Cool thread! I started guitar lessons in 1964, after seeing The Beatles play on The Ed Sullivan Show (twice that year). I was barely six and my teacher told my parents that I was, "too immature". He was quite correct about that. Three years later, I gave trumpet a go... but after a year or so. I dropped it for the drums. I played drums for seven years, to the chagrin of my parents and older brother, who found it somewhat obtrussive I was in school band and marching band, in junior high school. Yawn...
I played in a rock and roll band on full trap set but wasn't really into my band-mates musical direction or their head space. But I sold my drum set when I went off to art school in 1977. All I kept were my bongos and a small conga drum. My roommate played guitar and I wanted to accompany him on something other than percussion. My soul ached to play a melody instrument, so I bought a plastic Yamaha alto recorder. SHAZAM!!! My world totally changed that day. Within a month, I was onto playing the silver concert flute. I always loved bands like: The Moody Blues, Traffic, King Crimson, Genesis and especially, Jethro Tull. I played that flute for nearly thirty years, until I passed it along to my dear, dear friend Metanoia. I know it's in very good hands. :thumb_up:
My interest in flute playing naturally led me to go into many musical directions. In 1977 I was lucky enough to see the late Yusef Lateef, legendary Jazz tenor saxophonist & alto flutist, at a small jazz club in Boston. I was entranced! This drew me down the Jazz road, so to speak. Breathing is the core of all woodwind and brass instruments... the very breath itself births song, much like humming, singing or chanting does. Breathing and fluting are absolutely synonymous. I emphatically feel that playing the flute is a valid form of pranayama.
I was exposed to classical Hindustani music and Honkyoku shakuhachi music in 1978. This drew me into the magical world of bamboo flutes. In early 1980, I was front row and center at a performance by Pandit G.S Sachdev, master of Indian bansuri flute, at a small New Age bookstore in Boulder Colorado. This was so inspirational that I find it difficult to find the appropriate words. Bliss comes to mind and sheer awe! I've never studied any particular school of flute, nor had a teacher before but I do have my direct inspirations and am a big fan of many exquisite players, from myriad styles of music, across this globe.
I am equally devoted to Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Irish, Andean (Peruvian/Bolivian) and Korean bamboo & wooden flutes, while still retaining my love of rock, the blues and jazz music. Classical western music doesn't really attract me, although I do admire and respect it's complex beauty, but I am a self taught improvisor and it's far too rational to intoxicate my mind. And I've been in a few fusion bands, back in the 1980s but never found exactly the right groove with any of them (egos, egos, more egos, etc...). :thumb_dow
I got into playing guitar in 1979 but after playing for twentyfive years, both acoustic & electric guitars and even the sitar... I sold them all in an effort to focus primarily on flutes and hand drums. I was into alto saxophone for a decade, due to my love of Jazz music but life it too short and work is far too demanding, to master a large number of instruments, so I have narrowed it down to the two areas of musical expression.
Being a pack-rat, I must own close to a hundred flute and whistles? My deepest love is still for the silver concert flute, as well as alto and bass silver flutes, but Japanese shakuhachi and Indian bansuri are near and dear to my heart. The same goes for the Chinese xiao flute. They are sooooooo meditative, that they so entice and effectively, pull my mind's heart deeper and deeper into the vortexial fulcrum of the Unified Field of Being.
Yes, it's been discussed before, about organizing a Nexus band. We could call it something like: The Hyperspace Jesters or more simply, The Nexus Blues Band? Anonymity may be compromised, though, so it's kinda tricky to jam out together and keep our identities a total secret. Or is it possible? It's certainly food for thought. :?
For myself, playing music is a form of meditation and is very personal. That being said, I do love to jam out with other folks and especially enjoy drumming circles. I still play hand drums and love the wide variety of percussive possibilities beating all over this planet. I have about a dozen or so, really excellent drums from around the world. In my own way, I have associated the drum with the beating in one's heart and the flute with the breath flowing in and out.
I digress? Please pardon my usual rambling... I am buzzing on 14 grams of Latvian Amanita Muscaria shrooms, for the very first time, this afternoon and quite enjoying the trip. The salivating, mild nausea and perspiration are less than alluring... but I have a clarity of mind which is thoroughly entrancing. Colors look more vivid and saturated, although no fractals experienced. But there's an accurate awareness of the emptiness of space which exists between (and within) everything else. This, despite a delirious perception being palpably present.
Or is it really empty at all? Unseen geometries are surfacing and waves/particles/flows of pulsing energy are washing over me like waves upon the vast ocean. I am sensing an intricate lattice of energy fields and interconnecting lines of life force, so what is empty is full and what is full is empty. Also, I am FEELING the universal vibration oscillating in spades! I have been getting hints of synesthesia, distortion of size relationships and an awareness of the energy patterns lacing one defined form to another. The Grid is everywhere!!! It's so cool to experience a new entheogen in my 57th year here, as an earthling humanoid.
Time to smoke some Ganja and see where it leads me. I haven't smoked any herb yet, today. "Adios muchachos", I am now off to follow the white rabbit further down the rabbit hole, a wee bit. I might just see where this Amanita buzz leads to of it's own accord. Starting to feel inwardly drawn and becoming delightfully euphoric, at that!
Gotta do some sitting meditation, bathing in the sunshine, just after the herbal treatment is joyously applied. To quote Bob Marley, "Who feels it knows it". 8)
