Yours truly with the legendary Gregg Allman
after rehearsing for a gig at the New Orleans
House of Blues. Yup, there was some
mind reading going down.
A guitarist friend of mine introduced me
to the “catch a dollar bill” trick. For
those of you unfamiliar with this little wonder,
here’s how it works: You grip the end
of a U.S. greenback with your thumb and
finger, and ask someone (a sucker) to spread
his thumb and forefinger on each side of
the bill, halfway down. Now challenge your
stooge to grab the bill when you drop it.
Because this seems easy—but is, in fact,
nearly impossible—it’s a great way to win
free drinks in a bar.
Showing is better than telling, so if you
haven’t seen this trick, check out street
magician Ben Nemzer give a fine demonstration
of the sweet little con on YouTube.
Like most of you reading this, a lifetime
of guitar playing makes me fairly confident
that my fingers move faster than Joe
12-Pack’s beefy digits. I knew I could react
quickly enough to grab the bill, yet I failed
every cursed time.
For musicians, sensing what other players will
do is not uncommon—mysterious, ESP-ish
surprises occur often during a good jam.
My guitarist friend who showed me
the trick grabbed the bill three times in a
row when I tried it on him. I did a little
research that suggests this is actually impossible
because there’s not enough time for a
message to travel all the way from our eyes
to our fingers. One has to know when the
bill will drop and react as it happens rather
than reacting after seeing the bill move.
You may get lucky and grab the bill once or
even twice, but not three times.
So how did my friend (who wishes to
remain anonymous) grab the bill? He told
me that with a little practice and focus
one could sense when to act. As Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle said by way of Sherlock
Holmes, “Once you eliminate the impossible,
whatever remains, no matter how
improbable, must be the truth.”
The truth is we’re dealing with extrasensory
perception.
When someone mentions ESP, we tend
to think of The Twilight Zone and freaky
stuff involving spoon bending, telepathy,
clairvoyance, and a creepy guy wearing a fez or a turban. On Wikipedia, ESP is defined
simply as “the reception of information
not gained through the recognized physical
senses, but sensed with the mind.” For
musicians, sensing what other players will
do is not uncommon—mysterious, ESP-ish
surprises occur often during a good jam.
In a jam situation, musicians rely on
visual and vocal clues to direct them toward
an impromptu arrangement. However, at
one time or another, most seasoned jammers
experience the phenomena where the band
just senses where the song goes without any
detectable guidance. During those magical
moments, musicians with no pre-knowledge
or any obvious communication will at times
move together perfectly like Blue Angel
pilots flying in formation, simultaneously
changing dynamics, tempo, or direction.
Musicians playing as if they share one brain
is ESP. What else would you call it?
Some may call this a well-developed
intuition, but the term “intuition” still
implies the acquisition of information by
means other than standard communication.
ESP, intuition, the sixth sense, or the shining
(if you want to go all Stephen King on
it) ... they all mean the same thing: We just
sort of know what other people are thinking.
That’s mind reading, baby.
Perhaps what parapsychologists call ESP
is simply how people behave who are adept
at reading clues others don’t perceive. Every
second, our five senses are barraged with
information our brains constantly process
on a conscious and unconscious level.
Maybe good musicians are just particularly
accomplished at analyzing information
and making highly accurate guesses
based on this information. On the other
hand, perhaps pickers absorbed in song
can sometimes slip into a good old Vulcan
mind-meld.
I think it’s a bit of both. To serve
the song, good players have to read
each other—they watch and listen for
clues. That said, there have been times
onstage when something spooky happens
that defies a logical explanation.
I’ve experienced jams where, without any
prompting, we all stop on a dime or accent
a note hard or collectively switch from
8th-notes to consecutive triplets. I’ve been
playing with my eyes closed, completely
absorbed in the music, when the bass
player and I hit an identical riff at the same
time, never having played it before. It’s not
like we go, “I sense that the bassist is going
to play a descending pentatonic run at the
end of the phrase. I will too.” It’s more like
our instruments are playing us, making our
fingers go where they must. Nobody has a
map, but we all end up at the same place at
the same time.
In his biography My Cross to Bear, Gregg
Allman calls it “hitting the note.” I get it. I
bet you do too. Maybe this musical mind
reading is what Robbie Robertson was
alluding to when he titled his last record
How to Become Clairvoyant or perhaps
this was the point behind Supernatural,
Santana’s 17th album.
We musicians should all feel a bit superior
to those non-musicians, for we share a supernatural
power that they do not. I just wish I
could turn on this psychic power when I’m
betting on football or trying to pick stocks.
Sadly, all of my empirical evidence suggests
that it only works with music, and even
then, it’s more miss than hit.
John Bohlinger is a Nashville multi-instrumentalist
best know for his work in television, having lead the band for all six
season of NBC's hit program
Nashville Star, the 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009 CMT Music Awards, as well as many specials for GAC, PBS, CMT, USA and HDTV.
John's music compositions and playing can be heard in several major label albums, motion pictures, over one hundred television spots and Muzak... (yes, Muzak does play some cool stuff.) Visit him at
youtube.com/user/johnbohlinger
or
facebook.com/johnbohlinger.