{"id":1407,"date":"2013-05-24T10:11:07","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T17:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/?p=1407"},"modified":"2013-05-24T12:08:18","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T19:08:18","slug":"youtube-and-the-path-of-zen-guitar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/?p=1407","title":{"rendered":"YouTube and the path of Zen Guitar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am a mediocre guitarist at best. My technique is downright terrible. The nicest complement I ever received was from a friend who was very technically skilled, who told me that when I played, he could tell just <em>how much I loved it<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>So it&#8217;s with some concern that I watch <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/malabar777?feature=watch\" target=\"_blank\">the Tina S. videos<\/a>. \u00a0Tina is a teenaged guitarist making waves with her cover of Van Halen&#8217;s &#8220;Eruption&#8221; on YouTube this week. It&#8217;s quite impressive:\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rV6SmY04WdE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>The thing that struck me was not her clear virtuosity or technical skill. It was the seeming lack of emotion &#8212; in her playing, in her body language, and most notably on her face.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s Tina nailing the solo from &#8220;Beat It&#8221;:<\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_xopBlfsLSs\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_xopBlfsLSs<\/a>\n<p>And here&#8217;s Tina from five years ago, playing &#8220;Norweigan Wood,&#8221; one of the few songs I can actually play, but she&#8217;s doing it at about age nine, whereas I didn&#8217;t learn it until college:<\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6ILbTttLyvY\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6ILbTttLyvY<\/a>\n<p>These clips all have two things in common: Technical mastery, and the painful, haunted look of a forced recital. I get the feeling that she is doing this because she <em>has<\/em> to do this, not because she <em>wants<\/em> to do this or feels anything by doing it. I see frowns; I see these furtive, sideways glances at someone off camera. Maybe she is receiving encouragement from them during the moments she is nervous; maybe she is seeking approval from a harsh tutor. (I do note that her YouTube page asks people who want to contact her to visit her teacher&#8217;s YouTube page instead.) But what I never see is a smile. (Well, that&#8217;s not true; in &#8220;Norweigan Wood,&#8221; she smiles when it&#8217;s <em>over<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>The late Philip Toshio Sudo&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Zen-Guitar-Philip-Toshio-Sudo\/dp\/068483877X\/ref=pd_rhf_cr_p_t_1_JGZ4\" target=\"_blank\">Zen Guitar<\/a> really crystallized <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/review\/R3LG1PMIB0GR8P\/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&amp;ASIN=068483877X&amp;nodeID=283155&amp;store=books\" target=\"_blank\">a lot of my feelings<\/a> about the instrument, so that strongly colors my viewing of these videos. I see guitar as a way to express emotion, to connect with something larger than yourself &#8212; something spiritual. Even if you&#8217;re sloppy, if you are pure and honest in what you do, and you strive to make the best sound you personally can make, you are on the path. So when I see Tina play, I see frowns and looks to the side and a seeming lack of emotion &#8212; she&#8217;s got the technical stuff down, she&#8217;s solved the puzzle aspect of guitar technique &#8212; but she looks (and honestly, it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=cLStjjXIlgc\" target=\"_blank\">sounds<\/a>) like she&#8217;s playing math homework.<\/p>\n<p>Her connection to the same pieces of music that affect me so deeply seems so different from mine that I start to wonder if she has a connection at all. Is she playing because she loves to play? Is this a joyful noise for her, or an assignment?<\/p>\n<p>Maybe these videos don&#8217;t show how she reacts when the camera is not running &#8212; she could be very nervous or self-conscious. Maybe she&#8217;s just concentrating so hard on difficult material that this is her natural expression, like Michael Jordan with the tongue. Maybe Tina&#8217;s fulfillment comes from the technical mastery itself &#8212; maybe I am simply seeing a zen state that I have never seen before. But I am having trouble connecting with her connection, and as a musician, a little alarm goes off when I watch her videos.<\/p>\n<p>I could be wrong. And I&#8217;m not hating. I&#8217;m just worried. I hope she loves it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am a mediocre guitarist at best. My technique is downright terrible. The nicest complement I ever received was from a friend who was very technically skilled, who told me that when I played, he could tell just how much &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/?p=1407\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1407"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1417,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions\/1417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}