IV
A craft technique will instruct us in execution, present us with information, and convey a quality of energy which will facilitate our execution. The technique will:
- Instruct us in what to do, and how and why to do it.
- Demonstrate:
i) The pattern of elements from which the information is constructed: this is vocabulary and its constituents.
ii) How these elements are put together: this is syntax.
iii) Why these elements are put together in this way: this is form. - The quality will be present and recognizable. We may ask:
i) What is this quality?
ii) How is this quality present?
iii) Why is this quality present?
Once a quality is within our experience, we have access to it and may allow its action to take place upon us. But how and why it is present, is rather harder to describe. If this quality is present with us, description becomes easier: we describe the world in which we live. If we live in the way of craft, the craft lives in us; as we describe this way, the craft reveals itself through us. Any true way will be able to describe itself through its craftsmen.
Any way of craft has exercises and ideas specific to that way, and an essential quality which is easily recognizable. The explanation of how and why a craft is what it is requires a presentation of the complete pattern: that is, the presentation of its unity. Metaphysics attempts to explain who and why we are. In the way of describing who, what, why, and how music is, we need a metamusics. In the way of describing what, how, and why guitar playing is, perhaps we will settle for the exercises.
