Originally Posted by: snojones

I guess I should have specified "Intellecutal" brain, because you are right about emotion and soul comming, (at least in differing parts) from the anotomical brain. I was talking about the kind of "stuck in your head" thinking that leads to people playing in their heads. It gets in the way of attaining the things that music thrives on. That anoying voice whispering "I am not getting as far as I thought I should when I started GT a few months ago" Or " Oh shit here comes my solo" or any of the multitude of distractions that the Intellectual Brain likes to throw in your path. It is the "Im not good enough" chorus.....All that bull shit that get in our way. There is little room for soul or intuition when you are locked in that head set. That is what I was trying to get at and sometimes pot helps me let go of that crap.

However I do believe that Muscle Memory does not reside in the brain, but rather in the spine and in the muscles themselves. That is what all atheletes work on, and playing guitar is very much an atheletic pursuit. The brain says "play a G chord... but to do that, your spine and your muscles have learned how to side step the brain in your head.

If the impulses required to play a hot riff, or make a great jump shot, or to ski tight trees ... all had to go though your brain, you could not do the skilled physical things that you aspire to. Muscle memory an interplay between the muscle fibers and the nervous system. My understanding is that your muscles and the spine do all that stuff by learning repeatable, inervation, and micro-muscular patterns. This greatly reduces the distance that all those impulse patterns have to travel, thus greatly increasing the speed at which you can physically preform. All done without anything above the spine.

This also allows your brain to do what it does best. LIKE... anticipation and timing, or hearing the piano hitting a great note and figguring out how to answer that note, or what ever. That is what the intellectual brain is VERY GOOD FOR! A skilled musician must be firing hard on all these diverse cylinders... at the same time.

Mind, Body, and Soul are all critical parts of playing any instrument with any skill. That is what I was trying to refer to when I spoke of the brain being a bully. Some times, for some tasks, for some people, hemp can offer some help.

One word: Cerebellum!!