Robert Fripp's Diary

Hotel Acceptable Plus Los Angeles

Hotel Acceptable Plus, Los Angeles.

We arrived here at 01.30. The California fires prevented our equipment truck from getting to Las Vegas, so the show is cancelled. Pooey pooey.

From The Happy Gigster's Guide To A Happy Life On The Road: never check into a hotel at night. You'll wake up in the morning facing a construction site in full swing, or a bleak parking lot, or an even bleaker brick wall, or a busy road/motorway/traffic intersection.

I changed my room immediately, from front of house to back.

To bed around 02.30 Today dribbling, gentling, practising.

22.48 From ET --

Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 17:55:50 -0000
From: "neil mcnaught"
Subject: Do as I say

"The right hand seems to deviate from the "orthodox" GC right hand position"

Can we expect 'Do as I say & not as I do' to be included in the Guitar craft aphorisms? :)

GC aphorisms that refer to expectation are readily available, but the operative word in the quote from RF's diary is "seems". The word was deliberately included at the time to allow for Neil's comment. His posting is a good example of automatic mind: mechanical, reactional cerebration. The bell rings, automatic mind drools.

Neil's comment indicates & highlights a difficulty in attempting public discussion: automatic mind seizes upon a subject/object and, without constructively following where the (seeming) contradiction might lead, throws out its comment. Neil's dopey comment is dismissive & destructive, a good example of why a sane person might seek to avoid public life in the UK. 'Do as I say & not as I do' would suggest that the founder of Guitar Craft is based in hypocrisy. Since nothing true can be based in hypocrisy, Guitar Craft in turn can only be a lie. Well, that's the implication of Neil's approach.

One of the first injunctions of Guitar Craft is this:

Accept nothing presented to you without testing it and applying it for yourself.

This safeguards the honest & innocent student from cynical & hypocritical manipulation by That Awful Guitar Craft Instructor.

Briefly describing right hand picking is something like a few helpful words on how to ride a bike. For any of it to make sense, you get on the bike & pedal. Once cycling, there is information available for cycling to become more efficient & effective.

A very brief description of the right hand function is this:

The pick is held between the first digits of the thumb & first finger.
The relationship between the thumb & first finger significantly determines tone & amplitude on the acoustic guitar.
The hand is brought to the string by the arm, from the elbow.
The hand releases down from the wrist, allowing the pick to strike the string, and then returns to its position of readiness.

If this is the "orthodox" approach, how might the form of the right hand change?

1. Most guitars are made for guitar makers, not guitarists. Few guitars that I have played support the right hand form I recommend. So, an accommodation is made to the instrument we play. For example, wide-body acoustics require that the wrist be elevated.

2. There is an accommodation made to the physical idiosyncracies of players. For example, the first digit of the first finger of my right hand is twisted (as is also my left). I was born with this & it has some practical effect on how I hold the pick. It does not determine the principle of how the right hand holds a pick, neither dies it undermine the principle. My twisted first digit simply requires of me that I make a small accommodation. Several Crafties have unusual thumbs that require them to apply the principle, while accommodating the thumbs given them by their parents.

3. There is an accommodation from acoustic to electric (as mentioned in the diary). The ball of the right thumb is used to dampen open strings, as are the fingers. This is to prevent feedback & ringing overtones. The basic right hand operation is shown on acoustic, where tone & volume are governed mainly by the picking. This is not true of the electric: tone & amplitude have more to do with the amp & effect units.

4. I accept the advice I give to those who ask for mine: accept nothing presented to you without testing it & applying it for yourself. I continue to fine-tune & refine the right hand form: it is not rigid.

When I was 13 & 14, studying with Don Strike in Westbourne Arcade, I had an insight into picking. I began to develop the right hand, and build on the insight, and have been refining it ever since. But it was only within GC that I have had any experiential feedback. As our common experience within the GC community develops, the refinement of our practice continues.

"Good practice" doesn't happen in a vacuum:

there is an insight;
the insight comes into the phenomenal world, by intelligent application & the application of intelligence which serve the insight;
validation is provided by a community of the competent (and if competence is in short supply, then we might have to settle for a community of the adequate).

There are other approaches to the right hand; for example, banjo & oud picking. But my insight continues to resonate, and continues to draw me towards it. Once we begin to embrace our practice, our practice begins to embrace us, and we begin to develop understanding. As our understanding grows, the subect/object of our understanding changes. The process continues. The subject evolves.

I have no personal authority in this: the power lies within a point of seeing. In this sense, we are all in the same boat - I aspire to perfection, not claim it. I continue to refine my own practice, honouring the insight. The growing body of competent Crafties supports my own practice and offers me direct feedback from their own R&D activities, to which I also contribute. I continue to look at the recommended form & see whether it works, can be improved, and whether it is flexible enough to accommodate various demands. Videos from earlier times suggest a great deal of refinement, particularly since GC.

5. All technical matters are subject to the demands of the musical moment.

6. The form of the hand is distressed when one is playing outside the margins of competence: the form of the hand begins to fall apart; for example, when playing faster than is possible.

7. Accomodation to several various arising demands within live performance, including --

temperature: in sweaty clubs, a sweating hand loses its grip on a pick and squeezes to maintain the grasp;
the band begins too fast, or speeds up, and you're hung out to dry;
exposure to the mass of relatively inert energy otherwise referred to as the public, which brings its own demands, distractions & consumer rights;
exaggerated hand movements that function as cues.

Before Guitar Craft, automatic mind was commenting that a guitarist in a rock group couldn't sit down. When sitting became more-or-less acceptable, then automatic mind suggested the height of the guitar on Fripp's body didn't look groovy enough for a rock guitarist. This is in the nature of automatic mind: automatic mind is automatic - there is nothing there.

If Neil has an interest in the aphorisms, he may know this one: when you have nothing to say, better to say nothing. It is often followed by when you have nothing to say, it is very hard to say nothing. The latter refers, in part, to automatic mind's refusal to be quiet: it demands to be given voice, however empty its commentary.

Now, back to practising.