rickshunter1 - Posted - 09/18/2011:  09:02:12

Paul is a very interesting man and such a kind person you can tell this when you watch his videos always and I mean always has a smile on his face and what talent he has amazing.

Paul Roberts - Posted - 09/18/2011:  14:38:01

I was almost 21 when I began working at McLean, a hospital dubbed by writer Beam as "America's premier mental hospital." The hospital was founded in 1811 and with its longtime affiliation with Harvard Medical School, represented the highest level of psychiatric awareness and treatment in the US. This, I find out after I start working there. Me, a guy who flunked out of college and had no formal training in music therapy; in fact, I barely was becoming cognizant of the fact that the field even existed. There was already a music therapist at McLean, who had a master's degree in music therapy. But she wasn't addressing the niche market I was being brought in to address: the young people.

This was 1967. Besides my ongoing interest in the banjo and acoustic guitar I was also playing rock in a band with Jon Landau and another friend from Brandeis, Jean Korman, with whom I used to play banjos and who had become a rock drummer. Jon was playing guitar, I was playing electric bass. Jon who had become friends with Barry Tashian - of Barry and the Remains - was showing me the ropes. And, I was getting really heavy into the sitar. Beam writes, "McLean... had a music therapy department. But they didn't have a sitar-playing cool guy; as it happened, McLean and Roberts had been looking for each other." Being where the hospital stood in the world of psychiatry, they could call their own shots, like hire an academic miscreant, with no background in music therapy... to do music therapy. 

I needed to promote myself amongst the patients - get to know them, find out who played music, sang, wanted to play, wanted to form a band, and who wanted to hang out in a social scene around music. It was interesting to build up a program from scratch, with no direction, only support and encouragement. It was the feeling that they knew they had to connect with the kids through their music, but no one there knew how to do it. I was essentially given the golden key: "Get something happening. Try to get them involved in music in any way you can." Speaking of keys, I had to have a big wad of keys to get into music therapy, all the units and everywhere else on the campus. Some of the patients had privileges to walk around, and even go into town, on their own; others weren't allowed to leave their units at all, or under supervision.

So, it was about meeting people and making friends through music - the primary disadvantage to overcome being the fact that I was "staff." Many of the young patients seemed to have a good communication with one another, but they didn't trust the staff; it was a bit of an us-and-them situation. I seemed to inhabit an in-between space in that scenario: I wasn't quite "us" but I wasn't quite "them" either.  My age and music put me more in the "us" category, though, and pretty quickly the patients began to develop a trust for me. They also sensed that I wasn't treating them as "mental patients" but as human beings. That's the problem with labels: once you label and define someone, the tendency is to see them as the label, instead of who they are, the results of which have an enormously limiting effect on any attempt to be therapeutic.

The fact was, I didn't see the young patients as "mental patients." Sure, they represented the more disturbed segment of youth at that time but that didn't translate, in my mind, to thinking of them almost as another species, which I felt some of the staff had a tendency to do.

The immediate advantage I had, and it quickly became obvious, was that music is language all its own. Words weren't the determining factor. One could communicate through music even if verbal communication wasn't possible at all. Musical ensembles of various styles, individual lessons, jam sessions that included a hangout social scene (hey, that's what we've got going here) and, eventually, concerts, dances, a coffee house, trips to Boston to see Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding, outside gigs for the band - these developments were able to occur quite naturally.

Let's take a break. Funny, a music therapist friend in Colorado - the one who got me a recent gig playing for several units at a state hospital - just emailed about wanting to visit McLean. I wonder what it would be like to see the place after 41 years.         

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 09/18/2011:  15:16:59

Best thread ever!

You've always had my attention here, Paul --> Now you have my rapt attention!

JanetB - Posted - 09/18/2011:  18:09:18

Aren't there some pretty exciting events soon to happen in this chronology, involving very well-known musicians?  We're patiently waiting, as the patients must have done until you arrived on the scene long ago.

Janna - Posted - 09/19/2011:  15:56:31

Paul, you're great! I'm sorry that I don't know English enough for understand all you wrote, but I'll spend some days with the dictionary and read it all! It is very interesting! thank you!

Paul Roberts - Posted - 09/20/2011:  03:40:41

Music has always seemed to me to have magical and mesmerizing qualities. But it wasn't until I began working at McLean that I had the opportunity to witness the healing powers of music. What I found was that, given the opportunity, severely disturbed people can use music in creative ways to promote self-healing and to create a healthier, more joyous environment for others as well as themselves. I found that music can be a catalyst in reversing crippling emotional trends in people by providing a pathway to self-expression and self-discovery. Music provides a pathway that can lead from disturbance to balance. 

The life of psychiatric patients in mental hospitals is characterized by alienation from others. They feel a lot of shame about their condition that renders them socially unacceptable. A music therapy program provides a means for mental patients to transcend their role as mental patients, and to form a bond with one another.

At McLean there was a great deal of enthusiasm being generated throughout the hospital because of what patients were creating through their music. This helped to reduce the sense of loneliness and shame. The musical activities - concerts, dances, coffee shop performances and jam sessions - created a sense of community and pride, which these patients so desperately need. As something that made them start feeling good about themselves, music became a starting place on the journey towards inner healing.

"For me music is the easiest kind of communication there is," one patient told me. She was a classical violinist and one of the most powerful blues singers I have ever known. "Through music I have an outlet for my emotional buildup, which I am having trouble expressing in other forms. Music is a great release for me. When I please myself musically, then I please myself all around. I feel creative when I do music. Right now I don't feel very creative or spontaneous as far as people go. I'm depressed and as a result of it I don't feel the spontaneity you do when you're not. But in music it's almost as if I'm normal. I'm not sick when I play music. It's a realm that's beyond sickness, so it's marvelous for me. It's magic, almost. I mean, I have said that I'm going to kill myself in the morning and then in the afternoon I'm singing my heart out. It's brought me time and time again out of depression."

​Ronnie has since crossed the river Jordan, but I want her to know (if she has any way of tuning into what is being said here over 40 years after she related this to me) that the depths of her honesty and insight about music and its healing powers is being conveyed around the world through this marvelous medium of communication. When Ronnie sang everyone who heard her was deeply moved. It was indeed magic. A realm beyond sickness. Ronnie didn't have the chance to become a musical celebrity, which she surely deserved to be. But her music touched a lot of hearts in a very profound way.  

jimh269b - Posted - 09/22/2011:  16:22:44

if they are hide on a banjo,paul will pick it slat dapped off,you can bet,love the interview

JanetB - Posted - 09/22/2011:  17:58:32

Paul, when you were at McLean in the 60's there was a cataclysmic revolution going on in the pop music scene.  This must have tremendously affected your music therapy with residents at McLean.  Can you give us insight into its significance, as you perceived it then and, in hindsight, how you view it now ?

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 09/22/2011:  19:26:40

THESE QUESTIONS ARE REALLY FOR MUCH LATER IN THE INTERVIEW, I WOULD THINK - BUT I'M THINKING ABOUT THEM NOW, SO I'LL ARTICULATE THEM NOW:

I'm wondering how the changes in therapy for the mentally ill towards a chemotherapy approach coupled with release into the community has affected the viability of the kind of musical group therapy that Paul is talking about here.

Can music groups for the mentally ill be set up in the community?

Can such groups even be a bridge for the mentally ill into the wider community?

Paul Roberts - Posted - 09/24/2011:  12:02:04

Marc Nerenberg poses two essential questions: "Can music groups for the mentally ill be set up in the community? Can such groups even be a bridge for the mentally ill into the wider community?" 

Under the auspices of the California Department of Mental Health, I created programs for exactly what Marc is talking about in the early '80s. So my opinion is outright affirmative. 

My overwhelming sense about modern mental health care - and this was confirmed by my mentor Morrie Schwartz (who was an expert on the subject of the treatment of mental patients - and who later received much favorable recognition when the book Tuedsay With Morrie came out - and with whom I consulted for two years while I was completing my undergraduate degree at Brandeis University in an independent study program I had devised based on my continuing work at McLean) - my overwhelming sense about modern mental health care is that it's in the wrong hands, in terms of who controls it.

And that's the medical profession.

Just because our society has taken the route of attempting to control mental and emotional disturbances through drugging does not mean it's the best or only solution. My opinion (as was Morrie's) is that it's people with a strong sense of compassion - this is the type of person that a disturbed person needs to be able to relate to. This may or may not be a medical doctor, but in no way is limited to the medical profession. Not that doctors are not needed as part of a psychiatric treatment team, but they're definitely not the only ones who can help - and they can often be a limiting factor in the therapy of disturbed individuals because they don't always recognize or support the efficacy of other approaches, such as music, for instance. 

Musicians typically have a great deal to offer to this kind of therapeutic treatment. Music is a language unto itself, which opens up channels of communication to others - disturbed or not. These channels of communication that are available through music are not accessible by any other means. Other creative channels of communication are also available but music is unique as an independent auditory communication that does not rely on words; it's a more direct form of communication that words and can reach alienated individuals in ways that words cannot. 

Based on my own life experiences, what I believe is that musicians have the potential to enter into a psychiatric treatment program and invent ways to work with disturbed people in effectives ways to promote their emotional/psychological healing process. Musicians have the potential to be able to do this without ​having specialized training in the field of mental health.

The people I've seen help others the most, are people who have a great sense of empathy and compassion - an innate sense of caring about others. Musicians who have these characteristics have a distinct advantage in being able to help deeply disturbed people, because music provides them with a unique channel of communication that others simply do not have.

Every study I know about that has looked into the effects of music - on everything from various aspects of health, childhood development, mental functioning, etc. - have shown that music always has a positive effect. Whatever you throw at it - music helps. Native American people believe that music is medicine of the body, mind and spirit. And there are many references to the use of music in healing - references going all the way back to the earliest in recorded history. One of the most famous of these being the Biblical story of King Saul and his favorite banjo player, David.      

Don Borchelt - Posted - 09/24/2011:  13:28:35

Very interesting post.

JanetB - Posted - 09/24/2011:  16:11:49

Hopefully, Paul, you'll give us more actual examples of challenges and successes with music therapy.  True stories both captivate us and suggest ideas we can actually apply. 

Last week Kit and I were playing in my class during lunch.  One of my quiet, fearful little students stayed and began signing and smiling.  Later I asked her what she was saying.  "Beautiful music," she replied.  I asked her if she wanted to be a musician.  Sing or play an instrument.?  Both, she said.  Her mother later told me they taught her sign language as a toddler because she wasn't speaking. 

You must have a hundred of these experiences and I think we'd benefit when you share more, please.

Paul Roberts - Posted - 09/24/2011:  20:44:04

Janet, you've given me two very thought-provoking homework assignments: I'll repeat them here:

1. "Paul, when you were at McLean in the 60's there was a cataclysmic revolution going on in the pop music scene.  This must have tremendously affected your music therapy with residents at McLean.  Can you give us insight into its significance, as you perceived it then and, in hindsight, how you view it now?"

​2. "Hopefully, Paul, you'll give us more actual examples of challenges and successes with music therapy.  True stories both captivate us and suggest ideas we can actually apply." 

"Last week Kit and I were playing in my class during lunch. One of my quiet, fearful little students stayed and began signing and smiling. Later I asked her what she was saying."  'Beautiful music,' she replied.  "I asked her if she wanted to be a musician. Sing or play an instrument.?  'Both,' she said. "Her mother later told me they taught her sign language as a toddler because she wasn't speaking." 

"You must have a hundred of these experiences and I think we'd benefit when you share more, please."

 

​Clearly, he was a musician, because he had a Les Paul under his bed. Would he like to play with others? Jam? Form a band maybe? I got a distinctly affirmative response, although not much of a verbal one. He hardly talked at all during practices. He just played the guitar. Quite well. Occasionally he'd show others their parts. After the practices we'd have band talks; he didn't speak during these.

But, gradually...

Gradually, he started talking. After a while he got better. He left the hospital. I got him a job in a well-known band. I haven't heard anything about him since that time 40 years ago.   

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 09/25/2011:  06:45:06

Thanks very much for your thoughtful answers to my questions Paul.

(But you've interrupted the narrative flow! I want to hear more about your life and travels! Okay, okay, I'll be patient.)

Edited by - Marc Nerenberg on 09/25/2011 06:45:33

Paul Roberts - Posted - 09/25/2011:  08:14:25

Feel free to interject at any time. I'm propelled by a right-brained approach to life.

Let's all jump out of the box together...  

  *** just for the fun of it *** 

~~~ and see where we land(()).

Or, better yet, let's just stay up there... ^^^ : )

jimh269b - Posted - 09/25/2011:  09:02:20

great interview paul,really enjoyable

Paul Roberts - Posted - 09/26/2011:  16:52:01

Thanks, Jim, except it's distracting me from my interview with you.

McLean was founded in 1811. It maintains the world's largest neuroscientific and psychiatric research program in a private hospital. It is the largest psychiatric facility of Harvard Medical School, an affiliate of Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of Partners HealthCare, which also owns Brigham and Women's Hospital.

The following is an excerpt from a chapter, entitled “Hippiephrenia,” from Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital By Alex Beam. Here’s what one reviewer says about the book:

“McLean's story is thus part of the larger modern history of inpatient psychiatric treatment, but it is a peculiar one because of its elite patients. It is a remarkable list who stayed there, and they were not all distinguished only by having wealth. The poets Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath wrote about their stays, as did Susanna Kaysen, author of Girl Interrupted. John Nash, of A Beautiful Mind, was there, as were James Taylor and his brother Livingston and sister Kate. Ray Charles was there, following a drug bust. The celebrity patients come and go through these pages, which more importantly contain a entertaining history writ small of American psychiatry.”

Here’s the “Hippiephrenia” chapter reprinted in the Boston Globe in ’01. The suggestion I went into the mental health profession to avoid military service is incorrect.

___________________

DURING HIS FIRST MAJOR CONCERT TOUR IN 1969, JAMES TAYLOR used to introduce his song "Knockin' 'Round the Zoo" with a few words about his stay at McLean Hospital in Belmont. "Here's a tune I wrote at McLean to make a million bucks," he told one youthful audience. "McLean, that's a mental hospital - OK, anybody here from McLean? Let's hear it for McLean." Few people clapped, of course, because very few young people had spent time in mental institutions. But Taylor, then sporting a shoulder-length mop of dark, grimy hair, would grin sheepishly at the smattering of applause, and proceed with his cryptic paean to his nine-month-long stay in the "zoo":

‘There's bars on all the windows and they're counting up the spoons. And if I'm feeling edgy, there's a chick who's paid to be my slave. But she'll hit me with a needle if she thinks I'm trying to misbehave.’

To the mellow, preppy cohort of the '60s generation, the soft-singing Taylor siblings - James, his talented brother, Livingston, and the singer always known as Sister Kate - put McLean on the map. "For the Taylors," Time magazine noted sardonically in a 1971 cover story on James, "the McLean experience would soon become what Harvard is for the Saltonstalls - something of a family tradition." A washout at Milton Academy, James thrived at McLean's newly opened Arlington School, which provided classroom instruction for troubled youths. "We didn't have that jive nothingness that pushes most kids through high school," he says. "You can't tell a whole bunch of potential suicides that they have to have a high school diploma." The product of a liberal, moneyed Cambridge household, Taylor relished the reassuring structure of the typical McLean day: "Above all, the day was planned for me there, and I began to have a sense of time and structure, like canals and railroad tracks." Taylor never claimed that McLean "cured" him - less than three years after "escaping" from the hospital, he found himself addicted to heroin and checked in to the more bucolic, 23-bed Austen Riggs sanatorium in Stockbridge in the Berkshires - but it enabled him to establish a modus vivendi with the modern world. He and his sister both have homes on Martha's Vineyard, and both have compared the island's laid-back ambience to the asylum of McLean. "It was a pretty slow pace," Kate recalls. "Very slow. No pressure. And that continues for me, living on Martha's Vineyard, out here at the end of the trail."

Although James wrote his first two songs while still a patient in 1965, his path to success ran through New York City and then London, where he met Beatles producer Peter Asher, who fine-tuned the Taylor sound for the Apple label. (James's "escape" from Mc Lean is still the subject of legend. Because he had committed himself voluntarily, he couldn't escape. He did, however, bolt for Manhattan without signing the customary "three-day," the required three days' notice before checking oneself out.) But Kate and subsequently Livingston launched their careers at McLean.

Searching for therapies that might connect with their music- addled, alienated charges, in 1967 McLean hired a young rock musician named Paul Roberts to conduct music therapy classes. Roberts had studied psychology at Brandeis University in Waltham and tried to play music on the wards at Metropolitan State, a public hospital near McLean where he had gone to work as an aide to avoid the Vietnam draft. "It was sort of prison-like," Roberts recalls. "Their method of containing someone was to throw him in a locked room." The nurses started commenting that guitar strumming didn't figure in his job description. Roberts got the hint and began looking around for work. A friend mentioned that nearby Mc Lean, far better endowed than the struggling state hospital, actually had a music therapy department. But they didn't have a sitar-playing cool guy; as it happened, McLean and Roberts had been looking for each other.

McLean had three practice rooms, each with its own piano, and the administration was perfectly happy to turn the cafeteria over to any of the four bands that Roberts organized: the Zoo; the Strawberry Discharge; Ronnie and the Waverley Squares (McLean overlooks Waverley Square); and, most famously, Sister Kate's Soul Stew and Submarine Sandwich Shoppe, headlined by Kate Taylor.

The Sandwich Shoppe played for money at Brandeis, at a Cambridge peace fair, and for a "social" at the Institute of Living, a mental hospital in Hartford. Roberts wasn't exactly sure what he was doing, but whatever he was doing, it was working.

One catatonic patient, a gifted saxophone player, first began communicating with fellow band members, and only later with his therapists. One of the bands became a long-running group therapy session, trying for its members but ultimately useful in resolving shared conflicts. Ronnie of the Waverley Squares was a Janis Joplin-like blues belter. "They couldn't give her enough Thorazine on the unit, but in music therapy, she was normal," Roberts remembers. Kate Taylor was revealed to be a hauntingly mellifluous singer and signed a recording contract soon after leaving the hospital.

"Some of the psychiatrists were hip to the fact that real therapy was taking place," says Roberts, who now pursues his singing career with his wife in Redbird, Colorado. "People were getting better, but I didn't know or care why it was working. I was just experimenting in the dark. These kids needed to express themselves through loud rock music, and it worked. I was putting in 60, 70, 80 hours a week. I was completely enthralled by what was going on."

Roberts prepared a lengthy presentation on his band therapies for his academic mentor, who just happened to be Morris Schwartz of Brandeis (the "Morrie" of later Tuesdays With Morrie fame). Rob erts's report included interviews with his performers, most of whom testified to finding extraordinary release with their bands. A vocalist named Laura told Roberts: "It's magic, almost. I mean, I have said that I'm going to kill myself in the morning, and then in the afternoon, I'm singing my heart out. It's brought me time and time again out of depression."

Roberts's Brandeis roommate had been an academically gifted history student, Jon Landau, who had musical ambitions of his own. Landau had his own band, and once when Roberts dropped over to his house, the music therapist started talking up the talents of a severely withdrawn vocalist and guitar player, Livingston Taylor - James and Kate's younger brother. Livingston was at the Arlington School and was supplementing his musical education at the Berklee College of Music in Boston's Back Bay. Landau forsook his own musical ambitions and produced his first record, Livingston Taylor, a beautiful collection of ballads released in 1970. It included at least one song with a McLean theme: "Doctor Man." A second Landau- Taylor collaboration, Liv, included "Carolina Day," with words memorializing Liv's therapist, Dr. Harvey Shein.

Landau, who worked as a rock critic at The Real Paper, went on to become one of the most famous and powerful music producers of all time when he abandoned journalism to manage the career of a singer who he believed represented "the future of rock and roll": Bruce Springsteen.

Go here if you want to read the entire chapter.

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 09/26/2011:  18:07:35

Really interesting piece! (I did go and read the rest of the article - it was interesting, too. Thanks for posting the link as well as the excerpt.)

JanetB - Posted - 09/27/2011:  05:52:01

I recommend reading the entire link.  Alex Beam is an effective describer of  McLean, its residents, and the sociological conditions of the 60's.  It's a portrayal of a man-made disaster created by cultural and economic conditions in our country.  You were truly inspirational for many sufferers in finding relief and renewal.   

I'd like to hear more reflections or sagely lessons.  Perhaps later you'll also tell us about the musical programs you designed in California to promote "mental health."    You stated that empathy and compassion are key in calming a disturbance and creating emotional/psychological balance, with music being a bridge, as well as a vehicle, to a productive, happier life.  We're still listening, Paul!

strokestyle - Posted - 09/27/2011:  08:19:33

Paul please tell us more!

jimh269b - Posted - 09/27/2011:  17:11:39

paul have you ever been on the chat room here,if not why.if you want to say thats ok i understand

Paul Roberts - Posted - 09/28/2011:  17:23:21

I blasted halfway round the world, lusting after my plucked string fancy: classical Indian music on the sitar. I was three years seriously into it, having studied the Shyam Yodh, a sitarist and neurosurgeon in Boston. Shyam went back to India and invited me to come there and study with Ustad Rais Khan, scion of the top sitar family in India. It was an offer I could not refuse.

It was goodbye to Brandeis, goodbye to McLean, goodbye all things Cambridge and East Coast. I spent 6 months in India – traveling by bus from Bombay to Juhu Beach for lessons several times a week. When Rais went on tour, I hopped on the train and recorded his concerts, sitting with him on stage - with my new cassette recorder - which I had purchased in Cambridge just prior to departing.

Basically, my jaw was perpetually dropped, being around Rais Khan. Every note he played was hugely exquisite. If one wants to get a sense of what is possible on a musical instrument, hang out with a good Indian musician. The depth they take music in that culture is unfathomable.

My own musical interests during the three years I worked as a music therapist at McLean spanned from rock (electric bass, rhythm and lead guitar), to folk/bluegrass (guitar and banjo), to Indian ragas (sitar). At McLean I was able to play a lot of music – and I was in a rock band with Jon Landau. But the sitar was calling me the most strongly. I needed to pursue the sitar to find out if it was going to be the be-all-and-end-all for me, musically.

As it turned out, it wasn’t. Being that close to a very great musician was an enormous learning experience and an honor for me, but, frankly, I missed my banjo and guitar. I knew, then, that it wasn’t going to be an exclusive trip for me. I needed to be a musical explorer, and grab whatever plucked string thing I could get my hands on. That’s what began to unfold when I returned to the US, landing in a new life, as bohemian artist on the shores of Del Mar, California in 1970.   

JanetB - Posted - 09/29/2011:  05:32:43

Paul, you write songs easily and I'm wondering how you began doing this. Jim Reed is able to do this, too, as was Bill Monroe.   Was the playing style of Indian music to improvise, or was it to compose and remember a song?  Did you hear the same songs over again, or was the music new each time?   Was there a "frame of mind" and a life philosophy that was different, as in the way we in the West perceive the East?  How did your 3-year "apprenticeship" in India affect your present musical ability?

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 09/30/2011:  20:55:36

Ya can't ask so many questions in one post, Janet - it's scaring Paul off from answering!

Paul Roberts - Posted - 10/01/2011:  11:21:35

quote:

---

Originally posted by JanetB

Paul, you write songs easily and I'm wondering how you began doing this. Jim Reed is able to do this, too, as was Bill Monroe.   Was the playing style of Indian music to improvise, or was it to compose and remember a song?  Did you hear the same songs over again, or was the music new each time?   Was there a "frame of mind" and a life philosophy that was different, as in the way we in the West perceive the East?  How did your 3-year "apprenticeship" in India affect your present musical ability?

---

In music, we dream a part of ourselves. When I returned from India, I gave myself plenty of time to dream, musically. I had studied sitar in Cambridge for 3 years and then for 6 months in India. Washing up on the shores of Del Mar, California it took me a while to re-navigate myself back towards what had been any easygoing relationship with the sitar. In India, I was overwhelmed by how exquisite the whole thing could be. I became… well… overwhelmed. I saw how perfectly it could all be done, so where did that leave me? I didn’t want to become a clone of my great teachers; I just wanted to improvise. I settled back into my stream-of-consciousness approach, and felt okay, once again.

Giving oneself permission to be oneself and explore the musical topography of one’s soul, is, I think, at the heart of musical expression - and that would include improvisation. [beautiful bucks are cruising through my back yard] ‘Cause when you think about it, why not just make up your own music? What’s to prevent everyone from doing that? I, for one, would certainly encourage you to allow yourself to experiment, to go in the direction of allowing your own music to come through you. Whether we’re playing note combinations we heard externally, or note combinations we hear internally, or accidentally when we’re noodling there’s something going on underneath: namely, we’re singing from our hearts, out into our fingertips which create the message of how a string vibrates out into the air.

Indian music on the sitar provided me with an ideal context in which to experiment tonally. Rock and blues lead guitar did, as well. These are areas of musical expression based on enormous landscapes for possibilities of improvisation. They beckon, saying, “take the plunge, dive in and explore the possibilities – you may be surprised at what you come up with!” And you are surprised at what you come up with. That’s what propels you on, in that direction. Something is pulling at your subconscious. You don’t know where it’s taking you but it doesn’t matter because the experience is what matters. And when you come back with a piece of music that you can enjoy playing over and over - and which others enjoy when they hear you play it - that serves to deepen your connection with music.

It’s great to find a context for improvisation and to go into that modality on a regular basis. Out of that context comes the ability to improvise and crystallize that improvisation into form - songs and instrumental compositions. One begins to gather around oneself a repertoire of original material that mirrors back a musical identity. We each have our own musical fingerprint, a unique potential for musical expressiveness and creativity. Giving oneself the permission to improvise is a sure-fire way to discover this.

Laurence Diehl - Posted - 10/01/2011:  11:49:30

Wasn't it Thelonius Monk who said that composing was just improvising, slowly? (the companion to that was that improvising was composing, quickly). You talk about giving ourselves "permission to improvise". Why is that permission not intrinsic to who we are as musicians? And what is the process whereby we give ourselves such permission?

Paul Roberts - Posted - 10/01/2011:  13:04:22

quote:

---

Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

Wasn't it Thelonius Monk who said that composing was just improvising, slowly? (the companion to that was that improvising was composing, quickly). You talk about giving ourselves "permission to improvise". Why is that permission not intrinsic to who we are as musicians? And what is the process whereby we give ourselves such permission?

---

I'm sure it is intrinsic, as human beings, to have this, since music is another language of the brain - but most people, these days, believe they can't do it. Music has become specialized. Birds don't need to attend musical education classes. Neither do we. It's just that someone like you - Laurence - is extremely rare. You just did it. Nobody needed any permission there, for sure, and no one was going to hold you back.

Then on the other end of the spectrum is someone who comes to a music lesson and they were told by someone in their childhood that they had no musical ability, or they had a tin ear, or whatever. Man, talk about a hard thing to overcome! It takes a pretty gusty person to plow through that, and, frankly, I've seen more who don't make it than do. This type of stuff can leave some big scars on a child, and that translates into adulthood as a negative belief system about their abilities to play music. It can become seemingly impossible to overcome. This person needs a lot of self-permission to just hang in there long enough to play a few notes and allow herself to enjoy it and keep going forward.

I think it can take a certain amount of self-assurance to plunge into improvisation. If one starts allowing it to happen, then the very thing that might have been the most scary becomes the thing that builds the self-confidence necessary to keep the process going.

I think especially 5-string banjo provides an ideal launching pad for improvisation. It certainly does for me. I love it. You, Laurence, epitomize for me someone who knows how to take the plunge, and you do a great service by demonstrating the possibilities. 

Edited by - Paul Roberts on 10/01/2011 13:06:49

JanetB - Posted - 10/02/2011:  13:22:29

If it takes a certain amount of self-assurance to plunge into improvisation and composition, does musical training and experience contribute largely to one's success? 

Paul Roberts - Posted - 10/02/2011:  17:47:02

quote:

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Originally posted by JanetB

If it takes a certain amount of self-assurance to plunge into improvisation and composition, does musical training and experience contribute largely to one's success? 

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In many cases, I would imagine yes, but certainly not always. In Laurence's case it was absent as a causative factor for his ability to take the plunge (maybe he can get up on the high dive and show us how he does it).

Laurence Diehl - Posted - 10/02/2011:  21:56:43

I don't want this thread to be about me, but I will say this since you generously give me the opening. I think you have to be a bit of a risk taker. Some of what you play will inevitably sound bad, because it's not rehearsed. On the other hand, you can produce occasional (if accidental) flashes of brilliance. To me this is a good trade. But when I hear Paul play, I don't hear any of the bad notes, yet I am sure I have heard him improvising. Perhaps he is more skillful at avoiding the quicksands and minefields than I am.

Paul Roberts - Posted - 10/03/2011:  08:18:36

quote:

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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

I don't want this thread to be about me, but I will say this since you generously give me the opening. I think you have to be a bit of a risk taker. Some of what you play will inevitably sound bad, because it's not rehearsed. On the other hand, you can produce occasional (if accidental) flashes of brilliance. To me this is a good trade. But when I hear Paul play, I don't hear any of the bad notes, yet I am sure I have heard him improvising. Perhaps he is more skillful at avoiding the quicksands and minefields than I am.

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"Perhaps he is more skillful at avoiding the quicksands and minefields than I am."

Not at all. The worst of the bloopers end up on the floor of the cutting room floor, so you don't get a chance to see 'em.

"you can produce occasional (if accidental) flashes of brilliance."

I was just cooking up carrots and yam. I sprinkled some kelp flakes on it to see what that would do. When I remembered to check on it, the water in the pan had all evaporated and the dish was about ready to be toasted if I hadn't arrived just at that exact moment. At first I was a bit taken aback, as in "have I ruined it"? As Laurence says, "some of what you play will inevitably sound bad, because it's not rehearsed." But then I realized it had cooked to a point of perfection, in fact, different and better than I had planned, which would have been more in the goopie stage of culinary evolution. It was one of those, an occasional flash of brilliance was produced by accident, and I'm enjoying eating this flash, along with the other (non-accidental) ingredients as I type this.

It's an interesting state of musical mind we're trying to put words to. I think Laurence's use of the words "accidental," "flash," and "risk-taking" offer a lantern along the path.

In my interview with Laurence, he says,

"The creative process is a bit of a mystery for most of us, I think. You can't force it. In fact, that just makes it worse. Perhaps more people don't take the plunge because they either don't believe they can do it, or because they are locked into a rational thought process. The creative wellspring comes from somewhere else. You have to relax and let it come to the surface. That's my impression anyway."

Could you give us some reflections on your creative process in relation to your composing?

"Sure, I love talking about this kind of thing. I have wanted to write music all my life, but was only able to do so in the last 5 years or so. I think I must have been trying too hard before that. I have 2 distinctly different approaches: composing on the instrument (banjo or guitar), and composing away from the instrument. By composing away from the instrument, I am talking about ideas that come to me when I am doing something mindless, like washing dishes or riding the bus. I have even woken up in the morning with fully formed tunes in my head."

"Maybe it was Bill Monroe who talked about tunes floating around in the ether, and all you had to do was intercept them. I must admit it almost feels like that at times. These tunes tend to be more melodic and therefore better in many ways. Examples of this approach would be “A Banjo in Paris” and “Monique” on my Banjo Hangout home page."

"Tunes that I write on the instrument are the result of noodling around and stumbling onto something cool that I can build on. These tend to be more technical in nature. A good example of that approach would be “Tangier” on my home page. That was a case where I had a scale that I wanted to work with, and not much else. It took over 2 years to write because I would pull it out every few months and add a little bit onto it.

"But whatever the approach, you just need one solid idea to get you started; then you can build on it. Others have said and I agree, that it is the process that is important, more than the result. The act of composing, even if it is rubbish, will help lubricate that creative process and it is something you get better at the more you do it. I firmly believe that everyone is capable of doing this; it is just a matter of the right orientation and bringing the creativity to the surface."  Laurence Diehl 

Read my interview with Laurence Diehl, click here. 

Edited by - Paul Roberts on 10/03/2011 08:21:11

Laurence Diehl - Posted - 10/03/2011:  09:41:15

HA! Well put. If I may extend the analogy...

Carrots and yams - you are already acting like a unique individual.

Kelp flakes! - now you're being dangerous

It worked, so imagine how many ways you could apply that accidental brilliance to new situations? These things pack a big punch and pretty soon 'Paul Roberts style' is born.

Paul Roberts - Posted - 10/03/2011:  10:17:06

Giving birth to our creative spirits: a worthwhile project. I'm grateful to the slaves for supplying us with the banjo - such a cool tool to free ourselves.

5stringJim - Posted - 10/05/2011:  03:49:09

Great thread, Paul, I've enjoyed reading of your life journey so far. Thanks. p.s. Howie Bursen was the guy you mentioned a few pages back. sallyrogers.com/howie/