Adam Rafferty’s Blog – Guitar and Spirit

Giving a Free Sample Away Now; Receiving Later After the Buffer of Time

Greetings!

You and I are both marketers. In fact we all are marketers. If you have a day gig you are selling your services and time. If you are a freelancer, you are a marketer. You sell your product or service. Or, if you are in school you will soon be doing what I have just described.

Because marketing has become a discipline / study in and of itself, some people use it as an abstraction and as a talent to simply “market” something – whatever it may be. That’s fine for them, but I find it much more interesting to sell myself and my music.

Even rock bands are marketers. They provide an experience, and eventually provide bookers and promoters with an evening of profit when they bring their following to a show.

For the past few days I have been checking out some of my favorite “information gurus” to see how they use free samples, or even gifts as a giveaway. Everybody loves the idea of “FREE”. I do. It implies no risk. And, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling about the person I am getting something free from. I must say – I have gotten hooked on people after getting their free stuff.

FREE MP3s, PDF files, reading blog posts, you tube videos….get me hooked. Ok, I’m easy! 🙂

So I have been observing myself, and my own emotional buttons, seeing how I feel when they get pushed.

At “Trader Joe’s” grocery I got a tasty little treat of a sausage slice in a mini dixie cup. Yummy, at 8pm when I have not yet eaten. That made me more likely to buy them sausages. Wait- I actually did buy some!

In my quest to get better educated about marketing, I recently saw some “marketing web pages” of nobody’s whom I have never heard of, selling $497 ebook products with no free sample. Hmm, curious. What happens is I see it, and say “NEXT!”

For them to ask for a sale without giving me something is just bad marketing!

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I attempted (and still do) to look “under the hood” as it were – to take a cosmic view of this selling, marketing, free stuff. Sounds crazy I know. Leave it to us Americans to spiritualize making money! 🙂

But seriously folks, I love what I do and want to continue what it is I do – play music. So that means I have to sell the little gems that pour out of my mind, whether they are videos, books, pdfs, mp3s, CD’s or shows.

So…up rises a fear factor, a survival “worry”.

“What if I give it away when I could have sold it? That was too much work to just give away” and so on….I have experienced that. As it turns out, the more one closes off giving, it’s like putting gaffers tape over receiving! (Thanks to Mike Littman for that analogy!)

And so in a meditation, where I had clarity – I realized this:

1) No energy is ever lost.

Even if you go out to the woods and scream, everything around you received that vibration and it just gets transferred over and over, back and forth. This means, to give something away whether it is for free or not – the energy will surely boomerang back.

2) Time does not exist! Don’t forget.

When you give away a free thing – and you know step 1, that the equivalent will surely come back, the basic difference between a freebie and a paid item is the amount of time it takes to “receive” in return. If you give a freebie away, there are no “guarantees” in the material plane of getting paid. No one is writing a check or hitting a paypal button, but if you wait – and here’s the condition – truly given a piece of yourself, of your spark, of your genius – it must come back.

So there’s no real difference in a way. Giving the free thing away means you have faith that this law works.

(I think of this often when I play gigs…how I had to “sit in” for free for a while, give people a sample of “my playing” and now it has come around so that I get paid to play guitar.)

3) Feel the Worth in What You Provide

All this having been said, we all have our different gauges and inner workings as to what we charge for, what we sell and what we give away. I think another very important point is this:

Even though you might be giving it away for FREE, you must feel the worth in what you provide. If you don’t feel that what you are offering has true worth, that will be reflected back to you!

4) You’ll Get What You Give

Here’s why you need to follow step 3. If you give out CRAP, you get CRAP. If you give out LOVE, you get LOVE. Trust me, I have experienced this and know it to be true.

This is part of the reason that doing what you love, following your bliss, is so important!

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Food for thought! Now it’s time for breakfast….have a great day!

Music and Magic

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When I was a kid, boy did I love magic. I practiced sleight of hand card and coin moves for hours in front of a mirror. Many of the most stressful moments in my childhood were the dropping of quarters in the middle of english or social studies class when there’d be a hiccup in a sleight of hand move behind my desk! 🙂

I used to go down to this shop in the city “Lou Tannens” https://www.tannens.com/shop/featured.php and watch the older magicians demo their new tricks and ideas on each other. My mother kept telling me I couldn’t be a magician and it was horrible to hear. In retrospect magicians are much like musicians – they do gigs, sell information products (sometimes buying a routine in booklet form can cost $15) or sometimes a gizmo that is the trick itself (product).

In any case, as a jazz / blues improvising type guitar player, the greater “fabric” of the music is kind of an ongoing “weave” of musical groove and feel. If you are playing in a jazz band, (or any other type of jam situation) the “content” is the 32 bar (give or take) tune, and most of the music you then hear is the “process” of improvising. Many other types of music (classical, rock & roll Broadway, and yes – fingerstyle guitar) are more “set”. The content is completely rehearsed, polished and planned. It is more like “a bag of tricks”, if you will.

Both approaches to music are valid and limitless. Funny, on tour I saw that I have these arrangements – particularly the Stevie Wonder medley, and the improviser voice in my head would say “oh man, not this same old stuff again?”

I used the analogy of David Copperfield to understand why I am playing these set arrangements to explain to myself and other jazz musicians what I am doing. Sure, I am in the moment and present as I play the songs, but it’s like the last big David Copperfield trick of the night – where he vanishes, appears, dies, comes back to life, etc. Think of the rehearsal, the planning, staging, etc. that goes into that! It has to be set, not improvised – in order to work. In fact it is “orchestrated”!

Many fans have asked me for written out versions of my “musical magic tricks”, since posting Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and “I Wish” on youtube. I have just finished the PDFs for all you guitar players to learn, and plan to post them within the week.

More tricks for your guitar bag are coming!

See you soon!

Are Your Goals Supported by Your Environments?

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Greetings! Friends, I listened to an amazing interview last night – Jim Bunch was interviewed by Raymond Aaron.

I am not selling you anything. I believe in Raymond so here is his link. Raymond is a heavyweight, not a snake oil success guru. The real thing:

https://www.aaron.com/

You may have never heard of these fellows. Raymond Aaron has developed a program called “The Monthly Mentor” and others as well. My accountability
partner has shown me some of Raymonds materials, and they are pretty much the most awesome goal setting tools I (and my partner) have seen to date.

Ok, yes I am a musician, but I have goals – and whether you are a musician or not, we are in fact very similar! And all of us have this in common – we want to evolve, achieve, reach new heights, in whatever our main areas of life may be.

Jim talked about “the hot bath” phenomena with motivation. All to often I have seen this in my students as well. The “hot bath” can be likened to inspiration. He recounted how many of his students made commitments at motivational seminars and then a year later found themselves in the same place, not having followed through on goals.

Ouch! I think this is something we can all relate to – and bravo if you can’t or don’t.

So if you are like me (and you are) you want to eat right, exercise, meditate, (practice an instrument or whatever you are developing) keep your place clean, make more money….you see where this is going? The list gets long, and items fall through the cracks. Or we get overwhelmed (I do if I get overloaded).

Many of the teachers and coaches teach subconcious re-programming through affirmations and visualitzations. That’s another topic completely and a very important one. Essentially you re-program your mind. I can write more on that later, but there is already plenty out there. I suggest reading John Assarafof this topic.

Jim went on to break down, in his estimation, the factors responsible in bringing about change or progress:

10% Willpower (The “hot bath” problem; motivation wears off an then we fall into old habits.)

40% Subconcious (Very significant chunk here!)

50% Environment (Oh my God!!)

Environments support the direction of behaviors, beliefs and actions – good and bad. Wow!!!

In my travels through life I have taken notes like:

– A clean desk helps me work with a clear mind.

– Talking to people who are negative does me no good.

– Allowing myself to sit with an instrument in my hands guarantees improvement.

– If I have junk food in the house, I eat junk food.

– If I go to a bar I usually end up drinking more than I want to.

– Students who take lessons every week make more progress. The environment holds them accountable.

And so on. Can you see that these are all environments?

The desk, the social circles, the comitted time and focus on core genius, the refridgerator, the bar. Each environment supports behaviors and the environments “pull” can knock out will power.

Good grief!!! What a wake up call…

My commitment this week is to answer these questions, and maybe you’d want to try it too:

What 3 environments do I need to eliminate?

What 3 environments can I put in place to raise my standard of life?

This is hard core stuff. It can’t be “bought” as it comes from inside.

I will follow this up with a list for you, and in publishing it I will have you hold me accountable!

What environments in your life help you? What hinder you? Do you need to put something new in place? Eliminate something?

May you go in peace and kick ass in life! Until tomorrow….

Is the picture out there, or in here?

By Adam Rafferty 1 Comment

Greetings. I am on the plane back from Germany, just having performed with the Bennie Wallace 10 piece band. We did 2 concerts, but last night’s concert was at “Semperoper” – an unbelievably prestigious, beautiful concert hall, very much like Carnegie Hall – only much older and historic! Pics on myspace.

Before I go on (and this is not lip service) it was an honor to play with these 9 very, very excellent musicians. Yes, every one has a spark of genius, and it was a wake up call to never stop in the quest for excellence and musical understanding, ability and humility. I am honored that these guys would have me play with them as a peer.

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I watch my mind during my tours and gigs, and not only try to play great music, but to grow mentally and spiritually. There are always tough moments for me when I travel. They are mostly internal, and they give me the chance for growth.

2 nights ago, I found myself listening to some talks by Alan Watts on my laptop – he’s a well known scholar of Buddhism and eastern philosophy, and he was a key figure in explaining eastern ideas to westerners. He’s got this dry English accent and wit that make him fun to listen to. A night later, I stumbled on a “teachings of the Buddha” alongside the Bible in my hotel night-stand droor. Yeah Germany – you’re getting hip! As always, teachings were appearing before me as I needed them.

The previous tour in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky brought up in me a lot of “aversion”, a feeling of “pushing away”. Please don’t get me wrong if you were there and enjoyed the music – playing the music was a blast. However, I experienced this feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was just wrong and dealt with dissatisfaction, fear and doubt more than usual. Bravo – it pushed me out of my comfort zone, and resistance to the present moment arose. Time to grow!

We all do this when we are on line waiting for a slow cashier. It’s a “no”, a push that we feel inside. So I felt “no, I deserve more money, better hotels, more recognition, more publicity, easier travel” and so on. I made myself unhappy for much of it. I was grasping for “something better”.

In contrast, last night I stayed at the Hilton in Dresden, played with stellar musicians, in the most prestigous place I have ever played, got payed well and ate like a king. My feeling was, “wow ,of course this is cool, but it simply is what it is. I am here. So this is what I have been grasping for? It’s still me and my guitar, my mind, my fingers and I have to do my best. This is just as much NOW as Kentucky was NOW. Different, but not really, because I am always here in the NOW!”

It’s very hard to describe, but I saw a MAJOR flaw and built in guaranteed misery for all of us humans in the whole grabby-grasping for the things we want, and the pushing away of the things we don’t want. And magically, a book on Buddhism appeared in front of me.

I want to be serene more than I want anything. I guess I still want the pleasure, but there is a wide-awake delectability when there is calm, peace and acceptance. It’s a joy that is quiet and still – and always there if the tornado of the mind chills out!!! It’s a greater pleasure than a vacation, money, or ego inflation. It is the backdrop of inner peace.

The little Buddhism book from the hotel says many perfect things, but here’s the one closest to what I felt when I looked at this push-pull in my own mind:

“People grasp at things for their own imagined convenience and comfort; They grasp at wealth and treasure and honors; they cling desperately to mortal life.

They make arbitrary distinctions between existence and non-existence, good and bad, right and wrong. For people, life is a succession of graspings and attachments, and then, because of this , they must assume the illusions of pain and suffering.”

Can YOU see that attachment to the “good things” leads to misery when they are not there? Can you see that grasping to re-create a past experience is the hell of grasping, and that the present offers all that you’d need? Can you see that getting a nice big fat ego boost and enjoying it makes you thirst and kill for the next ego boost, which vanishes like a mirage?

Thank you life, for being the greatest teacher of all. See you tomorrow.

Jazzheads, meet everyday folks who love music! Folks, meet the jazzheads!

By Adam Rafferty 1 Comment

It’s 7 am on 5/22/08 and I am packing to go to Germany to play some gigs with Bennie Wallace’s “Disorder at the Border” Coleman Hawkins tribute band. The band has some of the finest players in the jazz world today, so this is a real treat!

Everything has it’s price, and to prepare for this gig I had to set the acoustic down and really spend some time wrapping my head and hands around playing straight ahead jazz. Shifting gears so to speak!!!

Music is like anything – the more you listen, think about and play a certain “bag”, the more you attract similar ideas and thoughts. The thoughts and musical language gain momentum and creativity.

Electric jazz with a band and solo acoustic guitar are basically 2 different languages. Just think “english” and “chinese” and suspend judgement for a moment.

What’s interesting is that no matter which “world” you happen to be in at any given time, it seems like the world you’re in is ultimate reality, that nothing could be better, and that you look at the other side of the fence and go “blecchhh!”

This gives me a keen appreciation of what listeners go through when they are not accustomed to a certain genre of music. What I am asking you is this…don’t stay stuck. Whatever side of the fence you are on, give the other kinds of music a try – yet – trust your gut!!!

A fan of my acoustic playing just emailed me this, and I think it speaks on behalf of many people:

“I’m not hugely into jazz (I pretended to be in university 🙂 but now I have nothing to prove and have realized I am not musically sophisticated enough to appreciate any of it). I’m kinda thinking jazz is music for other musicians. Too complicated for us non musicians. Smack me awake if I’m wrong.”

Interesting! Part of the problem here is that A LOT OF JAZZ REALLY FRIGGIN SUCKS!!!! In fact most of it makes my skin crawl, and I love jazz – the right jazz!!!

The jazz world today has provided an environment in which some musicians can get away with intellectual crapola combined with good instrumental chops. I say this – if you want it to feel good, want to groove to it, tap your foot, and hear that yearning of the blues in the jazz – you simply need someone to tell you who some great artists are.

Another way of saying this is that a lot of today’s jazz is “up in the head” rhythmically, the notes being ear candy. Everyday folks – you want more, I know. Jazzheads take note, everyday folks don’t like that crapola!!!

So – I will recommend a few jazz artists to you who I think you’ll dig. Mind you, listen to a few CD’s because quite often jazz artists change styles and you may enjoy an earlier or later period of a certain artist.

Take Miles Davis for example – there were 4 or 5 stages (at least to me) in his playing. 1) Playing and mentoring with Charlie Parker 2) Venturing Solo 3) leading various bands, with Coltrane & Cannonball 4) Leading the 60’s band with Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock & Tony Williams 5) Electric madness, “Bitches Brew” and all that.

This is a HUGE overview, but the music varies so widely that if you picked up “Bitches Brew” you may hate it, but you may really love “Kind Of Blue”.

Anyhow here are a few soulful, bluesy places to start checking out jazz:

Miles Davis “Kind of Blue”
Oscar Peterson
George Benson Earlier Stuff
Dr. Lonnie Smith (organ)
Stanley Turrentine
Lou Donaldson

I must say, my generation of jazz musicians has been totally supportive of my acoustic direction, because many of us grew up on 60’s rock, 70’s rock & pop, hip hop and so on. However, for the “musically sophisticated????” it’s very easy to slip into a mindset where other types of music sound as if they are falling short. I am aware that some musicians think I have had a lobotomy in taking my acoustic direction.

Here’s the problem. A lot of non jazz (rock pop blues etc) is particularly strong in one area, but certain areas of the music are lacking to a musicians ears. Regular folks take note – classical and jazz listeners have perceived music that is like fine dining, and when you hand them an aural “cheesburger” they may be more in the mood for “sushi deluxe”.

For example:

James Brown’s music – well it does not get any funkier!!! But, there is not much melody….heavy on the groove and the blues element. People can FEEL it, but a musician won’t necessarily enjoy any kind of melody and harmony. Personally I love it.

Folk songwriters music – may sound repetitive to musically trained ears, yet there can be a very human message in the lyrics, behind the music.

“Earth Wind and Fire” – just soak it up for what it is, allowing it to not be jazz.

“The Eagles” – great Americana rock, perfectly executed, perfect tunes, memorable and enjoyable. No, it ain’t a “Love Supreme” but they are EXCELLENT!!!

When I describe my guitar hero du jour – Tommy Emmanuel – to my fellow jazz musicians, I tell them the following:

“When you hear Tommy you get a total listening treat and fun experience. Great tunes, ferociously and impeccably played, variety, and total entertainment for non-musicians!”.

It’s easy to poo-poo a guy like him from a jazz point of view. I say this – show me one jazz guitarist that can hold the attention of an audience by playing solo for 2 hours, and make people freak out because they loved it so much. I know of only one – George Benson. (And now that I have a solo act together, hopefully I will be the second :-))

A fellow guitarist said that TE sounded too “country / hillbilly”. My reply – the hillbilly tunes serve a purpose in the set, offer contrast to the ballads, aggressive fast & loud tunes, and so on. In the name of crafting an evening of entertainment – they have their place.

In conclusion –

Regular folks, rockers & folk lovers – try some new stuff and gravitate towards any jazz artist you might like. Slowly you’ll expand your appreciation for different rhythms and harmonies. You are learning a new language, so just savor it!

Jazzheads – expand and listen for the good in all types of music. Listen to James Brown, Earth Wind & Fire, Tommy Emmanuel, Hendrix, and Glenn Gould.

Allow it to be what it is and pay no mind to what it’s “not”. For years I heard what certain genrres were “not” rather than whet they “were”. Try to hear what others love about it, and take a look at what everyday folks like. Music is about communication, right?

Alright, gotta run to the airport!!!