Anyone Can Play Guitarot…

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Welcome aboard the tarot blog hop musical express, directed by Jay Cassels who invited us to get our Gleek on. I do remember the exact notes but I’m fairly certain that artistic license and ad-libbing was pre-approved and so although I can on occasion just about carry a tune in a bucket, I’ll spare you the trilling and spilling of my mediocre singing and invite you to come winging through my variations on a theme.

Music and tarot are very intertwined in my mind and it is not unknown for me to burst into spontaneous song or pull a musical prank… (I may or may not write about that another day) Ok… let’s get back into the right key… I have lots of favourite types of people to read for but high up there in the top of the charts are Musicians…

There’s a fluidity in thinking with Musicians and they are all too easily lured into play…

I’ve often found that Musicians seem to innately know what the cards are saying even if they’ve never seen a deck before but then I guess that many Musicians over the years have infused their art with esoteric musings so any Musician with eclectic tastes has absorbed the occult by osmosis…

But when it comes to tarot reading then they are usually willing to freestyle and enjoy the noble art of busking, they are up for metaphorical musing and noodling and in no way adverse to trying out a few new licks and riffs…

Below is a reading that I did to look at business ideas.  We opened up the Orbifold and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to get the guitar player in front of me to transpose the composition to guitarot…

The whole musical language itself lends to an easy analogy and so questions flowed out…

How many strings are there to your business? How do you want to pitch? What’s the tone? What volume is best? etc… etc…

Sometimes the Musicians around me start up the movement and set the beat… Below is the latest composition Mr S has bullied me into commissioned from me… He’s recently bought a ???? oooh???? blimey!!! ah… I really ought to know the name of this… he’s been banging on about it for months and months… but names and models of guitars get lost in the same part of my wasteland area of brain where details about cars go to die… anywho… he’s bought this guitar that is in kit form and it is sitting waiting to be customised. He’s been humming (he’s always humming…) and ahhing about making any decisions but insisting that I should do the artwork for him. That had been going on for weeks until he asked me why it’s not done yet and I told him it’s because he’s still not made his mind up! At which point he says – Why are you waiting for me? Why don’t you just pull some cards out…

So cards were pulled and at last, he smiles as rough initial drafts are sketched out and approved as being exactly to his liking…

But…  dc al coda…back to the Orbifold…

Now the thing I like about the Orbifold is that is so sleek and unfussy and so elegantly designed… At a glance it looks simplistic and bordering on a tad oversimplified maybe but LOOK… look at those borders!!! There’s a whole symphony going on there…

And it occurs to me that when something appears to be so simply designed then it is because every mark and notation is carefully chosen and placed for a reason… There is nothing there by accident, everything is scribed carefully by the composer to lay in wait for the conductor’s hand to provoke a response in the players who in turn will stir an audience…

Then I discovered a magical musical game…

Orbifold Overtures

For this game, you will need one Orbifold deck and as many Musicians as you can get your hands on. If you haven’t already got this deck, then it is worth buying purely for this experiment. I have tried this numerous times now with various unsuspecting victims and it never fails to amuse me…

It’s very simple, there is little work for you to do…

You find your musician

You take out a handful of cards

You line up the borders

Then you say… Oooh… Look at this… Hmmm… if that were a song, what would it sound like?

My experience to date is that they will initially look a little pensive but in less than 3 seconds you will see their eyes light up and they will start tapping and rhythm and skat out a tune

Let me know if you try it?

It’s even more interesting when you show the same cards to different musicians at different times and they all sing the same song…

If you’ve enjoyed this musical interlude and you’re wanting an encore then pick a link and hit it 🙂

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