Lunar Notes
Marshall Burns:
Here's the "three texts" I mentioned. I also want to point out that I made LN because I've been wanting to get these things into my roleplaying for years now.
TEXT 1: CAPTAIN BEEFHEART'S TEN COMMANDMENTS OF GUITAR PLAYING
1. Listen to the birds.
That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere.
2. Your guitar is not really a guitar Your guitar is a divining rod.
Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you're good, you'll land a big one.
3. Practice in front of a bush
Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush dosen't shake, eat another piece of bread.
4. Walk with the devil
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the "devil box." And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you're brining over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
5. If you're guilty of thinking, you're out
If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.
6. Never point your guitar at anyone
Your instrument has more clout than lightning. Just hit a big chord then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.
7. Always carry a church key
That's your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He's one. He was a Detroit street musician who played in the fifties on a homemade instrument. His song "I Need a Hundered Dollars" is warm pie. Another key to the church is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty-making you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he's doing it.
8. Don't wipe the sweat off your instrument
You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.
9. Keep your guitar in a dark place
When you're not playin your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.
10. You gotta have a hood for your engine
Keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can't escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.
TEXT 2: THE DREAM & SHADOW PRECEPTS
(When I had a band, the Dream & Shadow Huntsman Group, I gave this to the musicians. I also interviewed them before taking them on, asking questions like, "Have you ever drank from a stream with your bare hands?"
A lot of this only makes sense to musicians. I can't help that. But it's all relevant to the myth and magic I'm talking about.)
1. The definition of music: organised sound of artistic intent. The level of organisation may vary.
2. If it makes a sound, it is an instrument. The Voice is just another instrument.
3. The two classes of sound: Ugly & Pretty. Both are beautiful.
4. Any sound audible to the human ear can be useful in music.
5. All instruments are melody instruments. There is no such thing as a "rhythm instrument."
6. The only time signature: 1/1
7. No padding. If you have no real reason to repeat a passage, then don't repeat it. Tradition is not a reason to repeat a passage.
8. Multiple instruments should only play the same passage simultaneously for emphasis. Playing a passage an octave lower or higher does not make it a different passage.
9. Full, non-arpeggiated chords take up huge amounts of space -- use sparingly, and only for emphasis. Strumming is lazy, taking up space that could be better filled with actual melodic passage.
10. All melody is arpeggio.
11. Specific harmonic shapes should be used for specific effect; major and minor are not and should not be considered standard.
12. Any two or more notes occupying the same harmonic space comprise a chord.
13. There are more than 12 notes in an octave.
14. Lyrics are not the excuse for the composition. The composition is the excuse for lyrics. Lyrics are subordinate to composition, and should serve only to improve the composition.
15. Play it organic like you just dug it out of the soil. Steel is boring, rust is interesting.
16. Play with a balance of disciplined technique and reckless abandon.
17. Listen to instinct. Your bones know more than your brain does.
18. Listen to ideas. Your brain has its moments.
19. Balance the 4 elements:
Earth -- rhythm, pattern;
Wind -- whimsy, rhapsody;
Water -- harmony, flow;
Fire -- dissonance, angularity
20. Risk. Risk something that matters.
21. Playing it note-for-note is not enough without Heart. Heart is not emotion or feeling or anything else human. It is something cosmic.
22. Break every rule at least once.
TEXT THREE: ON SONGWRITING
(This is something I wrote many years ago. As such, it is slightly embarassing in places. But the theme is still valid.)
I do not believe that a songwriter creates the songs he writes; I believe they are channeled from somewhere else, another plane of existence. The gift of the songwriter is a connection to this other plane. The songwriter went out and found his songs, or they found the songwriter.
Some songs are potatoes; you find where they're growing, dig them out of the ground, wash them off a bit and scrape some things off, and then it's edible right away. And there are so many ways you can cook a potato. Other songs are flowers, they're nice to look at but you can't eat them. Others are animals, usually ones you have to kill before they're useful; but others still make good sideshows while alive, the only thing is you have to feed them and take care of them, which is a lot of effort.
It's great finding the occasional potato and mushroom and rare flower, but what I'm mostly interested in is the animals. Strange animals that no one's seen before, or rare ones they've only read about or seen in zoos. Anyone can go out and bring back a duck or a deer; I'm interested in bringing back elephant birds, jabberwocks, bloomwhales, bonedogs. Sometimes I'm not very successful; those are pretty rare creatures (of course, this sort of meat isn't for everyone, but it's what I'm interested in). Also, it's not only the meat you bring home; you hang the head on your wall, you reconstruct and mount the skeleton; there's the ornamental songs that are basically like flowers; nice to look at (sometimes to smell?), but you can't do much else with them. And then there's the inedible parts that have practical uses, like using the hooves to make glue, using skulls as bowls, making canes out of femurs, making soap out of fat. But as nice as practical and ornamental songs are, the classic ones are those that are edible, because you can get them inside you and they become part of you.
The selection of weapon is also very important when you go song hunting. I don't consider myself a guitarist; I'm a Marksman. My acoustic is a longbow, my electric is a rifle (of varying sizes, depending on how I rig up the rest of my equipment; it can be a .22, a 30-ought-six, a 12-guage shotgun, or a tranquilizer gun, and anything inbetween). You have to be careful what you use; shoot a crow with a 30-ought-six and you'll blow him to pieces (especially if you shoot him 16 times), and a bow just doesn't cut it against a charging rhinoceros. If you use the wrong instrument when you're trying to write a song, you'll either never bring the creature down and it will run away or you won't have enough left of it to bring home, and you'll have to find another one (which is very difficult if you're hunting for rare creatures). Every instrument is its own weapon; brass and winds, depending on how they're played, are either cannons, flamethrowers, or blowguns; drums are explosives, snares, nets, or bear traps. Keyboards can be as devastating as mounted guns or as subtle as a telephone crank generator with a line running down into the water to paralyse fish.
Once you hunt down the song and bring him home, you can do whatever you want to him, but you have to be careful. Cut him up the wrong way and you'll ruin him. Leave him in the oven too long and he'll burn, not long enough and there's the risk of trichinosis. And if you leave him sitting long enough he'll spoil. You've only got so much time to make something useful out of the corpse, otherwise you'll have to go kill another one. And there's never two that are just alike. Of course, you can bring them back alive if you don't think they'll keep for the journey home (the really good stuff is far, far away in the jungle, on the bottom of the ocean, in the desert) or you don't have any ideas for them right away. But if you do that you have to make sure you feed them until it's time to get the axe and you have to make sure they don't escape. Sometimes it's better this way, 'cause you can use this time to fatten them up if they don't have enough meat on them. But a lot of things won't grow too well in captivity, and others are hard to accomodate (just try keeping an elephant fenced up in your back yard. And then feed him).
And that's the way I approach songwriting. The same concept of hunting/harvesting also applies to other art forms. It's all about that other plane, that other dimension: unlock the door with the key of your imagination. Like the Twilight Zone.
Marshall Burns:
Uh, one final point, just to be sure.
I'm in no way saying that this is a Done thing. I'm not defending what it is. I'm merely laying the cards out on the table to make it clear what I intend for it to be.
Noclue:
Marshall, I think this is in line with Ron's comment about "hunting spirits." The open question "Why are you hunting spirits?" bothers me. It seems like asking a musician why are you playing music or why do you breathe? There shouldn't be any why. You hunt spirits because that's where the music comes from.
Marshall Burns:
Huh. I actually didn't mean to leave that in there. Oops.
'Cause, yeah, "Why do you play music?" is a stupid question to ask a musician, and it'll get you a stupid answer.
Although this is related to why I focused on the "how" of things rather than the "why." The "why" has only one answer. "Why does my guy play guitar?" Stupid. "Why does my guy play guitar the way he does?" is good. "Why does my guy play guitar rather than bassoon or something?" Also really good. How someone does a thing says A LOT about that person. More than why does, I'm inclined to say. Which is probably because I'm something of a Formalist.
The differentiation between hunters is there not for tactical options, but for expression, and the ability to paint a nuanced personal portrait of your hunter.
(Ron, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you have similar misgivings about the number of attributes in the Rustbelt?)
Noclue:
Cool.
So, if I read the game correctly, its about reaching into the source of the cosmic music and binding spirits to your instrument? I like that in many ways. It sets up a meaty moral ambivalence. The musician can take on the roll of shaman, banishing evil spirits and healing the spiritually sick, but also uses the spirits for their own music, which is arguably very selfish and narcissistic. At least in my mind.
I do wish called something different. Calling it spirit hunting makes me think of Ghost Busters or Solomon Kane. Spirit Charming?
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