Jake: So not having any formal training didn't detract from your learning process at that point...would that be correct?

Richard. Yes; I never really went to school. This is kind of how I see it; I don't really think you need to go to school to play music. To me, music is a language of the heart, so you're talking with your heart. I don't see school been a necessity to learn to speak from the heart. When you think about some of the great musicians, like Louis Armstrong, they never went to school. Everything that is studied in school now is something that someone did without going to school, do you see what I mean?  So, like I said, it's the language of the heart. My mentor who was my grandfather always told me when I was a kid, just look into your heart, use your intuition, and let your heart speak. Then you're really able to get a sense of speaking with your own voice. I'm lucky, I had good ears, and it was very natural for me to pick up anything and hear a chord, and then just play it. And that still works for me even today, I can hear a chord, and just play it, and I've always had that ability since I was a kid. Even if I didn't know the name of it back then, I could still play the chord right away. At this point, I now know all the names of the chords, and I have a greater understanding of how to put them together.



Jake: Was guitar actually the first instrument that you started working on to begin to understand harmony?

Richard: Actually, it began with the balafon. A balafon is like a marimba. That was my first instrument, which I started playing when I was three years old. So I started playing with my grandfather when I was five in a church band, and that was my school right there. I was able to play every day, and started to understand what harmony was, how to put a melody to it, and what the chords were that worked with the melodies.

Jake: This is one of the questions I always try to get to as far as going to school or not going to school...it's a diverse subject, and everyone has a different opinion on it.

Richard: If you talk to people that went to school, they will always say I got it from school. But I feel you can get to all the things you might learn in school by yourself. I haven't been teaching for the last couple of years, but when I was, I always tried to tell my students, once again, listen to your heart and let that help you to try and find your voice. I believe everyone has a voice. It's kind of like just waiting for the information to come to you, and all the sudden you'll hear things, and here comes your voice. It's like waiting for someone to show you a C major seven chord, and then next week someone does show you a C major seven chord. We kind of become robots, forgetting that we have a heart to listen to, and that heart will give us the ability to understand, and to sing. It's an inherent human quality, like thinking or breathing. And from that standpoint, I think that everyone has a voice. So when you hear that little voice speaking to you, you want to make sure that you listen to it, and put it into your music, and then you begin to sound like something. Don't get me wrong, school in certain circumstances can be good, but understand music is not just about school, you need to do a lot of research on your own. It's like hearing a chord, and finding yourself in that chord.