If you look past the present

 In case you’re wondering this is leading up to personal theories of music.
​
Someone asked me recently how or why I work with two seemingly unrelated kinds of music-making, electroacoustic composition and playing guitars. The simple answer is that I don’t want to waste all those hours I spent as a child and youth learning and practising classical guitar music in my bedroom. But that’s by the way. 

​Another way round this is to consider that different kinds of music require different kinds of research. Some of course require none, in the sense of academic research. You just play, though there will undoubtedly have been a wider social dimension to that playing which implies some sort of  knowledge base or layered background. On an instrument that I’ve played for most of my life I can play from memory, from a score, improvise from a few ideas or improvise freely. Many musicians can do this quite easily, it’s no big deal. There’s not too much in the way of different sounds to be drawn out of an acoustic guitar, unless we get into amplification, effects and preparations which aren’t typical of the instrument. Any research tends to focus playing and listening or on the histories and traditions of the instrument and its players, a rewarding field of study in its own right.