Lesson 5: Not Knowing Anything is the Best Place to Begin

Welcome to Lesson 5

0:00:12 Hey, it's joEy and Mr. Twiddles coming at you for Eternal Crane, Lesson 5, 13 Weeks of Spirit. Thanks for coming. We're making it through the course. This is week three. This is a 13-week course, and it's been going wonderful. It's been a lot of fun. You're welcome here. You don't have to be a musician. If you are a musician, you can be any skill level. We're a friend group. We're interfaith. Everybody's welcome. You don't have to be a musician. I'm just going to say that twice, and you don't have to know everything. Just be here. Just enjoy the sound.

0:01:04 Enjoy the vibration. Ponder the spiritual talk. This course goes until the end of the year. There will be courses on Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's Eve. The lesson today is not knowing anything. Anything is the best place to begin. You're welcome to watch the new lessons. They come out every Tuesday and Thursday at 10 in the morning. Those are the lessons themselves, the VODs. And then that evening, there's a live study stream at 7 p.m. Central. That's the Hangout stream. That's a good place to ask questions, say hi. So let's do this. I'm excited for this one. I met somebody at the clubhouse.

Do You Have To?

0:02:09 A very kind gentleman. We were both getting coffee at the coffee machine. And he mentioned that he hasn't been playing his instruments. And I asked him, what's the one thing you can identify why you haven't been playing? And he said, because I don't know anything. And I said, well, do you have to? And he said, of course. Yeah. And I said, why? And he said, well, if I had started 20 years ago and played 30 minutes a day, I would be in an amazing position here today. And I said, well, 20 years ago was the best time to plant a tree. Do you know the second best time? It's right now.

The Master and the Beginner

0:03:07 And a master and a beginner. There's no difference between the two. The master doesn't know anything, just like the student. The person who plays 20 years ago and plays a half hour every day doesn't know any more than the musician who's playing today. And if that person does know more, that's going to choke the life out of the music. See, music is not about a pursuit of knowledge. Music is not about an end point. It's not about a competition. It's a process. It's a process that you choose to engage in. It always happens in the present moment. And you engage in it now with where you are, with your environment, with your inner life. And that is the same, whether it's 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years in the future, or right now. Every time you play music is the same. You're communicating. And now's the opportunity. You can communicate now. You can use the healing force of music. You can use the voice of music. You can use music to discover what's happening. You can make

0:04:33 contact. It's like those alien movies. Those encounters of the third kind. Well, you can make musical vibrational contact today. And that's what matters. What matters is being now, being here now

Supple and Weak

0:04:50 in the moment. This is from Lao Tzu. Man at his birth is supple and weak. At his death, firm and strong. Softness and weakness. The concomitants of life. My question to you is, do you have to? What's the

Every Time I Thought I Was Finished

0:05:15 one reason why you don't just start now? I've gone through this cycle. And every time I've gone through it, I thought I was finished. I thought I was finished when I was 16 and I didn't play guitar all season. I thought I was finished at 19 when I didn't play the piano. I thought I was finished at 26 when I didn't play the bass guitar. I thought I was finished at 37 when I took five months off. Sometimes I took years off. Every time I thought I was finished. It was always the right time to begin. The ending is the beginning. When it stops, that's the perfect precondition for it to begin again.

0:06:11 Musicians are eternal. You cannot be a musician 20 years ago and then not be a musician anymore. I've heard that. If I had to say the number one reason why people stopped is because they stopped in the past and they never picked it up. And the longer that distance grew, the more they thought that that was it for them. But your musical identity, you came into the world with it and you're going to have it when you pass. And you're going to carry it over the bridge when you move on to the next dimension. Your musical life is eternal. It's inside you. It's forever. It doesn't follow the calendar.

0:06:55 It doesn't follow the clock. And everybody's a musician. If you have ears, you vibrate. If you vibrate, you're a musician. Listening is just the same as playing. We are all tapped into this force of

A Journey of a Thousand Li

0:07:14 music. The tree which fills the arms grew from the tiniest sprout. The tower of nine stories rose from a small heap of earth. The journey of a thousand li, a thousand footsteps, commenced with a single step.

0:07:36 And I did say that today. 20 years ago was the best time to plant a tree. Now is the second best time. Of course, that's the, that's the Chinese proverb. What would 30 minutes a day grow for you starting today? And let's even make it, let's make it 30 seconds. What if you just spent three seconds thinking about playing? What would it feel like to just pick up the guitar in your mind? You don't even have to get it out of the case. Just spend a few moments imagining yourself taking it out. Maybe that's

The Master Knows Nothing

0:08:15 enough for today. Now this one, because I am a self-professed master. I'm a master. I've been at this for many years. These are my credentials. I've been at this for a long time. I've made a lot of records. I've played a lot of instruments. I've listened to a lot of music. I've studied. I've read a lot of books. But my position with that kind gentleman in the clubhouse today, my position is no different than his. Because I can forget and not play just like he can. And I'm still in a state of not knowing anything. This entire journey has not produced an outcome. It's only enriched the process. I still don't know what I'm doing. And I never will. And that's why I play music. There's a lot of things in the world that you can get your head around. Music is too rich. It's too emotional, too poetic. It's too scientific. It's too theoretical. It's too much like dancing to ever put it into a box and say it's finished. So I know when I meet somebody on the musical path

0:09:34 who doesn't know anything, I know that they're in a great position. They're in the place where they can be creative. I've met many people who've gone to college and they played for hours a day and they got their degree, their bachelor's, their master's, their doctorate. When they get out, they don't know what to play or they don't know why to play. Many musicians after school, they stop playing. It's not about accumulation. It's about being in touch with the signal, the musical signal. If you are open-minded,

0:10:17 you don't need to know. To know and yet think we do not know is the highest attainment. Not to know and yet think we do know is a disease. So my teaching today, I was so excited about this idea of not knowing because that's the birth. That's the seed, right? I wish everybody could be in a place of not knowing. I would love students who don't know forever. That's, that's the student that's ready to sprout. So that's what I wanted to do today. I wanted to be a beginner myself today, just like I am. So I don't know what to teach today. So I just wanted to make it up as I go and pick something that. I don't know what it is. So as much as I love having this Oreo cookie, yep, this is a chocolate vanilla Oreo cookie kitty. Time for the lesson and I do need to use my foot. I don't know where to begin.

Pick Four Notes

0:11:39 So what I'm going to do is pick four notes. I don't know what it is, but I can listen to it. That gentleman I met today can listen to it just like I can. Now I'm just going to move it in the left hand. Now you don't have to know what this is to be creative. So what I'm doing is just adding. I still don't know what this is, but I'm going to do this. One, two, two, one, one, down. Changed it a little bit, but I'm just repeating what I'm doing, but it's fun. I'm just mixing these, trying to find as many ways as I can mix these. That may be a good step for you. This may be enough for your, your seed for today. I'm going to add the fifth and the bass. I'm still just mixing up these, but I did add the fifth. G is

Connected to the Diminished

0:14:19 the fifth of C. And now I do know some things. This is connected to the diminished. I'm just playing with diminished inversions. Anybody can learn these. I'm just taking a simple shape. I'm doing it in both

The Diminished Scale in Thirds

0:14:52 hands. Cause it's diminished. I'm going to play the diminished scale, but I'm doing here. So the diminished scale on the right hand, you can study that there's a thousand websites. Just see diminished. I'm going to, it's like harmonizing it in thirds. Just walk down the scale in the left hand. If you harmonize in thirds, do that one more time. Now you can do that same harmonizing, but you can break it up. You can break them up. That's what I was doing earlier.

The Tritone

0:16:16 Changed it just slightly at the end. Now I'm going to go back to that structure from the beginning. I still don't know where I'm going. This is the tritone. This is the tritone in the right hand. The tritone lives in the diminished. So I'm playing the tritone. Again, I'm just doing that thirds and diminished triad in the right hand. You can look that up and find, you can find the shape. I'm just moving it up and down. That's the thirds in the left hand. I'm just going to play the diminished. Now I'm going to pick totally

Venturing Off Through the Tritones

0:17:47 random. I'm going to try to randomize the intervals, play with the tritone. Now I'm going to venture off. So not knowing means that you're okay venturing off somewhere you've never been before. So I like the C F sharp tritone. So I'm just going to start going through the tritones. I'm going to go back. The listener likes it when you return, it makes them feel like it's an idea that you're communicating. Going back to the tritones. I'm just building them. So that's how far we got to go just by starting with something I don't even really know,

Thirds in Opposite Directions

0:19:11 connected to my knowledge. I started, I did not know anything. Here I'm harmonizing in thirds, inverting, going in opposite directions. I've never done that before. I've never harmonized in thirds in opposite directions down to diminished. So when you find something brand new like that, allow yourself to really listen to what it sounds like. This is why I said earlier, if you have ears, you're a musician because the process that I'm doing is listening.

0:20:04 That's the primary activity that I did as I went up and down. So any student can learn these tritones. So this time I did do the thirds again, but I bounced, just bounced around. So try bouncing. Do it in both hands. This time I'm ending on the tritone, close out the improvisation with what

Composing and Improvising

0:21:08 I started with. It's like having a composer's mindset as an improviser. There's no difference between composing and improvising. The composer improvises when they write their piece, their, their, their, their lines, their motifs, and the improviser composes. So creating these little structures, having the ending be similar to the opening as a compositional device that's useful for us. We improvise. And I'm just going to end with a tritone. So that's the improvisation today. I hope you enjoyed that. The lesson is about not knowing things. I didn't know what would happen with this lesson. I didn't know where the improvisation would go. And that's what made it fun. That's what made it enjoyable. And the reason I continued to return to music is because every time I come back, I get to be an empty slate and I get to start over. I get to start over again. I get to start the process just

Thanks and Goodbye

0:22:39 like the very first time. So I hope that was helpful. You're welcome to write me a question. Thank you, Twiddle. You're welcome to write me a question and join the discord and check out the website. You're welcome to hire me to learn a piece and stick with this course. We're going to go to the end of the year. And I think that's it, Mr. Oreo cookie. So with that, we're going to say thank you. We'll say goodbye. Until next time. See you later.