Clean, crunch, and lead…

They’re the holy trinity of tone among guitarists – endlessly discussed, tweaked, and refined. We’ve all heard dozens of variations on each in popular music.

Clean is the sparkling guitar tone in the introduction to Boston’s “More than a Feeling.”

Crunch is the thick, meaty  tone that opens Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.”

Lead is the soaring, incendiary tone on famous guitar solos – think Eddie Van Halen’s seminal “Eruption.”

Guitarists obsess over these three separate, but related, guitar tones; famous ones are analyzed at ridiculous lengths by guitar magazines, and a billion-dollar industry exists in the trafficking of tone replication gear . Most of the famous amplifiers in guitar history are discussed reverently in terms of these tones.

“How’s the clean? Is it Fender clean? Does it have Marshall crunch? Does it have Engl lead?”

Google any new amp and you’ll invariably find someone reviewing it on the merits of these three basic tones. They’re the foundation of every songwriting session, studio recording, and live performance that uses an electric guitar.

As fervently as guitarists work to craft each one of these tones in their performing rigs, they’re also conscious that all three need to work together to sound like a tonal family. A warm, sparkling clean sound can’t transition into a cold, sterile crunch or lead; a singing, musical lead tone can’t move into a dull, woofy crunch or a dry, undefined clean sound. All three need to transition seamlessly from one to another during the course of a song, and all three need to sound as if you’re listening to variations on a central, core guitar tone.

Listen to Tom Scholz transition through his tones on the early Boston albums, or Jimi Hendrix’s seemingly infinite continuum of tones and sounds, and you’ll notice that despite a broad variety of tonal characteristics, you always know who’s playing. There’s unity in the variation, a sonic anchor to the innovation and creativity.

That’s no accident.

There are, literally, thousands of hours invested in those tones. Knobs have been twiddled and tweaked; effects like compression and chorus added, subtracted, changed, substituted, tossed in disgust. Fantastic tones in one area have been developed to the nth degree – and then chucked wholesale when they didn’t work in the tonal family. There’sinvestment in building those tones – layer by layer, frequency by frequency, effect by effect – to work together perfectly. They’re also remarkably consistent over time – that’s why you could turn on the radio in 1977 or 1987 or 1997 or 2007 and say, “sounds like Eddie Van Halen.”

Good leadership across a wide variety of business conditions is a great deal like guitar tone. There’s not one fixed style and managerial ‘voice’ that works for every situation you’ll encounter in business. As circumstances change, your leadership style has to change with it – whether the horizon looks ‘clean,’ whether you’re in a deadline ‘crunch,’ or whether things have begun to unravel and you really need to ‘lead.’

There are a few basic questions to ask yourself about your own leadership style in relation to business challenges.

First, have you invested the time to develop a stylistic variant for each of these different situations? What will you change about your core leadership style – your ‘anchor tone’ – for each situation?

Second, will your group, division, company, corporation recognize each of those leadership style variations as different aspects of the same core style? In other words, do the changes you apply to different leadership situations still reflect a ‘tonal family?’

If you can’t answer each of these in the affirmative, there’s danger ahead. Your everyday management style might not work in a ‘crunch’ – and if you’re not ready, with a recognizable and effective ‘variant’ on that style, it’s easy to fail in pulling your team through a difficult time – or keeping their attention and respect.

We’ve all worked with, and for, managers who were fantastic as long as there were clear skies ahead, but came apart under pressure situations or simply couldn’t manage through a crisis. Make sure you’re not one of them by crafting and honing a leadership ‘tone family’ that can meet every business challenge.

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Dave Mayer is EVP & Executive Director of Aristeia, Inc.
He can be reached at david.mayer@aristeia-corp.com

Image Sources: rattana.org, rockinwithremedy.com, mtv.com

As many of you probably know, Stephanie is no longer blogging at change.org. She’s still blogging though, and has masterminded a new endeavor, Animal Rights & AntiOppression.

I’m excited about this for many reasons; one of the biggest is that it’s harder and harder for me to see Animal Rights as a stand-alone issue. It all runs together for me – social justice, environmentalism, animal rights…oppression is oppression is oppression, right?

Besides, to loosely paraphrase something I heard pattrice Jones say once, what’s the point in saving animals if you don’t save their home too?

So, intersections, commonality of oppression, it’s how I see issues and so as much as I enjoyed Stephanie’s Animal Rights focused blogging at change.org, I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy this new space even more.

Stephanie asked me and several others to join her, so I’ll be posting there too. In fact, I have a post up already! “Glimpsing the Future in Re-Wilded Chickens and Turkeys.”

It’s strange how things have worked out this last year. I once told you that you should write about it, let all the memories, feelings, joys and frustrations pour onto the page; just to let it all out. But now I realise that it’s probably too much [much too painful] to open up those floodgates. Because there would be so much emotion involved and as we both have realised this last month, that can be quite draining. And in any case, I don’t think that you could possibly have much more energy left now, as you attend to present needs. And I understand. Everyone recounts that life irrevocably changes after such life events. Of course. It is essential that life changes, turns, circles, back-tracks.

I feel as though we both are in similar situations. Trapped if you will. I imagine that our lives will play out as they should; driving on separate roads in the [i hope] same direction. We will go through the motions as before – clutch, shift, accelerate, reverse, park. We will experience unexpected set-backs; collisions, break-downs, break-ups, deaths, births, separations, reunions, pain, joy, senility. And we will hopefully continue to grow stronger through each of these life events, with or without each other. Always driving. Always moving. And until the day when our lives [might] intersect, we will continue driving without (hopefully) collision.

So, for now, let’s just drive.

Life is full of many intersections and crossroads. I’m facing one of those right now. I recently moved back to the U.S. from Russia, I’m moving to a new state where I have never lived before, I’m trying to find a job in an economy that is struggling. I am facing many intersections in my life.

Intersections bring us to a place where we have the opportunity to make a choice. We can continue on the path that we are on or we can follow the diverging intersecting path. Many times we don’t know where either path will lead, we may think we know where we are going, but the reality is that in the presence of an intersection we are facing the possibility of two unknowns.

Despite the uncertainties of intersections, I find them refreshing. It’s an opportunity to stop and think about where I’m heading. A time to stop and seek Gods direction in my life to know that I am heading in the direction that He is leading me.

We will always face intersections, they are a reality of our lives. It is a unique opportunity that we have to look both ways and begin an adventure!

Songwriting is a lot like cooking blindfolded.

You go in with a general idea of what you’re trying to accomplish, but the end product doesn’t always look (taste?) anything like your original vision. Salt is mistaken for sugar; lemons are fumbled for limes; what felt originally like a jar of salsa was chutney instead.

The result can be anything between brilliantly inspired and wildly unpalatable.

The same goes with my rock band. I’ve brought forward song ideas to our group and watched verses become choruses, choruses become bridges, bridges become intros, and intros become cutting-room casualties. I’ve seen measured rhythm become syncopated and vice-versa. I’ve had a general idea of a lyrical theme in mind and seen our lead singer bring in a completely different idea. Often, what ends up on the session recording is magical. Sometimes, the feedback I get from other band members causes me to see that the original song structure was untenable; then I’m back to the drawing board to try again.

Ya’ know what? In the end, it works – and something truly magical has happened along the way.

A monologue has evolved into a dialogue and then into a musical conversation. Our drummer hooks onto the general idea of the song and asks, “how about a big break here and a double cymbal crash to come out of it?” Our bassist decides – with a little help – to invert a scale progression and add tension to an opening section. I’ll trash an early guitar solo as the piece evolves and rewrite it to fit the new vibe. What began as a scribbled riff in my notebook, or a throwaway recording on my handy Zoom H4, has become something very different; it’s music owned by everyone in the band. Everyone’s got his say, and everyone adds value and vision to the process.

Don’t get me wrong. There are arguments along the way. Occasionally one or more of us will stand on a point; this can’t go there. I don’t feel it. We need that vocal held, because I want to come up under it; you need a different word. The drums need to stay with this line. But we all understand that by flexing where we can, we build something stronger than one person’s monolithic vision – we build music we believe in. I see it when we’re onstage – when Jay is nodding along with the groove he helped build, when Mike goes for the high note he wrote with everything he has, when Sean is pounding away in commitment – not compliance. It’s ours.

Frankly, it doesn’t happen if any one of us comes in with an autocratic vision. Sure, I could hand out sheet music and start counting in. But what I’d get is compliance. Compliance sure looks like commitment in the early stages of a project, but it lacks inspiration, fire, agreement. It’s the shadow of a larger, grander, multidimensional object that exists only when everyone on the team is granted the freedom to give to the best of his or her abilities.

Leadership isn’t always about circling a destination on a map and telling the troops to march toward it.

That’s instruction, but not development; order-giving, not activating. Real leadership is putting people in a place to lead themselves; then, to lead others around them; ultimately, to lead a group. You’re not going to do this forever. (Are you?) Their first efforts on this front aren’t likely to be pretty, but unless we’re willing to accept that as the price of progress of improvement – and, on occasion, have a backup plan ready to quietly share – employees don’t grow and evolve. The next time you’re given a task to carry out, or have an inspiration for a project, keep your sheet music in your pocket. See what your team writes. You might be very surprised at the passion in the music that comes forth.

Are you willing to accept the price of progress in your organization? Do you have the professional courage to invest in people for the longer-term benefit of the team? Or do you frighten more easily under the pressures to produce and shortcut others’ growth? How challenging is trusting yourself and your team in leading development of others? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Dave Mayer is EVP & Executive Director of Aristeia, Inc.
He can be reached at david.mayer@aristeia-corp.com

Image Sources: buildingdiagnosticsgroup.com, ui09.gamespot.com

Northern Mining (ASX: NMI) announces that extensive, widespread reverse circulation (RC) gold intersections have confirmed the significant potential of the Blair North Northern Zone centred 2,400 metres north of George’s Reward.

• Extensive, widespread gold intersections
• Open in all directions
• Centred 2,400m due north of George’s Reward
• Two discrete zones of mineralisation
• Coarse, free gold at George’s Reward

Click here to view the full announcement.

Can you please inch out into the intersections when you have the green yield light when making a left turn?  It is really aggrivating to have to sit through 3 red lights to turn left anywhere.  Its not that difficult.  Ill draw you a picture. 

See now when the light turns red you can go through the intersection.  Very simple.

Thanks,

Petrie

Little Gadding, Faye’s family home, with its betrayals and contradictions is a counterpoint of Little Gidding in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. It sits at an intersection between the modern and the ancient worlds, apparently unchanging, but in being so, it is in a state of perpetual change. Being and no-being.

Combining the constant-motion softness of marabou feathers with a woolly worm fly, Russell C. Blessing’s Woolly Bugger did what most great flies do: it improved on an already workable idea, and it helped those of us less apt to make a perfect presentation catch more fish. Blessing passed away at the age of 74 last Wednesday at his home in Pennsylvania.

O’fieldstream Outdoor Journal
J. Leslie Booth
(765) 252-0251 |Skype|
(765) 463-7949
ofieldstream@gmail.com
Member:OWAA

Posted via email from O’fieldstream Outdoor Journal: Posterous

CGAL 3.5 is the latest version of the library, but it still does not include support for intersection between Triangle_3 and Segment_3. I recently requested for this with the CGAL team on their cgal-discuss mailing list. Pierre Alliez, the INRIA researcher who is working on this was kind enough to share his WIP code on this with me. It supports intersection between the following entities:

1. Triangle_3 and Segment_3
2. Triangle_3 and Line_3
3. Triangle_3 and Ray_3
4. Triangle_3 and Plane_3

I have made available this code here [ZIP]. This code is still not release ready, so if you run into any problems please email Pierre with your feedback.

Here is how to use it:

1. Unzip the 4 header files into your $(CGAL_DIR)\include\CGAL\Intersections_3 directory.
2. Open your $(CGAL_DIR)\include\CGAL\intersection_3_1.h file in any editor.
3. At the end of the file (just before the last #endif) add the following includes:

   #include <CGAL/Intersections_3/Triangle_3_segment_3_intersection.h>
   #include <CGAL/Intersections_3/Triangle_3_line_3_intersection.h>
   #include <CGAL/Intersections_3/Triangle_3_ray_3_intersection.h>
   #include <CGAL/Intersections_3/Triangle_3_plane_3_intersection.h>

You should be able to successfully intersect these geometrical entities in your CGAL code after this.

I’ve always kind of hated Halloween. Okay, not “always.” But ever since I was old enough to be conscious of the fact that other people thought my body took up too much space and was the wrong shape. Having to dress up meant drawing attention to my body in some way, and I started feeling very uncomfortable with that around 10 years old.

When I was in college I went through a brief phase where I enjoyed dressing up and while I never went for “sexy” particularly, I did go for “cute.” I’d go as a kitten or butterfly and enjoyed putting glitter on my face and cutesying myself up.

The last few years though, I’ve just felt a general distain for the the idea of dressing up and partying and was glad my spouse has no desire to engage in these social rituals himself. Last year we made pumpkin bread from scratch (like, literally completely from scratch—starting with a whole, fresh pumpkin and going from there). We roasted the seeds and watched So I Married An Axe Murderer and savored the delicious smells and tastes of the fresh pumpkin bread. This year we’re continuing the tradition.

Over the last few days, I have been reflecting on the general distain I have for the ritual of getting dressed up in costume. I wondered, is it because of the sexism in how all women’s costumes are prefaced with the word “sexy”? You’re not just a nurse, you’re a sexy nurse; you’re not just a librarian, you’re a sexy librarian. Well sure, that’s part of it, but it’s not all of it.

In this reflection I think I may have come to a new understanding of what else is bugging me. When people dress up—kids or adults—it’s an opportunity to try on a different way of being. To be “other” than one’s self, most often in ways that would normally be socially unacceptable (e.g. elementary school kids are not allowed to paint fake bloody scabs on their faces every day).

Kids trying on different identities and figuring out who they are is a normal process of growing up. And even with adults, to some extent the same is true as we continue to evolve and change, but it’s not quite the same as for kids, because to us the awareness of opportunities and limitations afforded to us socially based on our abilities, our body shape and size, our age, our height, the color of our skin, the perception of our gender, etc. have begun to take more solid shape in our consciousness. And it occurs to me that when your body is considered “normal” (thin, white, able-bodied, straight, cisgender upper-middle class young adults) then dressing up and being different can be a completely new experience. But what about those of us whose daily reality is that our bodies are considered “other”? All the time? Without respite?

My body is sold as a costume. People can dress up like me, pretending. Playing. Trying out what it’s like to be fat; getting a laugh out of it. How crazy and disgusting their body would be if they really looked like me. And then at the end of the evening they can take it off. My body is a costume for thin people.

My body isn’t the only body that’s a costume for privileged people.

The bodies and cultures of many persons of color are costumes for white people.

The bodies of “illegal” immigrants are a costume for American citizens.

The bodies of the mentally ill are costumes for the neurotypical.

The bodies of the old are costumes for the young.

The bodies of the poor and homeless are costumes for the wealthy (or at least middle class).

Not only, then, do the oppressed become costumes for the privileged, but it’s worse—these costumes are caricatures of us, designed to be shocking, ugly, “exotic” or otherwise striking in some way. Not only are we othered by the fact that our bodies are used as a costume, we are further othered in the way these costumes make us appear even less “normal” … less human.

And I am sure I only scratched the surface. But what’s happening here is that privileged people are trying on the identities of marginalized groups and it’s passed off as some sort of innocuous party ritual. It’s not. It is not okay when a thin person dresses up as a fat person; it is not okay when a white person wears a “Kung Fu Fighter” costume.

Now I do have a lot of respect for people who do like to dress up and get creative about it. My friend Jasie just posted pictures of some awesome costumes (most of which were hand made!) that she, her partner, and her son have worn over the years. A Jeopardy contestant? Brilliant! Animals and cartoon characters? Right on. If you do choose to dress up for Halloween tomorrow, please be awesome like Jasie and her family, or my sister Kim who is going as a “forest fairy.” Please don’t be a privileged ass and dress up as someone else’s lived experience. Please choose a costume that doesn’t purpetuate oppressive systems.

As for me and my family, we’ll be savoring salty roasted pumpkin seeds and sweet chocolate chip pumpkin bread fresh out of the oven, sipping on glasses of wine and watching The Ring Two.

Happy Halloween

An object can both “be something” and “not be something”. At a simple level a stone is a hard object and not a soft object, but this concept is a useful philosophical tool to helps us think about what existed before the Big Bang and, if the universe is expanding, what is it expanding in to?

If Time only exists from the point of the Big Bang and is defined by the limits of the universe created by this Singularity then if anything exists beyond and before then it could be described as both “being” and “not being”. We know that it is not defined by Time, to the extent that using our current knowledge we can record Time back to a Big Bang, but not before. However, by not being defined by Time, it is actually defined by the absence of Time. It becomes something we cannot describe with any accuracy except in terms that it is not. So it is defined by Time. It is also defined by our inability to measure anything beyond the limits of our Time and Space because even at the extremes of mathematical physics planes and volumes are described according to the dimensional limits of our universe, and our own place in the universe which prescribes the extent of our understanding.

Perhaps a Being (ie not a state of being) can also be described as a not Being. Perhaps this is what drives faith in a God. The inability to prove existence of such an entity is also the inability not to prove. This neither validates nor invalidates a God, or some form of ultimate power or force, but does address a state of beyond-ness which completely encloses the definable limits of Time and Space, in terms which some of the monotheistic religions would recognise. Obviously the limits of language are causing problems with such descriptions, but the lack of participation in our limited landscapes implies a greater state of being and not-Being.

Schopenhauer’s work on the Will provides some further insights here because the Will, as he saw it, is an ineluctable force which drives above and beyond any particular desires or motivations of the individual, to such an extent that the will of an individual does not need to be conscious to have value or provide motivation. In fact the conscious will of humankind is neither working with nor against Will, being irrelevant to it. In this way any observable phenomena, such as rain, a sunset, or actions such as procreation in animals, can be driven by Will, without the requiring consious thought.

Will can be said to be either a state of Being and not-Being, but could also be interpreted as A Being and A Not-Being. In this way, Will, in providing the motivating force for all phenomena permeates the known universe and the before/beyond. This might lead us to concepts of the Absolute in Sufi thought, Wu wei of Taoism and Kantian noumenon.

Trigger Warning

I was recently in a dialogue in a feminist forum about beauty standards. My conversation partner was a woman of color who was calling into question my goal of trying to “smash beauty standards.” She said that some people, particularly women of color and transgender folks, have to perform beauty in order to survive. I replied that I didn’t have the option to perform beauty because I’m fat. I can put makeup on, I can dress up, but at the end of the day I’m still fat and in many people’s minds, ugly by default because I don’t fit the cultural beauty standard. At that point the woman of color stopped replying to me and another one chimed in, telling me it was ridiculous for me to be talking about smashing beauty standards as a “survival strategy” when others in the world are actually worried about being assaulted and potentially killed on the street just for being black, transgender, etc. Thus ensued a long argument over what “survival strategy” actually means. I never felt like it went anywhere productive, I only felt chastized for daring to assert that my experience of abuse is worthy of discussion, that I should stop sniveling because there are other people in the world who have it worse.

I don’t think this is how we should have these dialogues. Do I have to worry about my physical safety when leaving the house, due to the color of my skin or my gender presentation? No. Do I have to worry about my physical safety when leaving the house, due to the size of my body? Not really. (Though it does happen sometimes). But do I have to worry about emotional abuse, physical abuse, and being treated as invisible? Yes. Every second of every day.

In the quarter of my 18-month internship class where we focused on human sexuality, our professor, Eldon Olson, discussed his work with survivors of childhood sexual abuse. He said that sometimes the most difficult form to heal from is when nothing “obvious” happened. Not when the little girl was molested by her grandfather, but when grandma constantly called her “princess.” Not when the little girl was shown pornography by her aunt, but when her father said that she sure looked “sexy” in that little dress. Healing from this kind of abuse can be extremely difficult—there is an ambiguity about the situation, a tendency to ask, “was what happened really wrong?” There is more room to make excuses for the perpetrators, saying that they didn’t know better and, really, aren’t we just supposed to love our families, faults and all? Dr. Olson said that healing from that insidious kind of sexual abuse could be a lifetime process, whereas other forms of abuse, that seem much “worse” to us, such as an older male neighbor assaulting a teenage girl, may be less complicated and time-consuming healing processes because there is such an obvious and socially acceptable “wrongness” about them.

So at the end of the day, what I’m saying here is that it’s just pointless to argue about who has it worse, and who needs to shut up and sit down. I’m not saying that people who experience more subtle forms of abuse have it worse than people who experience physical violence, I’m just saying that all of us are oppressed and experience abuse in unique ways, and I think asking who has it better or worse is divisive and counter-productive. As a friend of mine on LiveJournal, Belenen, points out:

I am convinced that the only meaningful way to measure suffering is by how much it affects a person, and the only meaningful reason to measure suffering is to learn how much support that person needs in that situation.

All of us who experience oppression are suffering. Some of us experience similar types of suffering and some are very different. Some of us literally fear for our lives walking down the street; others of us can’t turn on the television without exposing ourselves to abusive language about our bodies. Some of us are prevented from participating in all areas of public life because no accommodation has been made for a visible or invisible disability. Some of us experience physical violence in our families; others experience physical safety but emotional or spiritual violence. And through all of these things, the unique chemistry of our personalities, our tenacity, and our tolerance and endurance levels will make each of our experiences of these oppressions totally unique to us.

All of us are suffering. So the question is, how will we react to the suffering of others?

Will we insist that we have it worse? Will we insist that there is some objective measure of suffering that doesn’t take into account the person’s lived experience? Or will we, through our own suffering, find compassion for the unique suffering of others… not judging or evaluating it but listening, acknowledging the areas we might have privilege that exacerbates their suffering, and finding ways to work together to make the world a more just place?

I think I’d rather live in a world where more people are doing the latter, myself.

Welcome to the jungle. Welcome to a new place called RockStar Leader.

The idea for the RockStar Leader group and blog came from a conversation with a talented keyboardist named Emerson St. Pierre who wanted to see his two passions of music and leadership talked about in a vibrant open forum. Emerson knows what he is talking about when it comes to these two topics. He was the recent winner of the Hard Rock Cafe’s nationwide search for talent in the Ambassadors of Rock Battle of the Bands contest in Summer 2009. Beating over 150 bands, the Atlanta, Georgia band named Rudy Vaughn won the Hard Rock Cafe contest and was flown to London, England to play at Hyde Park in the Hard Rock Calling with Bruce Springsteen, The Dave Matthews Band, The Killers, Neil Young, and more.

Facing the challenges with creative-types on that journey really prepared him to gear up for more challenges in cooperating with others in the creative music business. Since that experience in London, Emerson is honing his skills on the music scene and is continuing his lifelong passion of leadership effectiveness.

So, E, here is your blog. We call it the RockStar Leader.

The new blog called RockStar Leader is designed to engage people who are interested in the intersection of music and leadership. Here are some of the topics we will be covering:

“A Different Drummer” has topics related to people who might just be a little off-beat. (But everyone is welcome…)

“Leader of the Band” discusses issues related to being a leader of a musical group, orchestra, or worship team.

“Music Genres” is a category for different types of music. Find your favorite beat here. Rock, pop, jazz, hip hop, and more…

“Intersections” is our catch-all category for those topics that we just can’t seem to get back into their cage.

“Decade” has subtopics, oddly enough called: 1960’s, 1970’s 1980,s, and so on…

And More!

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Aesthetic Intelligence: Reclaim the Power of Your Senses

PLEASE REPLY and let us know if there are topics or categories you would like discussed.

Also, if you are on LinkedIn, come join our group here:  RockStar Leader