Feeling?

I think the key point is that if you play following your inspiration (your soul) ,no matter the style of music, but specially not thinking in the reaction of the audience (in other words stop being pretentious) but playing for your own pleasure ,then you are playing with feeling.
The trouble comes when you have to re-create this spontaneous emotion (the feeling) in an everlasting recording session or in concert when you have already played the same song a hundred times,in that moment you have to use some techniques in order to get the results you want for your music.

I was thinking in those cuban grandpas from Buena Vista Social Club...they sing and play with lots of feeling..they were alone,doing their jobs, living as retired people, until Ry Cooder discovered them...they weren't playing thinking in an audience, they were just playing for their own pleasure ,or just to compensate their boring life, like these cotton workers in Mississippi who contributed to the blues foundation .
The emotions are genuine, are human... genuine music is based on emotion... but since art is communication, then the audience appears,and then the music industry that complicates the genuine intention of express your own feelings in music.

well, to add my two cents i do think that the emotion is in the minds and bodies of the audience. as for the artist, it is up to he or she to try to convey the intended feeling but i would add that the artist has to know the feeling in order to convey it. This might seem rudimentary in the arguement, at this point, but I think it was missed.

Conveying the feeling, as already pointed out this is done most often with good technique (though not exclusively good!) In order for the artist to convey the emotion he or she has to know said emotion--he or she has had to have that feeling at least once in life in order to convey it. So BB King, in Arjen's example, may not now care about the girl who said something to him a decade ago that he didn't like, but it hurt him at the time and he can use that experience to coney the emotion of hurt feelings. Whether or not the audeience gets it or not BB King has not control over. Again in Arjen's example of Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie, he didn't really die on the big ship, he didn't really care about the girl on the big ship, but he knew the emotions from real life experience that he wanted to convey and he had the requisite acting skills to convey that emotion and make it seem real to the audience. The idea of making something constructed seem real to the audience is what being an artist is all about.

the artist is a projection of the audience:if he is an actor, musician, or a painter...and yes, the profesional artist should have the ability to connect with the emotions of the audience...anyway,if he or she is sincere there will be even one in the hall that will be touched by the playing...that will be a triumph.

Feeling isn't something you can be taught or told about (especially from an online forum!), but something you must experience.

there you go

You will all agree that this subject brought real feeling to the forum !!

Feeling isn't something you can be taught or told about (especially from an online forum!), but something you must experience.

bravo

I think that guitar players who use alot of string bends and vibrato are percieved to be more emotional players because those techniques mimic the human voice, even slide guitar falls into this area, so blues and classic rock are percieved to be more emotional than say...metal or grunge, it has nothing to do with whats better, people like what they like, but I think thats why people describe that kind of music as emotional.

In the end its just a description, now don't make me cry....sniff ;)

Scott

I agree that a lot of music is contrived, but not all of it. Do you think that Eric Clapton wasn't feeling anything when he wrote Tears in heaven after his kid died? http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/tears.htm If there is no personal emotional investment in music, is it even logical to pick up a piece of wood with 6 analogue oscillators and stand there and generate random tones? :roll:

I'm not saying that there is ABSOLUTELY NO emotional investment in music, certainly most lyrics are full of emotion, I just think in terms of instrumental music... perhaps it's a bit exaggerated... or it may even be possible that I just don't understand and I don't know how to truly play with the same amount of passion and emotion yet. Nevertheless, I don't think anyone can say for sure what makes a piece emotional or not.

I don't think anyone can say for sure what makes a piece emotional or not.

"People hear D Minor and instantly start to weep. It's the saddest of all keys."
- Nigel Tufnel

:wink:

Now i'm on a roll...just excuse my crumy typeing.
i'm a little OCD about logic so emotions aren't the top of my list. plus i'm not particularly interested in performing.. i play couse i love it...it colms me when i'm stressed and clears my head. It is nice when others see the effort you've invested.
i just have to wonder if you are talking about the emotion you put into it or the emotion your trying to inspire in the audience. one is passion your putting into your music(all good) and the other is manipulation(never turns out the way you plan)
as with any author... write about what you know and if you have strong feelings it will show automatically. feelings are catchy..such as laughter or anger.

exactly: there's a bit of manipulation you have to create if you want to be accepted by the audience (again the examples of Hendrix and Townshend)..specially if you're original...but anyway what you do has to be fully enjoyed by yourself . You have to entertain of course (audiences pay for it) but you won't miss a note if you play for your own pleasure.

i certainly believe that people can invest emotion into music, when playing it. i also believe that people can feel certain emotions from listening to pieces of music. i don't think that the argument is whether, bb king for example, gets lost in emotion, and the notes he plays HAPPEN to fit within the chord structure of the song. bb king is fully aware of what notes he chooses to play (and which he chooses not to), but its the matter of the order that he plays these notes in, and how he manipulates them, which adds 'feeling' to a song.

with hendrix, his music is full of emotions. did you ever hear 'machine gun?' that first bent note, kicking off his solo after the verse, is FULL of emotion. the same applies to his version of the star spangled banner. with hendrix in particular, he always puts emotions into his songs. just take a look at any clip of him performing (especially when he starts soloing). his eyes are closed and his head is kinda bobbing around, which take him to a complete other planet. though he's playing with 'feeling' he's still aware of what he's doing. however, he's just conveying his emotions into the solo, and is subsequently applying it to the notes.

I've done all those things, bobbed my head, moved around while soloing, closed my eyes. Had nothing to do with emotion. I bobbed my head because my hair was in my face, I moved around because I get restless, also helps me keep a beat and I close my eyes because playing infront of people makes me nervous so I close my eyes so I don't focus on them.

My point is you can't tell for sure that it is emotion. Someone sent me a video of Stevie Ray Vaughan. Said expression of his face on one note meant he had a lot of emotion on the note. My first thought to his face was "I think he feels a sneeze coming on." Not to insult him, but it's entirely possible.