Matt Stead YouTube Kanikapila today?
- Thread starter ZaBeth
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Not only not seeing anything on YT, but no mention of it on either of his Facebook pages. I hope he's okay!
I wondered if he'd announced at the end of last week's thing that there wouldn't be one this week. I don't usually last to the end of the kanikapilas, so I would've missed that.
Thanks for the (non-)info!
They run at 7am Hawaii time when the UK is in daylight savings mode, 8am when the UK is on standard time, so making it to the end depends on a whole lot of other things in my life. LOL But I'd just been thinking, "Hmmm, maybe I should check the end of last week's YT stream...."
I'm really glad that you're tuned into the Kanikapila sessions! So many people here are fans of Matt (who also has an account here, btw, but posts more often at Facebook), and indeed, I first heard about him from folks here....but as much as I enjoy his lessons, I LOVE the Kanikapila sessions!
I'd started to explore music theory in general (Matt's videos among others), and it scratched my curiosity itch -- the same kind of itch that makes me enjoy behind the scenes and making-of videos for movies, for example -- but I didn't feel it was doing a thing for my playing. Almost all of the practical applications for theory I was seeing meant nothing to me. It was almost entirely in the context of soloing, which I have zero interest in. The Circle of Fifths? A problem to me, not a solution. (If you love it, good! I'm not wanting to get off track on that though.)
The Kanikapila stuff applies music theory EXACTLY the right way for me -- playing with more confidence, more quickly and easily, more FUN, and opening the structure of EVERY song to make them easier to learn. It was like a light turning on, maybe even close to a miracle. Completely transformative, for sure!
btw, "kanikapila" is pronounced kah knee kah pee la, and is a Hawaiian style jam session, where, instead of chord sheets, people just show each other the fingering, and go. Maybe chord names enter in, maybe not. LOL But definitely no chord sheets. It's about looking UP, at each other, and just PLAYING.
In practice, the application is along the lines of the Nashville numbers, where once you know the root and the handful of numbers that describe the chord progression, you just take off and start playing. It takes practice to learn the the V (roman numeral 5) of C is G, but once you wrap your head around a few basic progressions in a couple of keys, you suddenly "know" a TON of songs with only the tiniest bit of tweaking.
For folks who are looking to learn theory to improve soloing, Matt has you covered there too, as half or more of the songs he teaches (4-5 a week) have opportunities for soling built in, most using the pentatonic scale. I happily ignore these and stick to the chords, but that's also my point. You can make these as hard or as easy as you need them to be, but the freedom and flexibility is really energizing.
Even the recorded playbacks are a gas, which, again, because of the not always convenient hour, is pretty regularly how I watch. It's worth noting that in the early days of this, they're all named the same at YouTube, even though the repertoire is quite different. They're themed, sometimes by artist (Beatles, Dylan, Beach Boys, etc), sometimes by genre (blues, gospel, Hawaiian, etc), sometimes by topic (say, London, 90s indie, or the beach, to name some recent ones), and a repertoire far more eclectic than I'm hinting at here. From the Carter Family 100 years ago to Radiohead, Belle and Sebastian, and beyond in both directions.
Really, truly ace stuff! And yeah, I miss it whenever it's not happening, but a great chance to check out some of the older ones you may have missed.
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