Spirituality

The Musician’s Cure to Social Media Madness

THE SCENARIO

This last week, I spent a lot of time online, doing my research, keeping up with social media, new (to me) sites like Pinterest.com and Chill.com.

(does this sound familiar?)

Sites like Facebook, twitter and Youtube are helping me reach fans and book gigs…so I wanted to see “what I’ve been missing” and how I could ramp things up, career wise.

Oh boy…all I did was make myself nuts!

Like many musicians, or managers or “labels” I’m scratching my (bald) head wondering what’s next, and will the sites I’m signing onto even last?

Some sites will be here to – stay (for a while) while others will bite the dust like Myspace.

My head started to hurt.

Questions like this plagued me this week (don’t worry – this post will end happy…)

Some of my personal issues:

How can anyone hope to compete with a Youtube channel with millions of subscribers?
To get more hits & views, must I simply play every crappy cover song I can think of, in incredible voluminous amounts?
Will Youtube yank my videos / channel, since I still am doing covers?

then…my personal hell….since I get asked for tabs of my covers constantly…

How the hell can so many guitar instructors out there sell tabs with ZERO licenses in place, and I choose to go the high road and get licenses, am I an idiot?
Will social media change, because right now I don’t want to know about someone’s cat barfing…so I “shut off” and others do too.
Where is it all going? And am I wasting time trying to figure it out?

The irony is…(drum roll please)

By asking these questions I was simply “creating my world” and seeing the world as “I am” not the way it is.

BUSTED.

What appeared to be “out there” was “in here.”

This is kind of heavyweight information when you think about it.

I create my world and you create your world, minute by minute, whether we complain and worry, or whether we rejoice and give thanks!

THE CURE

I picked up the guitar.

I decided to start learning a new tune….”IMAGINE” by John Lennon. It was time to be a musician and not a social media manager for a few hours.

After hours of ironing out an arrangement, I uploaded it to Youtube:

[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dELdAQ25kT0″]

This video was done with NO end result in mind….only “love” in mind, honest to God. I wanted my fans to have something nice and soothe them.

I fell completely into the song, the lyrics, the tone of the instrument, Lennon’s voice, intention, and so on.

THE AFTERMATH

As I walked out into the street in NYC after uploading the video and I felt “all my troubles seem so far away” 🙂

The pain, headache, uncertainty and frustration I was feeling were GONE.

What?

I found myself in a “bliss” state.

Immersion into music, with no thought of “what I’d get out of it” is what got me there.

I saw after this that I have the personal power to choose one state or the other.

THAT’S BIG! Do you get this?

What I previously thought “the world was doing” was MY creation.

My NEW (forgotten) mantra “I am responsible for 100% of my life.”

THE IRONY

Once I dropped the video onto Youtube, Facebook and Twitter – it was something useful that people wanted to share.

That’s the way to use social media! (I.E. that’s the horse before the cart…)

THE MEDIUM IS NOT THE MESSAGE

Social media is a pipeline.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Good meaningful stuff in, good meaningful stuff out.

The lesson….offer something good….really good and everyone wins.

How to Improve Your Guitar Sound – Mentally!

By Adam Rafferty 6 Comments

The other night while sound checking for a gig at the Vienna Mozarthaus, I found soundcheck to be very easy. Then I found the gig to be very relaxed and easy.

It’s not always been like this. What did I do right?

I’ve had nights where I’ve fought the guitar, overpowered it, beat it into submission and make it do what I want it to do, even if I am drowned in sweat.

Why was it easy 2 nights ago? Hey maybe after 5 years of heavy touring – I’m finally learning something!

This may sound trite – but it’s quite profound: I offered no “resistance” to what I was hearing. I didn’t allow a “mental concept” to disagree with “what was happening in the moment.”

This meant not worrying about what anyone thought, not feeling that I was “required” to do a tune I wasn’t in the mood for, and also meant not “planning the next tune” during the current tune.

It meant “being present.”

My warm up was groovy and easy going. I didn’t flex all my chops back stage but got playing in a groove so I could dance along, like a well greased machine. Almost as you’d expect a tennis player to warm up.

The “sound” on the gig was perfect….I simply worked with what I had and listened closely, at each moment and accepted what I heard. The more I listened and allowed, the better the sound got.

Maybe it’s no coincidence that I meditated 30 minutes in the afternoon. My daily meditation sometimes gets thrown off when I travel a lot. But, after seeing how it affected my last gig, I am determined to stay on it for the rest of the tour.

Tuning my mind to pay attention to “what’s in front of me” (i.e. the present moment), rather wanting “something else” gave me peace. No energy was wasted in “pushing against” the present moment. I could hear and feel the difference.

30 minutes of silence…try it, you’ll like it!

As Above, So Below…on the Guitar

By Adam Rafferty 3 Comments

One of the joys of my musical journey is to discover something musically and see that it also applies to all of life.

(Really guitar and “life” are no different – since it’s our brains looking outward and seeing the contents of our own thought!)

I have been doing a lot of slow, deliberate practice on fingerstyle guitar pieces like “Thriller” and “Aqualeros do Brasil” and “Fly Me To The Moon” simply because I want the groove to be deeper and want the perfect sparkling and coordinated “mix” of melody, bass and accompaniment.

It never fails; once I put my mind on the role and job of my right hand thumb, I see that it has been pulled by the influence of the other right hand fingers, and is not as solid as I thought it was! [Read more…] about As Above, So Below…on the Guitar

Hitting “Plateaus” in Guitar Practice

By Adam Rafferty 36 Comments

Often we hit “plateaus” when we play guitar. We feel that we haven’t been improving.

That’s good! 🙂

To my delight I just started book called “Mastery – The Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment” by George Leonard. Mr. Leonard points out the American “war on mastery” – an epidemic of wanting things “quickly and easily”. He then accurately describes the delicious, sweet, long term path to mastery through his story of Aikido.

The path to mastery is not a steady incline; there are growth spurts, and then long plateaus where on the surface “nothing” seems to be happening. At first, the student feels that these plateaus are disheartening and frustrating and wants only the peaks. [Read more…] about Hitting “Plateaus” in Guitar Practice

You Can’t Learn This From YouTube

By Adam Rafferty 16 Comments

I just got back to NYC a few days ago from a short trip to Germany. I was a guest artist at the Remschied Guitar Festival in Germany – and it was a lovely scene and experience. The students were mainly classical and rock guitar players – and they were excellent.

With each student I see and teach, I see a little part of my past and history, and to be honest – I almost get “tear jerked” as I remember how much my beloved teachers helped, taught and mentored me.
[Read more…] about You Can’t Learn This From YouTube