Matthew Charles Heulitt

Happy 2012 to everyone, lots of exciting things happening in my world as of late:

The regressive art rock band MoeTar, which I’ve been a part of for 2 years now, has been signed to Magna Carta records!
We are being promoted on the front page of the label’s site and our album “From These Small Seeds” is set for re-release in a couple of weeks. There’s all new artwork and cd layout for the re-release so check back in a bit or just pre-order it online now at magna carta‘s website.

New album “Thunder” with legendary fusion drummer Narada Michael Walden!!!
I’ve been doing various projects with Narada over the last 5 or 6 years and I’m proud to say we’ve just completed our first full length album together. We got together and collaborated on song writing and the over-all vision for a modern blues/rock album ala Jeff Beck and The Black Keys. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this project!!!! I’ve been listening to Narada’s jaw-dropping drums since I was a teenager with bands like Jeff Beck, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Allan Holdsworth, and Weather Report. “Thunder” will be available soon as well as “Rising Sun” which is a 4-song EP of some of his old fusion hits with Jeff Beck and Mahavishnu. In addition to all that, I’m also featured on his new instructional video called “Out Of Time”. And we’re kicking off the first shows in Japan! Which will be my first time and I’m very excited…
Check here for updates and where to buy all these products.

In the creative realm, effortless freedom resides only within a framework.  Which is to say, with too many options we are frozen like deer in the headlights.  The creative process is one we are engaged in on a minute to minute basis as human beings.  I hear a lot of people say they “aren’t creative” or that they tried and failed, which now proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they are “not creative”.  But when we talk to each other, we aren’t reading from a script.  We are improvising words all day long,  but we do so within some very strict confines.  We have an idea to communicate, we have to obey a modicum of grammar rules,  we have to obey certain moral codes, and we also manage to share an emotional tone as well.  If someone handed you a pile of words cut out of magazines, in a language you don’t speak, and told you to create something meaningful…chances are you’d eventually determine that you aren’t creative too.

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On Sunday April 17th from 2-4pm I will be leading a workshop about “modal improvisation for guitarists” at Berkeley’s Jazz School.
“Modal” is defined as:
1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a mode.
2. Grammar Of, relating to, or expressing the mood of a verb.
In the musical paradigm, definition one basically means playing within a given key or tonality. The 2nd definition, for our purposes, I would edit to read “of, relating to, or expressing a mood”. So, what we have are modes (musical tonalities) that each specifically relate to a human emotion.
The jam band scene has exploited this simple structure of improvisation for decades to hundreds of thousands of adoring and stoned fans. Basically, if you know a few scale positions you can pretty much shut your brain down and spin/dance your way down epic pathways of endless and meandering solos. Unless you’ve found yourself at a MMW concert though (or a small handful “jam” bands that have actually done some homework), you’d be lucky to find any educated musicians in attendance to drink from the cup of spontaneous composition. All tangents aside though, the purpose of this discussion is to shed some light on the intricacies of this art form, what it’s goals are, and what separates the mundane from the astounding.

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