his difficulty in answering questions that required him to fragment his thinking about music – and even detach music from its place within the rest of…
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Evelyn Glennie On Playing Music And Learning
OK, this is one of the best presentations on learning music I’ve seen in ages. I got to play with Evelyn Glennie a few years back, in her studio – she had been talking to Rick Turner about electro-acoustic music, and he’d advised her to talk to me about looping. I went to meet her…
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What’s important?
I’m always amazed – and dismayed – at how often I fail to ask the above question in my life. I spend a whole lot of time on trivial, time-wasting things as a diversion from the important things I really ought to be doing. That’s not to say that ‘trivial fun’ isn’t valid – sometimes…
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Playing The Music You Love, Loving The Music You Play.
I have certain pre-arranged responses to some of the questions and comments I get about my music. One of my favourites to throw out is to comments like “hey, Steve, you should do a whole ambient record” or “I really like the funky tunes, you should do more of that“, or any other ‘you should‘-type…
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“Is It Right?” vs “Is It Good?”
The question in the title is one that is so often ignored and yet is fundamental to the process of learning music (and a lot of other things!) Because so much that happens in music education is based on a model established for teaching classical repertoire, the emphasis is hugely on “Is It Right?” –…
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Britain’s Got Talent.. and A Fetish For Celebrity.
For a week or so now, it seems like everyone has been talking about Susan Boyle. She’s a 40-something year old woman from lowland Scotland, who went on Britain’s Got Talent – the latest Simon Cowell vehicle – and ‘wowed’ everyone with her unexpectedly amazing voice.