Feeling?

BB king is a master of this: surely he doesn't feel sad about what a girl said to him half a decade ago...

i'm sure he feels like playing the notes he plays, though. :idea:
"You have a soul, you have a heart, you have a feeling your music is life. Life as we've lived in the past, life as we're living it today and life as I believe we'll live tomorrow." --bb king

Jason, I think your misisng it. Maybe I am too, but this is what I'm understanding of what he's saying...If it were emotional music, all people would be able to feel it...

Arjen, I see your point, in that, music can not be ranked as UNIVERSALLY emotional. Agreed. But certainly emotional. You go to a Clapton concert at MSG, you have 25 thousand people who are getting something out of this music. Emotions are subjective, we have all had diferent experiences, exposing us to different feelings and thoughts, etc, causing us to respond differently to emotion causing sensations.

But then we ask, would we still get the emotion if not for the words? I think with the master songwriters, you would.

Take Billy Joel's Piano Man...There's a part towards the end, where he sings, "and the piano sounds like a carnival, and the micraphone smells like a beer, and they sit at the bar, and put bread in my jar, and say man, what are you doin' here?!"

It isn't just the words, the words, are somewhat arbitrary for the common person, who isn't making their living in a piano bar, but the emotion in his voice is very important. So just replace the words with 'ahhhh' and I think it would still make me pound my fist into the air. Take away all vocals, and I think the music alone will do that.

How about Claptons, "Layla", just looking at the instrumental half, I listen to that, no words at all, and I still feel the emotion. I played that in a guitar class, that little riff that basically encompases the entire outro, and someone said, "wow, what is that? It sounds so sad and desperate"

I think the really great songs, the music alone can convey the emotions.

name me -anything- that has a universal emotional response. if my mom died tomorrow, i'm not expecting a goatherder in mongolia to care one way or another.

edit. oops, that was neil.

"Get their a***s to move and their hearts and minds will follow"

I forgot who wrote this but it makes sense to me.

The ability to trigger an emotional response from our music is, IMHO, the reason we started to play guitar in the first place.

Think about what made you pick up the guitar in the first place and most people will point to a song or an artist that inspired them. This is an emotional response. The ability to recreate or replicate this is what drives us to play like them or to come up with our own interpretation of what moves us. This does not mean that one is better than another, I can't stand rap or industrial music although in situations where I am forced to listen to it, it DOES create an emotional response in me. And I've found out that the emotion that I feel is NOT the expected one. (i.e. the beat of a rap song or the hypnotic groove of some industrial) I've been pleasantly surprised at times. Not that any of it would change my personal taste in music but I can understand why each style has it's proponents.

My personal journey in playing guitar is rooted in the blues, it has always affected me more than any other type of music. This is just my personal preference. Sleutobos's is different than mine, as also Jasons. All are valid. I may not agree with either of you or your methods of expressing yourselves, but I can respect them without "mocking" or pointing out why I'm right and you are(fill in the blanks...).

To me, any intolerance to another differing opinion is probably one of the most damaging examples of emotions that I know of. Notice that I'm not saying that you have to agree to a differing opinion, but to mock or attack it is just wrong. Nobody will receive any benefit from it and a lot of grief in this world has been caused by it. You will spend more time tearing each other down, accomplishing nothing and all will be diminished by it. A lot of work for no gain.

I'd rather listen to rap music than to see two people who I've admired get to this position.

"Shut up and play your guitar" Frank Zappa

(coming down off soapbox)

And as David says...

Peace :)

When you take away the lyrics to piano man, you still get the same feeling, is it because the music is so important or because you automatically fill in the missing parts because you are familiar with it and your brain already associates that peice of music with the song.

Well, like I said..."as they put bread in my jar, and said man what are you doing here" doesn't really mean that much to me...If I were a struggling pianist, trying to hit it big on the music scene, maybe it would. So the point is, even though the lyrics don't really affect me, the music does.

Arjen, I see your point, in that, music can not be ranked as UNIVERSALLY emotional. Agreed. But certainly emotional. You go to a Clapton concert at MSG, you have 25 thousand people who are getting something out of this music. Emotions are subjective, we have all had diferent experiences, exposing us to different feelings and thoughts, etc, causing us to respond differently to emotion causing sensations.

Which by default means that the music itself cannot be emotional. The only alternative is that there really is emotion in music and that leads to some nasty consequences. If I hear emotion in a song and you don't then you would have an inferior ability to recognize emotion. Maybe you even have an 'inferior taste' because you listen to 'emotionless' music. If you think 'Sweet Sixteen' sounds sad and I think it sounds happy then either of us would be 'wrong'. I don't like this train of thought at all.

In one simple short sentence: emotion in music doesn't exist like colors do not exist in the world. We *perceive* colors but they do not physically exist. They are our own interpretation of physical stimuli. An artist might *intent* a certain emotion and the audience might perceive it the same, different or not at all. How it works out depends on the skill of the performer and his intentions, not his 'emotion'.

As for your examples of emotion: do you think you perceive the exact emotion that the composer was trying to send you? If not then obviously it is your interpretation. Humans have the extroardinary ability to find emotion in so many thing...

As for the 'no lyrics' comment: that obviously only applies to parts where there should be lyrics. Take any clapton record and put it through a 'vocal remover' and listen to the verses, you'll see what I mean. I did not mean that instrumental parts or songs are without content.

Final 'proof':if it's about emotion, how come technical players can convey the same emotion night after night whereas other highly emotional persons without the skills cannot get anything across? It cannot be because of the emotion otherwise the first player would sound vastly different every night.

Listen to Santana's "Europa" or Roy Buchanan's "The Messiah will Come Again".

Or anything by Segovia, Bach, etc...

Music itself has the power to elicit a response, but everyones past experience will determine what it will be.

Music itself has the power to elicit a response, but everyones past experience will determine what it will be.

+1 8)

free your mind and your a** will follow. -george clinton

anyway, you're just repeating an old philosophical argument. i'm sure there's an equalling compelling response that i also don't want to ever be forced to sit through again.

I'd rather listen to rap music than to see two people who I've admired get to this position.

don't admire me, man. i'm a scumbag. i like rap, though.

Alright, I'll throw a +2 down to racetruck.

I had a long post I was writing, but basically it was me saying "I see what you are saying Arjen"

haha, so to sum it up...

+2.

Jason,

If I don't admire you and Sleutelbos, I'd have to admire myself and if you think you're screwed up........ :shock: :D

you listen to jimi hendrix playing red house at woodstock... speed and emotion. or oh my god the star spangled banner, and wow. that's like watching a kid's head get blown off and not caring in one way or another probably isn't an option for most people.

Jimi Hendrix never had any effect on me. Though he's more fun to watch. He has a certain stage presence. I think emotion effects more of what you see than hear.

i meant this from a purely aural perspective. do you hear it, at least? the bombs, mortars, the screaming, the fear? if it doesn't get to you, that's one thing, , but you at least hear it, right? sometimes music doesn't reveal itself to you right away. i didn't really get into nirvana until heart shaped box or thereabouts, but now i like the earlier stuff.

I don't hear emotion in Jimi's playing. I can't say I hear it in Kurt Cobain's playing. Sure he had an angry sound, but in that instance, I'm using emotion to describe a sound. Mostly Nirvana takes me back to the 90's when everyone was questioning their place in the world. Which I still do to this day. It gives me some juice to keep questioning. Jimi? Well he can't take me back to 1969, that was 15 years before I was born.

Listen to Santana's "Europa" or Roy Buchanan's "The Messiah will Come Again".

Or anything by Segovia, Bach, etc...

Music itself has the power to elicit a response, but everyones past experience will determine what it will be.

This is exactly what I mean!

My experience is different than yours, yours is just as valid, just different!

OWA, You obviously have MUCH different experiences than me, probably age, gender, etc, but that is the strength of this forum, and my great affection for it, I learn more from people like you than from all the people who are like me! It's too easy to associate with all the people who will agree with me than with those who disagree, but then I wouldn't experience anything new! :) And that is the reason I come here for.