Matt Coffman and Claudia Peralta: Growing Through Creativity

By: Dr. Matt Warnock

An accomplished guitarist, teacher and recording artist, Matt Coffman brings his unique approach to the instrument to the world through his website, String Love Guitar. The site offers readers many in-depth articles on developing one’s ability on the guitar, as well as ways to improve one’s practicing and mental relationship to the instrument.

Not satisfied to just be a successful teacher and blogger, Matt has also released an album of original material, Spirited, that has been getting a strong response from fans across the board. With these accomplishments already in the bag, Matt is looking into the future as he begins work on his next recording project and continues to build String Love Guitar.

Not to be outdone, Matt’s partner Claudia Peralta has launched her own successful website, The Art of Creative Relationship, where she shares stories and provides advice to couples who are looking to bring more creativity into their marriages and partnerships.

Taking the lessons that she, and Matt, learned from teachers Katie and Gay Hendricks, Claudia’s site offers couples a chance to learn from her articles, as well as share stories of their own through the site’s comment section.

There are many sites out there on dating, marriage and relationship building, but The Art of Creative Relationship has managed to rise above the crowd and provide a unique and highly personal take on these subjects, which is no easy feat in today’s crowded blogosphere.

Guitar International had a chance to talk to Matt and Claudia, both separately and together as a couple, as they discussed their backgrounds, websites and where they are going from here.

Matt Coffman

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String Love with Matt Coffman

Matt Warnock: What exactly is “String Love Guitar?”

Matt Coffman: String Love Guitar is a website that serves simultaneously as a blog where I can share my perspective on playing the guitar, a guitar lesson site for helping others learn how to play the guitar and a portal for folks to encounter my original music.

A good friend dubbed my approach to the guitar “Love Guitar,” and that’s what I’m trying to share with the content on the site. “Love Guitar” is an approach to guitar playing that endeavors to integrate all the aspects that music calls forth in those who play it—from the physical processes of how we hold and play our instrument, straight on through the way we work with our heart, our mind and our spirit as we play the guitar.

Matt W: Who were some of your most influential teachers, both on guitar and otherwise?

Matt C: On the guitar, I’ve been most heavily influenced by my tutelage under Richard Todd, who teaches classical guitar at Tennessee State University. He’s one of the most amazing teachers I’ve ever encountered in any field, and he has helped me tremendously. I also benefited from studying Brazilian jazz guitar with Billy Newman of Brooklyn, New York.

Jamie Andreas, the author of The Principles of Correct Practice for the Guitar, is another major figure in my guitar learning process. I read her book, applied it, reaped massive results, and drove two hours up from Brooklyn to take lessons with her on a few occasions and have done my best to apply her methods to my own approach to the guitar.

I have a huge list of musical influences who inspire me, but if I had to keep this short, I’d say Bela Fleck has been my biggest musical hero since I was a senior in high school and first heard some tracks off his album with the Flecktones called Live Art. I fell completely in love with the Nashville-centered New Acoustic music scene, and from there discovered and fell in love with bluegrass, jazz, world music and beyond.

Off the guitar, my teachers are almost too numerous to mention. I’ve been heavily influenced by the writings of Ken Wilber, Henry Thoreau, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi and others. I’ve received amazing lessons from my time with my partner, Claudia. And my Grandma is probably my greatest teacher of how to be a kind and simple human being in this wacky world.

Matt W: How did you get involved in starting your blog and bringing your knowledge and music to the internet?

Matt C: It actually took me quite a while to get the guts to show up in the online sphere. I moved from Brooklyn back home to Nashville three years ago. I returned home to go into a deep period of working on the guitar. I call it my “Guitar Monk” phase. I simplified everything and went into retreat.

But all along, I was learning about the online world, bloggers and social media. I knew I wanted to toss my hat into the ring, and it took several tries before I finally figured out how to get past the technical challenges that had previously stifled my initial attempts at launching a site. I love writing, so adding a blog into the mix was a no-brainer.

Click to Buy Spirited from Amazon

Matt W: Talk about the period leading up to you recording Spirited and how that time led to your releasing this record?

Matt C: The songs on Spirited emerged out of that “Guitar Monk” phase. I was living very simply and practicing guitar most of the day. I found that I entered a very quiet, still space after several hours of practicing. I had already been writing songs prior to that period, but the quality of the silence took the music I received to a new level.

Most of the songs on Spirited came to life between January and September of 2008. I recorded the album in a simple studio, with a very simple live setup one day in August and another day in September 2008. I basically wanted to share this music that I was receiving from the silence that all the practicing opened up within me.

Matt W: Do you have a new album in the works?

Matt C: I do. This time around, I’m going all out. I’m working with an amazing producer in Rio de Janeiro, and I’m super excited about how it’s shaping up. I play regular guitar and soprano guitar, and along with my vocals I brought a friend down to add some female vocals to the tracks. There will also be some strings, flutes and hand percussion to fill out the sound. This new project is tentatively titled Round and Round, and I intend to release it in early 2011.

Creative Relationships with Claudia Peralta

Claudia Peralta

Matt Warnock: How would you define a creative relationship?

Claudia Peralta: What we’re aiming for with the name “The Art of Creative Relationship” is to define a creative relationship in its many forms. We see a “creative relationship” as the ultimate possibility in togetherness. There’s much more energy, creativity and potential when two people consciously craft “awareness” and growth into their union.

Many relationships result in a net-negative impact on the energy levels and creative power of both people. I know I’ve been in that situation. But the vision of a relationship as a source of not only love and joy, but also higher energy and enhanced creativity, is an amazing, almost revolutionary, idea. The Hendricks use the term “Co-Creativity.” We call it “Creative Relationship.”

Matt: What did you learn from your teachers Gay and Katie Hendricks?

Claudia: Really, the most important thing we’ve picked up from their teachings is just the possibility that a conflict free, co-creative relationship is possible. There are so many examples of bad relationships out there, and sometimes it seems like those of us in the modern generation have to completely reinvent how women and men relate. The old models have stopped working. We need new models, new teachings and new possibilities.

The Hendricks have put together an incredibly accessible, humble teaching on the positive potential of intimate relationships, and that’s why we were drawn to their work. But, we’ve learned so much from their work. It’d be hard to do it justice in this interview.

Some of the other key distinctions we’ve picked up include the importance of Commitment, and what it even is, the importance of Appreciation and specific tools to use to resolve conflicts and take responsibility for our contributions to everything that happens in our relationship.

Matt: Why did you decide to launch your blog to bring these teachings to others around the web?

Claudia: We noticed that although there is so much information out there about dating, there is not much in the field of helping couples consciously create a life together that empowers both parties. Particularly not from couples who don’t necessarily have all the answers, but are fighting to discover what works and apply it in the real-life real-time laboratory of a committed relationship.

There are many amazing things going on in the blog world, and we wanted to contribute to what we consider to be one of the most important projects any human being can engage in, becoming more loving.

Matt: Do you find that being married to a guitarist that your home life is more creative in general than the average person?

Claudia: In a word, yes. We play the guitar together. We sing together. We read out loud to each other. We don’t own a television, and that makes a huge difference in how we spend our time, actively engaged rather than passively entertained.

And we’re aware of the flow of creative energy in our relationship and constantly try to increase and enhance it through simple things like sharing our feelings in the moment and telling the truth.

Matt: Do you have plans to write a book of your own on creative relationships?

Claudia: We are working on an ebook right now, actually. Keep your eyes on creativerelationship.com to hear more about it when we’re ready to release it.

The Creative Duo in Conversation

Claudia Peralta and Matt Coffman

Matt Warnock: How did the two of you decide to get involved with Gay and Katie Hendricks and their teachings?

Claudia: Matt had become aware of the Hendricks after he’d read one of Gay’s books that doesn’t directly deal with relationships. Very soon after we began dating, he brought Conscious Living: How to Create a Life of Your Own Design into the mix, and we started pulling on the teachings in that book in order to create the best relationship possible. We wanted to find serious teachers that had a solid background and with teachings that resonated with both of us. The Hendricks fit the bill perfectly. We humorously refer to them as “relationship ninjas.”

Matt W: When did you decide to apply those teachings to your websites?

Matt C: Our first year together involved us learning and working through plenty of old patterns and confusions that we had picked up from our pasts. As we kept moving forward and navigating whatever obstacles arose, we started feeling like what we were learning would really be beneficial to others. So, we decided to launch The Art of Creative Relationship as a means of sharing the lessons we’ve been learning. String Love Guitar wears its non-guitar influences a little more subtly, but the approach of learning to live and love consciously is absolutely what both sites are about.

Matt W: What are some of the ups and downs you’ve faced as a couple working through the creative relationship process?

Claudia: Whew, boy. There’s this line in Conscious Loving where the Hendricks point out that Love acts like a bright spotlight, and as it shines brighter and brighter, the shadows all around become more apparent. That idea has really helped us approach our relationship with the understanding that the problems we encounter are coming up so we can put more awareness on these old patterns and issues in order to dissolve them. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, it’s hard to remember that. We try, we slip and fall, and we pick ourselves up again and keep going.

The biggest lessons we’ve had to contend with have had to do with learning to trust and be vulnerable, learning to communicate more and more clearly and learning the true, super intense meaning of the world “commitment.” But when we apply these lessons and show up with our hearts wide open, it’s worth the struggle to get there.

Matt W: Where do you go from here, both as individuals and as a couple pursuing these teachings?

Matt C: We definitely want to aim high, we want to keep growing in Love, together and as individuals. The relationship work keeps our focus clear, be kinder, more thoughtful and loving and more alive every day.

The Hendricks lay out a map that leads from Co-Dependence, which is where both parties blame the other and hold each other down, to Co-Commitment, where both parties accept their responsibility for everything that goes on in the relationship and commit completely to the other, and finally to Co-Creativity, where both partners enjoy more energy and creativity thanks to the power unleashed by the relationship.

We’re aiming at Co-Creativity and enjoying the ride on the way there. No matter how complicated this modern moment seems, the answer has always been the same, Live, Love, Learn. That’s why we’re here, and that’s what we’ll keep doing, with humility and gratitude, to the best of our abilities.