Mental Gymnastics

[eric_darling]

Here's a fun exercise:

1. While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and
make clockwise circles.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your
right hand. Your foot will change direction.

[AXXESS]

Doesn't work for me... must be my drummer tendencies...

[Intrigued]

I found it worked as described. I am not a drummer, but I use to game alot! Ha!

Hmmm...

Something I do about 95 percent of the time I go through a check-out line is to, as fast as I can, blurb back in my mind the change.

ie. 42.58 out of a $100 bill. Leaves 57.42 in change. *Cachiers job just stuck with me I suppose. It's weird... it's like I see it in an image flash into my mind. Probable just to much junk food on the brain.

[Corey]

In my case it started to happen but then my skateboard bone overrode it. But I could *definitely* feel it happen. Very cool. One of the main things Yoga does to you is it evens out all left/right imbalances. As anyone who starts yoga will testify, it is *shocking* how out of balance we are. I Noticed this phenomenon doesn't work if you try it on your left side for some reason, I tried it both sides, both directions and it only works in the manner you posted.

This is also an interesting glimpse into the left-handed phenomenon. Left handers are more suseptible to injury statistically for example, this may very well be a peek at one of the contributing factors. We seem to be designed as right handed beasts with all sorts of little built-in automatic mechanisms geared in that direction. Very cool, I'm going to show this one to everyone.

[JimS]

I can sort of replicate it on my left side. If I move my left foot clockwise and draw the number 9 in the air with my left hand, my foot changes direction. Then again, I’m so uncoordinated that I need to sit down to chew gum.

[Corey]

Hmmm, I must be a freak then. I suspect skateboarding erodes this specific phenomenon. One cool thing about skateboarding is the way it forces you to do everything on both sides, i.e. switch/fakie. It super easy to do certain things in normal position but once you try them switch (other foot first) they become almost impossible. Imagine trying to kick a field goal with your non-kicking foot. I almost popped my knee trying that once, it's profoundly difficult.

Steve Vai and Michalangelo are a couple of rock guitarists who can play left as well as right to some extent. Took them years to develop that ability. I've always found that odd how someone can be the world's best at something right handed but then totally equal to a rank beginner when they switch hands. The world's best brain surgeon wouldn't even be able to get admitted to med school if he switched hands. Imagine if Tiger Woods switched sides mid-season.

Vai with a variation of his famous heart guitar. Note that he also plays right and left *at the same time*. I've tried that, it's beyond difficult, the human brain essentially has to be "reprogrammed" to do this:

[Intrigued]

Hmmm, I must be a freak then. I suspect skateboarding erodes this specific phenomenon. One cool thing about skateboarding is the way it forces you to do everything on both sides, i.e. switch/fakie. It super easy to do certain things in normal position but once you try them switch (other foot first) they become almost impossible. Imagine trying to kick a field goal with your non-kicking foot. I almost popped my knee trying that once, it's profoundly difficult.

Steve Vai and Michalangelo are a couple of rock guitarists who can play left as well as right to some extent. Took them years to develop that ability. I've always found that odd how someone can be the world's best at something right handed but then totally equal to a rank beginner when they switch hands. The world's best brain surgeon wouldn't even be able to get admitted to med school if he switched hands. Imagine if Tiger Woods switched sides mid-season.

Vai with a variation of his famous heart guitar. Note that he also plays right and left *at the same time*. I've tried that, it's beyond difficult, the human brain essentially has to be "reprogrammed" to do this:

Like a lot of people, watching me throw a baseball with my right hand is uneventful. While with the ball launched from my left hand is like a 2 year old trying to putt a 500 YD hole.

;-)

[Corey]

Yeah, that would be hilarious to videotape a montage of a bunch of athletes trying to throw with their bad hand.

The one that always really amazes me is the people who do specific things wrong handed from day one, i.e. right handers who golf lefty but do everything else righty. Or left handed people who kick with their right foot. That completely freaks me out.

[AXXESS]

Vai is an amazingly talented guitarist. Watching him shred in Crossroads was inspirational to say the least!

[eric_darling]

Before we were married, my wife had a professor in college who would write on the blackboards in the classroom with both hands simultaneously. We're talking two well-formed sentences being generated at the same time. To make matters worse, the class was Organic Chem - so it was difficult subject matter to boot. This woman would get so far and then be forced to erase one sentence while writing another. Fascinating stuff to watch, since I wasn't among those who were feverishly trying to keep up with their own notebooks.

[Corey]

As a kid I used to write with both hands well into grade school but they started punishing me for it so I stopped. They told me to "pick a hand" so I said "OK, left..." then they said, "No, you meant to say right". Eventually they got me. I never wrote with both at the same time as you say though, that's amazing. For me it was just a thing where I'd write lefty until my hand got tired, then switch, etc. Laziness is a great motivator.

Few people know the story of Vai so they lump him in with all the other shredders but he is so far beyond all that it isn't even funny. This is a guy who started mailing Frank Zappa precisely accurate transcriptions of his most difficult pieces when he was only 14 years old.

Steve Vai redefined the technical limits of modern rock guitar music unlike any other single individual in history. What a lot of these other guys forget is that it's music. It has to connect with the human experience on some level or it's just noise. I mean what is the difference to a wolverine between the sound of a drum solo and bunch of garbage can lids being dropped? Nothing. The *thing* that makes noise into music is the human connection.

The new breed is *all* about hype. They can't play in time, they have no sense of musicality, and they got no soul. There's no human connection. I feel sorry for the few who were highly musical like Ritchie Kotzen for example because the system essentially penalized them for being musical and only rewarded them when they regressed to hype. Nutty.

Vai is that one rare individual who is simultaneously a true master of both hype and music. He says he learned that from Zappa who was, of course, extremely deft at creating and managing hype. I suspect his years with David Lee Roth were also integral in his hype management education.

[AXXESS]

I heard that Billy Sheehan is going to be with Steve Vai on his current tour. Now those two together... a veritable tour de force.

Billy is a monster bass player that mirrors Steve's incredible instrumental dexterity... this was first evidenced on David Lee Roth's Eat 'em and Smile CD.

I suspect his years with David Lee Roth were also integral in his hype management education.

And now Roth is an EMT!!

(Billy and Steve shown below)

[Corey]

I just saw the G3 summit concert tape from Denver with Sheehan playing bass for Vai, and Tony McAlpine (!!!) as Vai's keyboardist/guitarist. Excellent gig for Vai and Satriani (great version of Starry Night) but not so hot for Yngwie who appears to pretty much have fallen to pieces. Poor Yngwie, he's completely out to lunch. Sad considering how great he really was, he plays some Hendrix-y stuff on his Hot Licks tape which really showed his depth as a blues player and it was actually some jaw dropping stuff.

I'm a big fan of Sheehan, I have some instructional bass tapes from him which I've worked through. He has gigantic hands, hard to play some of his stuff. I mean, I've got big hands and can get around a bass OK but his are HUGE and he has a knack for gymnastic antics. Good guy though, doesn't say anything he can't back up and always delivers the goods. He's been on some harrowing tours too, like 2-3 years solid roadwork. That ain't easy.

Tony McAlpine is another guy from the shred era who got punished for being too musical not hyped enough. I'm not a big fan of his albums but live he is one of the most amazing musicians I've ever seen. His appearance with Vai in G3 supports that. His guitar playing is off the map.

Yeah I know about Roth. Amazing guy actually. He used to train with Paulie Zink too, became one of the very few high level monkey style kung fu practitioners of that particular type. He became an EMt because a whole bunch of people in his family are doctors and he wanted to live up to his life long dream of being part of that whole legacy thing. From what I've heard he's top notch and everyone is really impressed with his abilities.

I still miss him. Whenever I think of rock and roll Diamond Dave is one of the first guys that come to mind. I saw them on April 17th, 1984 and it permanently changed my view of the universe.

[AXXESS]

MacAlpine is another amazing (yet underrated) guitarist. I first heard his stuff on Maximum Security. He plays with a extreme feeling... yet can certainly tear up the fretboard when he needs to!

Yngwie IMHO always seems too arrogant... and his main thing is always "look how fast I can play" (which is blazingly fast), but after a while it becomes unlistenable.

I really need to get with whats going on with the G3 tours.

[Corey]

Agreed, Yngwie is a jerk, no one will argue that. Wait until you see him in G3 Denver with Satriani and Vai, at the very end where they confab after the concert, hilarious. Defnitely worth seeing. He did play with some depth when he was young, only his fastest stuff got marketed though. The great thing about Yngwie's stuff was that he had some really decent singers and sidemen. "Crystal Ball" and "Heaven Tonight" have catchy vocals, and the album "Marching Out" had some fairly solid vocals I thought. Jeff Scott Soto in particular I thought was pretty solid. The Johanson brothers Anders and Jens (keys & drums) deserve a lot of credit, the unity between the keyboards and drums on some of Yngwie's stuff was revolutionary in the arena of "rock keyboard" and to be sure, those lads received the raw end of the stick from Malmsteen on numerous occasions. He treated them extremely shoddily.

Also I like the spark Yngwie brings to everything. Like David Lee Roth, nothing is ever boring around Yngwie. I remember when Michelangelo released "Yngwie can't touch this". Hee! Those were fun times when opinions were opinions, not this wishy washy super-safe corporate garbage they shovel into our ears nowadays. Chad Kroeger? I don't think so... Rock and roll was never meant to make you feel warm and fuzzy. Rock and roll is not meant to be safe. Rock and roll is Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, The Ramones. Making a statement with your life. In that regard I respect Yngwie more than any of today's lily livered MTV darlings. At least he makes a statement.

I also saw another G3 DVD with Vai, Eric Johson, and Satriani which was decent but I don't remember where it was from, possibly Dallas. The only thing was that Vai's guitar got switched off for some of the stuff, it was wierd. Still worth seeing though.