Keys to the Soul
The art of authentic musical expression
Play the Music of Your Heart
A holistic approach to finding and developing your artistic voice. Music is not just about playing the song, but telling the story of your heart.
Join us on a 4-week Live on Zoom, immersive, guided exploration of the soul through your musical instrument. Geared towards all levels of musicians. Recommended for chordal instruments
What does it mean to engage with the heart? Why is this relevant?
Engaging with the heart, expressing from the heart, is about radical honesty. It’s about courageous truth. It is about transcending the subtle fears and conditioning that chain us to ‘playing it safe.’ It is about opening the mind, relaxing thought and allowing something greater to come through. It is about taking your hand out of the pot and allowing the entropy of the universe to flow.
Have you ever tried to place objects so that they look random? Try placing some pebbles on the ground in such a way that it looks like they just fell. Youll find that no matter what you do it just feels ‘staged’ in a way that is hard to escape. And the harder you try, the more contrived it feels. Where when you just throw them, they land in an authentically random way. You just let go, and it effortlessly happens. The splatter paint just lands the way it does, and it is somehow perfect. You couldn’t have done it any better.
And so there is a sense in which the deeper levels of our heart want to just let be. Authentically connecting with the heart is about letting go. Letting go of trying to make things a certain way, trying to be perceived a certain way, trying to sound a certain way. It is the courage to jump off the cliff and see what happens.
It is the radical and subtle courage of throwing the pebbles, not knowing how they are going to land, and trusting that however they do is the truth of the moment and is beautiful!
And as we continue to master our craft, the pebbles are thrown into more and more robust and beautiful configurations.
But no matter how much you master a craft, if you are thinking about ‘what you should do’—it will likely be contrived. Authentic expression is the difference between someone who is so talented at their instrument, but they just shred and say nothing of meaning (maybe even numb to their hearts in this case)— v.s. someone who may have much less experience, but is just being radically honest in their playing— honest in their imperfection. And it is this second person that touches your heart. It’s the second person who is connected to their truth that moves you for a reason you can’t quite put your finger on. And this course is about learning to let go, and be that second person, regardless of your level of craft.
4 heart-centered weeks
Week 1 is all about connecting with your inner ear and allowing your emotional body to engage with simple playing. Treating our instruments as vessels of expression, we start gently and snowball our emotions into something truly magnificent and real.
Week 2 we are cultivating harmonic and textural vocabularies by 1) consciously making mistakes to find things so new and uniquely ours (discovering at the forefront of our musical horizon), and 2) stealing from people who inspire us deeply. This is all about creating a sound and style that feels true to you. It is the palette from which you will paint your heart.
Week 3 is about digging deeper into limiting beliefs and investigating more deeply into your inner world. When you can see the chains, they are easier to undo! We will be experimenting with journaling inquiry combining it musical exercises— using playing as catharsis for the emotional body that wants to be released. Get ready to find some deep beauty here
Week 4 is about setting you up to continue these practices. Sharing the songs we all will have written by the end of the course, and
Throughout the course I will help you to expand your expressive capacity through guided meditations, journaling prompts, and musical exercises. I will also be offering harmonic suggestions and help with pushing r over the edge of your perceived musical and expressive limits.
Four group zoom calls (90 minutes each), plus introductory one on one meeting with me. Sundays at 11:30am PST
Being a Fearless Creative Force
In this course we will be getting to know our own inner landscape more deeply, using our instruments as tools of self inquiry, ultimately finding the confidence and attuned sensitivity to share our raw, honest, truth.
Connecting with and courageously expressing this truth is the clearest path towards creating the beautiful, heart-wrenchingly honest art that we so deeply long to share.
