Over the past few years, I've been dedicating the majority of my focus to guitar, but I play piano, clarinet, and sax and have taught those instruments as well as the gamut of "band" instruments from beginner-advance students. I've taught many of my students how to read music as well. I taught myself sax and guitar and never had any instructors for those. As Hyperspace Fool said, once you have the know-how for one instrument, it becomes pretty simple at translating the concepts onto another instrument, though the guitar was definitely initially a big jump out of my woodwind-dominant comfort zone.

I play a wide variety of music from hard rock to fingerpicking to my zany obscure originals and improvs. You can find a nice handful of my music here at my soundcloud. The tracks on my soundcloud are almost exclusively guitar instrumentals. A lot of them can get pretty ambient and trippy. Some recommended tracks are You Must Be This High To Ride, Clock of the Elves, 4D and Nebulous Paradise. Most of my best work comes from recording on LSD or pharma/aya or coming out of a DMT session. It's almost like changing the rules of the game because it goes from practically synthetic approaches to composing/writing to painting with sound as each new sound literally creates or alters an element of hyperspace. When I write, it's often in the attempt to render visual scenes in the minds of the listener.

I have a nice Gibson Les Paul with an "iced tea burst" faded finish with a 60's-style slim neck profile. My Vigier Bumblefoot Signature guitar is just flat-out awesome. The sheer detail and clarity in the tone coupled with a killswitch, floyd rose wammy bar, built-in thimble (for tapping notes higher than the fretboard), black matte textured finish and carbon fiber rod in the neck that renders a truss-rod obsolete (the neck will never bend or warp --- even in the most dynamic heating conditions!) all make this guitar one bad mother of an instrument to play. My acoustic guitar is a Maton. It's an Australian brand that not many outside of Australia are familiar with (I don't live down under FYI), but it rivals Martins and Taylors in tone and playability.

As for myself... I started out playing the guitar when I was 6 years old, switched to trumpet at 8 years old and then, drums when I was 10. The rock and roll beat had gotten under my skin! I was a big Keith Moon and Bill Bruford fan (The Who and Yes). When I dropped acid the first time, 1977, I decided I really wanted to play a melody instrument, again. I bought a plastic alto recorder and a Blues harmonica. Two months later, I picked up a Gemeinhardt student model, silver-plated concert flute. My brother-friend Dioxippus now plays this very flute, 35 years later!

I play a number of bamboo flutes: Indian bansuri, Chinese xiao and dizi, Japanese shakuhachi, Native American flutes, Irish wooden flutes, penny whistles, Peruvian quenas and quenachos, etc... Since those days, I've added alto flute, bass flute and the dreaded piccolo into the mix (classical silver flutes).

I started playing guitar again, in 1979 and am primarily a rhythm guitarist, in accompaniment to the flute. I used to play full trap set drums, alto and tenor saxophone, electric keyboards, as well as electric guitar... but I've tried to narrow my horizons, as there is only so much time in the day. I was a sitar and tabla player for about a decade but have since given them away to more gifted players.

Still, I have a number of hand drums and percussive instruments on hand. My most recent acquisition was a Hohner bass recorder. It's a German-made concert recorder, crafted in pearwood. It's 30-40 years old but in mint condition. It has a deep, AUM vibration to it's tone. With the gigantic silver bass flute, this is even more so! Playing larger flutes is one of the most rewarding forms of pranayama, that I know of.

I agree with HP, playing gigs out gets old quick, unless you have a knack for it. I was in a few Modern Jazz, Blues, Jazz-Rock-Fusion and New Age bands, way back in the 1980's. It's tough to find the right group of egos to harmonize with, though. The stage freight thingy... was always a drag for me, especially when folks were paying at the door.

That being said, I do occasionally sit-in at a gig or when offstage, just plain jam with good friends. I really like to improvise with kindred spirits. The creative buzz is a very good thing. I personally believe that the Spirit Molecules and other entheogens, enhance this creativity exponentially (as does deep meditation and moving meditations like Hatha Yoga and Tai Chi Chuan).

Anyway, I practice music as another vehicle to alter my own consciousness. On good day, we can alter the consciousnesses of others who are listening to such songs.

Honestly, my biggest inspiration for the last year has been the Japanese shakuhachi. Breathing is key to this art. IMO, nothing quite sings of the soul's innate presence, like bamboo flutes do. Shakuhachi music is a form of Zen Buddhist prayer and meditation. The whole musical genre was started by Komuso monks (priests of nothingness). They call the art, "Blowing Zen".

Music is the very breath of life.

Now wouldn't that be something! With such a musical fellowship, we could be the 21st century flashback to the Rolling Stone's Rock and Roll Circus, 1968.

The Nexian Rock and Roll Circus, 2012.

Also, I agree with a lot of the other members here, playing music before and after peak experiences is the deepest and most purely sonic experience we can fathom. In the midst of the peak... who has any capacity to co-ordinate fingers, hands, feet, lips or even remain locked within the material reality of the time-space-continuum? Low doses, for sure.

I've also had some of my most joyous moments, playing music in the shimmering afterglow of an LSD, mushroom or DMT epiphany. Salvia Divinorum is a little different story, eh? It's hard to snap back into the 3-dimensional realm and function normally, for a bit of a spell.

Yeah definitely, during the peak the thought of playing never even crosses my mind, but afterwards.. so much energy, creativity unleashed.. seeing new connections everywhere, everything coming out perfectly. It's insane

If there's ever a nexus get together, I propose we bring our instruments and jam away!

Perhaps we can make a Nexus composition systematically. First we'd need someone (or a small crew) to do some coordinating/mixing. Then we can have different groups of musicians add their track to the mix one by one from the ground up in (let's say) weekly intervals. So for example, percussion would be week 1. One percussionist would record a track, pass it back to the engineer(s) who would then forward on the track to the next percussionist, and this would go back and forth until there is a collaborative percussion section. By the end of the week there will be a cumulative percussion backbone where percussionists may be either overlapped and/or have their own sections depending on context. The next week could be the bass section followed by guitar/keys followed by wind/brass and topped off with vocals. This could be exciting. We can collectively coordinate our views and opinions through a thread, polls and regular audio updates revealing the progress of the work.

Great idea. You have been working with recording, can you start this project?
I would try to participate...

Sounds like a great idea!!!
What you would need is a master track output of the curent tracks (as you add to the list) and then each person would play to that master, then creating an additional track to add to the mix. 2 tracks sent back via Internet, the master and the additional track, because we would need to know where the track placement is to go and the timing thing, ins and outs (technical stuff would be laid out in music itself).

Then there's the delema of what type of music and who is going to play what. From experience what happens when you get a bunch of musicians together, is they all contribute their part. But what happens is you get like 10 guitars wailing away in a drown out soupy mix. So there has to be control.
Here is a proposal. Pick about 4 to 5 types of songs we would like to create. Then each individual would pick a song they want to join in. Then at 4-5 song cd type thing then there might be 5 or 6 people in one song for each song, rather than 30 people on one song and it's hard to hear.
Then! We can have a nice mix of songs to listen to! A Nexus DMT enhanced psychedelic experience music creation. 2012 the beginning of consciousness awakening.

djembe

dont know that I can sing, but I will sing.

Yes, definitely spread everyone out. There seems like enough variety of creative minds here to make at least one solid album. The variety of influence alone could make this a very exciting project!

We could also do covers, to give it some more structure.

What program do you suggest for this endeavour though? Something cross platform would be ideal.. I only know audacity, but AFAIK it's not so good for collaboration.

I would love to add some Sitar if necessary (also play other instruments but think there are enough guitars right?)

you play sitar? how much does a decent one cost? I absolutely love sitar, but assumed they were too expensive

My sitar cost me £550 which is about $900, maybe a bitless. You can probably get a decent one for less and you can certainly pay more. Most money I ever spent on an instrument...

Worth it

No other instruments clicks so nicely when you get it right. Nothing like having those magical notes playing back at you.

..a world wide, real time jam of nexian musicians would be amazing!..does Soundcloud or Skype support such an option..?

That's exactly the approach I take with my psychedelic ambient material (I'll have to put together a soundcloud page so you guys can hear some of it). I approach it exactly like painting with sound, I've always wanted to be able paint visually but could never get to grips with the brush so the studio and recording is my attempt at that. I usually compose and record sober then give it the acid test (no pun intended) by getting high and getting an outside, shifted perspective on the architecture of the soundscape/recording. Glad to see someone else approaches it in a similar fashion

Peace and happy traveling.

Hopefully there will be a nexus get together at some point... I was thinking about online jam at some point too, but it would be way more difficult than jamming live. Considering the amount of musicians...

Meet this summer, you say?

I was messing around back in the beta for http://ejamming.com/, and it works if you get used to the latency thing... for laying tracks it is fine. There is also www.onlinejamsessions.com which I have heard about from friends but not tried myself.

When I had ejamming for free it was certainly useful... but not useful enough to continue on when they started charging money. At any rate, the 30 day trial is free, so there could easily be a Nexus Project done there in this time frame.

HF

I Play The Didgeridoo and a hand pan (like the HangDrum but from other builder)

Namasté