(rimshot)
 
Wait...

I set a date for it, at least. (I've got some work to do.)

One of these centuries, anyway...
 
Details are on my Wordpress blog. (Didn't want to bore everyone here with it. I'll bore them with other things instead.)

That's a pretty doggone nice drawing there. I'm not referring to the stick man :) 
 
I'm not deep enough to get into they whys of it all. I once drew non stop every day for years until I was out of school. The drawing helped me have some kind of sanity. I think music has now pretty much replaced drawing , but I sometimes still want to draw a pic...usually really strange looking characters. Cartoon character like....I like to make them odd on purpose. Why draw something that looks normal :)

UbiquitousBubba ... Speaking only for myself and the other musicians I've known personally over the years, the vast majority of us "doodle" on our instruments, experimenting with sounds and just playing for the fun of it....

 
I would never consider that this is not the case. Because I know it isn't the case.
 

UbiquitousBubba ... Playing for the feeling and for the mood can produce a lot of noise, but it sometimes results in a moment of genius. Some players regularly record their musical doodling just in case they tripped over something great.

 
I would be careful in wording this. Which came first, the chicken or the egg, kinda thing. There are just as many times when the "thing" is there, and you spend several months trying to interpret it and put it down, regardless of talent, or musical knowledge. Likewise, just as many folks spend many hours, days and what not refining something ... and still not be happy with it.
 
There is something here that you know about ... that you did not mention! You realize that many of the youngsters that went on to do "progressive rock", did not have  30 years of music training behind them, and they still put together AWESOME work, as have many others.
 
I can tell you from a rehearsal space, that sometimes, a few folks "grok it" (my favorite word for it!) and can continue off it from the first go. Others, have to gesticulate it in their minds and find the intentions and the emotional reactions for it. You make it sound like the "great" actors do not rehearse! Actually, most of them rehearse 5 to 10 times more than anyone else, and it is one of the reasons why they are good ... but they are in the search for seconds, inside a moment, not necessarily for a character, and this is akin to you just playing 3 notes, and it defines that whole song, but it ISN'T the whole song!
 
The parallels are the same! I'm not sure if musicians are more stuck on their theory and "learning", than they are in anything else. Almost 75% of them are into "jazz', or "rock", or "this or that", I have found, and asking them to try something else, or listen to something else, is scary for them, because it throws them OFF their "path", which, I guess (how stupid of me!) means they become lesser musicians ... hahaha!!!!
 

UbiquitousBubba ...The idea that musicians are too arrogant and/or stupid to experiment with music is grossly inaccurate.

 
I've tripped around with a few bands in my time taking pictures and had the chance to talk to many of them. In my whole life, only two of them, Christian Vander and Daevid Allen could talk "etherics" or "far out" stuff, and then go play their stuff ... there was no interference, or annoying anything!
 
Here, it's weird ... it's like ... I'm not sharing a secret! Guess what? Music or any art, is NOT about the secret of this or that ... it's about HOW GOOD YOU ARE AT TRANSLATING YOUR INNER VIBE. Just about everything else is ... as you say ... probably too mental a battle. It doesn't have to be, if your rehearsals are more than just a note and chord workout!
 
To suggest that only people with technical skills can do anything, is a bit weird, when the whole of the 20th century has been all about the breaking down of the "technical skill", in order to find something else in music, that is just as simple, and just as important, as anything that was previously done!
 
This does not take "doodling", any more than it takes "practice" ... what it takes is CONCENTRATION, which is diametrically opposed to practice. One is inversely proportional to the other! And this has been proven time and time again ... but many folks, even here, keep saying that only practice will make you good! ... it might not be solid enough, as it could be, and you can tell in the playing! Or better yet, in their songs ... and their ability to do more than just a redo of an old song! Well, even Robert Wyatt has done a few ... but you would be hard pressed to think ... that was The Rolling Stones' song?
 

UbiquitousBubba ... It's understandable that people who are unaware of the difficulty and complexity of learning an instrument might think that all we need to do is make noise at random to write music. That kind of experimentation only works after countless hours have been spent meticulously honing those mundane skills. To someone who is not a musician, those years spent practicing are nothing but wasted time. Musicians know it may take thousands of hours of practice to create a few seconds of great music. ...

 
Bubba ... the best actors out there will embarass you with this line! They rehearse in their sleep, in the mirror, in the shower ... non-stop! They will do it having lunch with you, even!
 

UbiquitousBubba ... That assessment is insulting to actors because, in my ignorance of the art form and its disciplines, I did not see the same level of discipline and skill in their performance as we musicians put into ours. ...

 
They both put in their time. Actors no less or more than you do! You just don't see it, because you do not consider a "person" performance important, since you have never considered the physical aspects, and other elements of acting, that add to the inner completeness of what you do. Most rock bands think that sexy is all they need, or a slight undressed woman at the front, to get some attention!
 

UbiquitousBubba ... We will gravitate towards random paint splatters, accidental noise, and mindless spasms. On the other hand, operating from a point of view that values order over chaos will reverse these approaches. Extreme focus on order may result in heartless realism, devoid of any emotion. Music may be mechanical and dull. Most of us will fall somewhere in the middle along this spectrum. Some of us may drift more towards order than chaos while others may run the other way.

 
I try not to define "music", any more than I do literature, any more than I do "art".
 
The spectrum from random to precise, is illusory for me ... the minute you find McLaughlin, the next day you hear a Gismonti, and then you hear a Django ... and then you hear Keith jarrett, and the word disappears, since the definitions for all of us are variable.
 
The funnies thing, was when directing, I was excellent at empty stages ... and just symbolic this or that ... a square, a platform, and nothing "real" ... you know why? It gave us room to go wider and further ... it gave us "space" to move, instead of being tied behind a chair next to a sofa and table! Music has the same "implications" as does literature and other arts ... we just think that they are all different ... and in the end, I keep simply saying ... it's the same source ... you INNER BEING ... and all I try to do is help bring it out.
 
This doesn't man that I'm going to ask Karyn to do Betty Boop, or Janet to do Lucy, or Bapu to do Fred Flinstone! But it would give them more freedom for interpretation, than just COPY what was done before, and be tied to something that is basically irreplaceable anyway in our minds.
 
Humility is one of the things that takes actors the furthest, and helps with confidence more than anything else, specially when you got "directors" that can be so mental as .... to be insane. In general, the "great" directors, tend to allow actors to do anything they want, and you will find this a lot, and of course, many actors love that freedom! You can't tell me that musicians do not like that, which we know is not true, or Yehudi Menuhin, John McLaughlin, Egberto Gismonti and countless other musicians would not have come anywhere near what they have done.
 
One last thing ... I do not "intelectualize", most pop music. Not because I think it's "less", but in general, there is a lot more out there than just a song ... and that is the only distinction I make ... it needs to be more than a song for me.! 

Hey Sharke - I just saw a cool show on someone trying to authenticate a collage as being created by Frank Zappa (which they did, by the way, as confirmed by Frank Zappa's wife).
 
Anyway, I learned something about how Frank Zappa approached writing music, and it blew my mind.
 
He sees a music composition as a collection of pictures/drawings of things, almost like floating mobiles, of differing 'densities', where the densities are visual representations of the melodic lines and musical sections.  I mention it in this thread, to give you something you might try sometime - doodle up something that represents some musical ideas running around in your head, and use that to help you pull those ideas into a composition.
 
Just a thought, LOVED your doggy drawing, by the way - I really appreciate what you shared with us.
 
Bob Bone
 

Something else popped back into my dim memory a moment ago, about all of this.
 
About 30 years ago, I had an idea that through the use of mathematical formulas using something called a Fourier Series, musical frequencies could be converted to differing frequencies of light, and that one could create musical compositions based on colors of light, and colors of sound.
 
So if you REALLY want to get out there with your noodle doodles, you might be able to get some pretty far out there stuff.
 
And, I just wanted to say again that I REALLY like the doggy you drew.  :)
 
Bob Bone
 

Tonight I thought I'd have a go at sketching something in pen, so I drew an old lady on a roller coaster. It didn't quite turn out like I'd hoped but it's kind of fun and it does make me smile when I look at it 
 
Fabrics, I have never got the hang of drawing. I'm really jealous of people who can render all of those folds and shadows with just a few scribbles. Keep trying.....
 

 
 
 

Hiya sharke,
 
Is that a drawing from memory? Or did you have a photograph in front of you?
 
Either way, it has depth, and I think you've done a good job with the fabrics 

That's what I thought. Maybe Kim Dong's mother?

jps
Here is one of my creative drawings "Book of Silence"
Jan

Nice! Is that charcoal?

Well I've definitely gotten the doodle bug. I love just scribbling as well, the movement of the pen on the paper just seems to mesmerize me. Today I bought some nibs and a bottle of India ink just to see what it's like, boy does that take some getting used to. Apart from the constant fear of tipping the bottle over, I'm finding it really hard to get smooth lines, and also get into the flow of knowing just when to dip. 
 
Anyway I tried another pen drawing the other night, using my trusty fine line marker, and discovered that I really, really like going to town with the cross hatching. I worked from a photo, it was supposed to be James Bond but my inaccuracy ended up making the guy look a lot meaner, almost a totally different face. And I totally screwed up the placement of the nose, lol. Wouldn't you know, the damn pen ran out on me before I could finish it. I was just going nuts with that cross hatching, not even really caring how it turned out and I like the loose feel which resulted. I think I like working in pen more than pencil though, there's something about that feeling that you cannot erase...
 

 
 

sharke
Anyway I tried another pen drawing the other night, using my trusty fine line marker, and discovered that I really, really like going to town with the cross hatching.
...

Do not worry about "smooth" lines, or anything "definition".
 
Eventually, these lines define themselves as something else that are a part of a bigger detail.
 
The important part is to get through the ability to "bring it on" and "download it" from your head in one piece, and what it looks like is not important ... again, for a while, I would recommend not concentrating on "what you want", or "what you see", but simply ... on letting it come down.
 
In due time, these resolve themselves ... but you have to allow for them to grow on their own. IF, you are interfering with it, its growth becomes limited.
 
This is, one of the most important parts of the exercise.
 
Don't forget that I'm stating things here that help you find an inner path to yourself ... and a lot of folks here do not like that because they think that it makes them nekkid in front of a mirror, which is the stupidest idea ever! But, if you are only interested in an idea or two, you will not be learning as much as you can about these things. There is a "world" out there, and all you are telling me, is that you are afraid to check it out! Trust me on this ... just trust me on this! It's not just a bunch of words and ideas, as some of you guys here think!