The Jon Finn Group- an article worth reading

The Thinking Man's Shredder


A happy marriage of stellar technique and edgy rock is at the core of Jon Finn's playing and teaching.

Article by Brett Milano
Berklee.edu Correspondent
(October 12, 2001)
Photo by Kim Grant

"I don't think of myself as the professor type," notes teacher and guitarist Jon Finn. If you sat in on Finn's class on advanced rock improvisation 1, you might mistake it for a hot band having a jam. Dressed like a rocker in jeans and sneakers, Finn strums rhythm, taps his feet in time, and breaks into a grin whenever someone plays a tasty lick. The main difference is that he's got his students jamming on pentatonic scales that are too sophisticated for most rock players to handle.

Finn is a man on a mission. He's a confirmed rock'n'roller with amazing technical chops, and is out to prove that you can be a serious thinker without losing your status as a mean guitar shredder....Click HERE to finish reading the article.

If you have the Quicktime player, I'd recommend listening to his song, If Stevie Ray Vaughan Went to Berklee and Studied Jazz , linked in the site for slow and fast speed connections. I love it.

Any of us who are creative are influenced by the music we hear, either through its inspiration or by its appearance in the poem itself. Jon Finn...another musician to be your muse, perhaps??

If you were to choose just one piece of music right now, this moment, to inspire you to do something creative, what would it be?

OR

If there's a piece of music you'd put on right now just to hear it again, what would that one be? Don't think. First impulsive choice.

Mine right now would be this beautiful blues piece a friend sent, A Soul That's Been Abused, from Duke Meets the Earl. Next would be the Hero's song another friend sent. Thanks, Charlie and Michael. Thanks, Lloyd, too, for sending me an actual copy of the Jon Finn song on this link above.

Pris
Edit: Andrew raised the question about research on music on human beings. While I'd seen informal writings about certain music and sound inducing meditative states or relaxation, here's a site with several links to scholarly articles on how music affects our brains.