David "Fuze" Fiuczynski & the Musical Toolbox
Friday, March 30, 2012 at 4:12PM
Trey Gunn in coaching, composition, craft

A friend of mine passed Part One of this over to me and I sent it out to one or two people. But seeing Part Two now, I think all musicians should check it out:

Part one:

Guitarkadia Session: David "Fuze" Fiuczynski

Part two:

Guitarkadia Session: David "Fuze" Fiuczynski

 

Part three is coming on April 3.

David very clearly advocates something I am very much in line with and have discussed with many of my coaching clients: what I like to call your personal "toolbox." The little kit of very, very specific musical ideas that truly moves us. We all need to have a way to:

1. identify these elements
2. keep track of them
3. access them when we are looking to develop our ideas

Number 1 means looking inside yourself for your own genuine response. Not out into the world for what has moved other people or is (or has been) successful.

Number 2 means having some kind of system in place to catalog these things. David advocates writing them all down on a big sheet in the categories of melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, stylistic and textual (he uses the word orchestration, which really just means the instruments used to voice the ideas.) Other ways could be writing in notation and keeping in a folder. Or recording them. The form doesn't matter. What does matter is that these ideas need to have some kind of container.

Number 3 means checking in with this tool box on a regular basis, pulling an idea out, and then working with it and turning it into something.

cheers,

Trey

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