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All night long last night I was doing as much deep breathing as I could manage.
Have you ever suffered from guitar player’s insomnia?
That’s when your mind refuses to stop imagining endless improvisations, and let you just forget about music and go to sleep.
Please tell me I am not the only weirdo who suffers from this syndrome…?
Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
Imagining the changes puts me to sleep.
Hey, Buco, tell me more about how you get to sleep imagining the changes…?
For example, do you imagine yourself playing the chords? or do you imagine that you have an accompanist?
Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
Yes just going through the song imagining the chords, not playing the chords, just have them sort of flash by as the song is going. I do that when I want to memorize the chords for the new tune. Also sometimes hearing the improvised lines but don't know where those would be on the fretboard, even I occasionally try to visualize where it might be. But yeah, this stuff will put me right to sleep. I don't have insomnia though every once in a while if I wake up during the night I might have a hard time falling back to sleep.
We are on holidays and the lady in the unit upstairs is a yoga teacher.
Here is the breathing technique she advises for insomnia, “four-seven-eight”…
Breathe in counting to four
Hold your breath counting to seven
Breathe out counting to eight.
I’m going to try it tonight.
Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
When I have an occasional trouble falling asleep, I sort of use "sleep" as mantra and meditate on it. Seems to shorten the duration it takes me to go back to dreamland.
Which to me sounds like anything you do to stop your mind from racing with thoughts and help it quiet down can do the trick.
Well, the results from last night are mixed.
The “4-7-8” formula didn’t seem to match my natural pattern and left me feeling short of breath, so I tried some other counts.
So far “10 in and 12 out” seems to match up best with my natural pattern.
And it did stop my mind from racing… although after about a dozen cycles I would forget to count and my mind would start racing so I would have to start all over again.
But I’m going to keep at it.
Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
That's the thing with meditation, you're not supposed to corral your mind. You just throw a bait to it but if it wonders elsewhere, that's ok. When you become aware that you wondered off, you throw that bait again and so on.
I've only just read the original piece - very good, and thank you. I really like the bit about Pat Martino's "house" but also this:
"I was very glad to hear Dennis Chang say something I believed in for some time. You can and should look at lots of different methods but in the end you need to establish the method that works for you. After buying several music manuals, you need to write your own and follow it faithfully."
That resonated with me. So many times have I started reading a method book and thought "This is it! This is the one. This time I've found something that resonates with me." Only to discover it very quickly veers off and loses me. Most of the time I think this is because authors have to pack a lot of stuff into their books and don't always work at the pace / level that I need. So I've actually been doing exactly this - writing my own method and applying it and though progress is slow, it is progress and it's done through steps I can understand and pacing I can aspire to (even if it's just two minutes a day!).
Thanks again
Derek
Cool! Can I get a copy when you are done??! 🤣😜