This Changed My Playing
Yoga and Live Music
9 years ago my wife, Angie, asked me if I would be willing to play live music in her yoga classes. She had just came back from the first Wanderlust Festival in Vermont and had taken a class accompanied by the musician Todd Boston and it gave her the idea. I love to play live and thought providing live music for a yoga class would be a unique experience. I had no idea how it would change everything about the way I approach music.
I remember the first class I played in at Upper Valley Yoga in White River Jct., Vermont. I brought my music stand and sheet music and began playing classical guitar repertoire in much the same way I would if I were providing background music anywhere. I quickly figured out that the rustling of paper, the pauses in between pieces, the shifts in harmony, and the pace of the pieces was very out of place with the atmosphere created when a group of people is focused on yoga asana. Everyone was really positive, but I knew it was not the right fit. That was the last time I brought sheet music with me and began playing only what I had memorized.
Over the course of a few months, I learned to follow the breath instead of a tempo, to pace the music to the flow and the elastic timing of bodily movements, and build the hand strength to play for an hour and a half without any sort of meaningful break. I learned to appreciate open strings, drop D tuning, capos, and the special burn you feel in your left hand when you hold a particular chord shape for minutes on end. I became very comfortable improvising and creating spontaneously in front of an audience.
I recorded an album of original classical guitar music at Clark Creative Studio in Amherst, NH just before I started playing for Angie’s classes. It is called “Moments in Time” and it is exactly that - A snap shot of my solo guitar playing before yoga. Fast, filled with notes, complex harmonies and structures, and pretty aggressive (those heavy metal roots go deep). A year later, I recorded “By Candlelight” in my home studio. When I listen to these albums side by side, it is like listening to two very different guitarists. The guitarist on “Moments” is concerned with the technical aspects of music, practiced and focused and composed; very much the product of the conservatory. The guitarist in “Candlelight” is letting the notes that float by in the air enter his body and find expression through his fingers as pure music.
Obviously, I am both of those guitarists but the lessons I learned about breath, space, and flow have allowed me to break the tyranny of the bar line and listen to the inner pulse of my heart. I learned to appreciate the depth of just a single chord and the mantra in a finger picking pattern. Playing for yoga classes changed everything about my philosophy of music and changed the way I approach the guitar.
Here is a Possible Thing To Try with One Chord Playing
Tune your guitar to Drop D Tuning. Low E string down to the D a full octave below your 4th string.
Place your 3rd finger on the 5th string, 5th Fret. (D)
Place your 2nd finger on the 4th string, 4th Fret. (F#)
Place your 1st finger on the 2nd string, 3rd Fret. (D)
Let the 6th, 3rd, and 1st strings ring open. (D, G, E)
It should look like a “Folk C Major Chord” just slid up 2 frets.
The technical name for this chord is Dmaj add 9/11
Pick through the chord. Try using different picking patterns. Try going really slowly and listen to how the notes interact with each other. When they ring together, do you hear the overtones? What else can you do? What other ways/places can you use these notes (D F# G A E)?
If these instructions do not make sense, send me an email, I’ll help.
Take your hand off the guitar and shake it.
I do this whenever I am feeling stale or I have fallen into the same patterns or ruts in my playing.
See You on the Path,
Josh