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Philip
Toshio Sudo
I
try to be prepared for the moment, through understanding
and being warmed up, knowing all about chords and scales,
so I don't even have to think and I can get right to what
it is I want to say. --Pat Metheny
The best way to make decisions about playing in the moment
is to have already made them. That is, do your thinking ahead
of time. Think before the time comes to act, think before the
time comes to speak, think before the time comes play a note.
Then, when the moment arrives, do not think. Just play.
Some athletes prepare themselves by visualizing what they
want to do, creating a mental movie of themselves in perfect
action. Golfers picture the perfect swing, pole vaulters imagine
the perfect jump, figure skaters run through the perfect routine.
Musicians who perform a set piece of music can also visualize
themselves playing the perfect song. The sharper and more detailed
your mind's movie, the more likely your hands will reproduce
it.
Players
of improvised music can't visualize what they are going to
play, because by definition they don't
know where
the moment will take them. But they can prepare strategies
for dealing with the unexpected. The black belt player's thinking
is the same as that of a fielder in baseball. Before every
pitch, a good fielder analyzes the game situation and says, "If
the ball is hit to me over here, I will make this play. If
the ball is hit to me in over there, I will make that play." There
are countless plays that could develop. When the ball is hit,
there is no time to think--training and mental preparation
must take over.
So it is with playing music in the moment. With the proper
mental attitude and training, what you play should come out
as natural as the call of a bird in the wild. There is no thought,
not even so much as a word in your head-only the song of the
heart. The instant that discrimination and calculation enter
the mind, the truth of the moment is lost. To play the truth,
you must have the correct attitude previously. When you look
for it during the moment, you will still be looking for it
when the moment has passed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From
Zen Guitar, pp. 110-111.
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