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The Guitar Circle

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Author:Robert Fripp

Perhaps it is easier to start with what this book is not. It does not provide tips or tricks to improve your guitar playing other than at a metaphysical level (more of this later). It does not teach you to play like Robert Fripp, nor does it teach any theory, scales or tasty Crimson tinged licks. It doesn’t consider the benefits of a .7mm plectrum vs a 1mm (believe me, there are books which do), nor does it debate effects pedals or how to play D. In fact for long periods it doesn’t talk about guitars at all. What, you may be wondering, is it about then?

Having read it once cover to cover then skimmed through it a second time, I’m struggling to articulate what it is about really. Probably the easiest way to explain it is to say it is a detailed exploration of Fripp’s personal philosophy of guitar playing (the eponymous Guitar Craft), some of which is quite specific (how to strike the string, when to move fingers, how to sit on a chair) and large sections are letters to his Guitar Craft students or responses to their queries. It stresses the student’s need for poise, for silence, for intent, for being present in the moment. He mentions the Alexander Technique as a key influence, and mindfulness hangs in the air but I don’t remember it being mentioned.

I suppose you could say the book is about how to achieve the right physical, emotional and spiritual state of mind and framework of skills to be able to create music, though as I said above, this doesn’t include what you create, which could be any genre or none.

Personally I found it frustratingly gnomic at times, so abstracted from the realities of making music that it mostly irritated me in its abstruse utterances. But hey, he’s Robert Fripp so who am I to disagree.

Now, where’s that book of hot licks?

Length of Read:Medium

Might appeal to people who enjoyed…

Philosophy books, King Crimson

One thing you’ve learned

There are completely different ways to think about something I have been doing for so long I can’t remember not doing it. Which in itself is interesting. Maybe I’ll give it another read.

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Comments

  1. Hasn’t he got any freakishly unidentifiable semi developed life forms suspended in belljars to demonstrate his toenail banjo techinqiques to instead?

  2. There are quite a few Guitar Circle videos on YouTube, of various Circles doing their thing. I really like the versions of KC’s Great Deceiver, Red and Discipline; indeed, the GC version of the first I prefer to any of the seemingly infinite KCs out there.

  3. A balanced review, @Twang – although I suspect I might be closer to the target readership than you 😉…I can say with some confidence that I’ll be buying this.

    In the past, Fripp has hinted that music is something outside of himself and the act of creating is actually being receptive to it. I guess that being present in the moment (in a mindfulness sense) makes that more possible.

    Mind you, he’s also described King Crimson almost like a personality which sits beside the band and takes them into its confidence. In 1981, the band Discipline was recognised as the new King Crimson when Fripp reportedly felt KC sitting in the passenger seat of his car…or something like that…

    • Yes, the KC in the car was in a couple of interviews he’s done. He’s also said about how KC wasn’t in the gig for bands whose members were in KC. I find that side of him fascinating. He’s said about all the philosophies/beliefs he’s tried to find meaning; the Gurdjieff/J.G Bennett seems to work for him. His record company seems to work well without ripping people off, with a decent attitude towards copyright.

      • Yes – having been ripped off for years himself, he set up DGM with the artist very much in the driving seat, an example of “do as you would be done by” which is still rare in the music biz.

        For all his faults (which he openly acknowledges) and the criticisms (both reasonable and completely unreasonable), I think he is fundamentally a good egg.

  4. It can be potentially fascinating (or potentially dull) when musicians talk about the non-musical factors of their creative process.

    A totally different genre, but I remember reading a Fatboy Slim interview when he was at the peak of his career, and he was asked about his process for creating music. No doubt the interviewer was expecting some technical answer, but he said something along the lines of: he gets drunk, takes drugs, goes clubbing, goes on a three day bender, crashes for 48 hours, then wakes up and makes music. I quite liked that answer, and in its own way it was a bit Eno, a bit Fripp, talking about everything BUT the technicalities.

  5. I can never understand this side of Fripp, as he is clearly a man with a great sense of humour and even the ability to make fun of himself at times. Perhaps he maintains this Fripp as an entirely separate entity, to dip in and out of as the mood takes him. I won’t read it because it sounds like a pretentious load of old bollocks. The funny thing is that I wouldn’t put it past Fripp to include that comment on the sleeve if there was ever a reprint.

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