Random Thoughts on Playing Guitar...

Somebody jokingly said, "What really matters is genuineness and sincerity. Once you learn how to fake those, the rest is easy." Or something like that.

Some actors and musicians are able to assume whatever emotional state is called for at the time, regardless of their state before. Others can't. But when you're booked for a tour, you've got to be out there on time putting on a performance that the fans will be moved by. I think that's a very hard thing to do when you don't feel like it. Personally, when I'm really seriously troubled I can't play my guitar at all. Bad things happen to all of us, but "the show must go on." I think kingpatzer's right, that someone who's technically proficient enough can give a performance that'll convince most listeners regardless of the emotional state the player's actually in. But the conflict is wrenching for an emotionally sensitive performer. Here's a great expression of it:

"By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
They said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?"
Psalm 137:1-4, NIV

Having experienced the inability to perform while in emotional distress, though not the forced necessity of it while working on a performing contract, I think this explains a lot of why so many professional musicians and actors get hooked on drugs. They've got to put on the show whether their heart's in the right place or not. Their feelings get in the way of their ability to perform, and they look desperately for something to numb their feelings so they can put on a front and give the people what they want. (Even if it's not as good as if they were really feeling what they are portraying.) And if they're technically skilled and practiced enough, they can pull it off convincingly for a long time.

I think an example is needed because I'm not quite following. Right now, I'm looking at a chord progression of A-C-Em-G and trying to get the emotion of the song from just that. But I doubt that's what you mean. So if you could use an example of a song, it might help.

OWA, I'm surprised that you'd have any trouble thinking of music that's expressing an emotion.

I'll offer an interesting example that just came to mind. "Amazing Grace" is surely the best known and loved hymn by Christians generally, written in the 1790s by a converted former slave ship captain. It has such emotional meaning to countless believers that many specially request it to be played at their funerals. The emotion comes from the lyrics, which express the singer's gratitude for the "amazing grace" of God that offers forgiveness of sins and redemption. The tune associated with those lyrics has come to carry the same emotional effect for many familiar with it. When I play that tune on slide guitar in Open D, I have those feelings inside, and I'm trying to express them. I think I can do that pretty well, but it took me a long time to gain the experience and develop the techniques necessary to do so. I have a good friend in England, an older fellow of mixed Jewish and Catholic parentage who's an agnostic himself, and doesn't like the song. He thinks it's a corny piece of tripe. He's a gifted player with an extensive background in classical music before he got hooked on blues. He recorded me an instrumental slide guitar performance of "Amazing Grace" that I thought one of the best I'd ever heard. But he was doing it completely insincerely, intending it as a parody of the emotional manipulation he felt players often engage in. From my standpoint, though, it succeeded perfectly in inspiring the emotions I was prepared to feel from that tune.

Truly, emotion is in the soul of the hearer. A musician can do his best to transmit his intended message, but the listener interprets it according to his own experience and mental/emotional state.

Sitting here thinking about this, just now I've had a new arrangement of "Amazing Grace" pop up in my head. So now I need to grab my guitar and see if I can play it. :D

OWA, I'm surprised that you'd have any trouble thinking of music that's expressing an emotion.

I'll offer an interesting example that just came to mind. "Amazing Grace" is surely the best known and loved hymn by Christians generally, written in the 1790s by a converted former slave ship captain. It has such emotional meaning to countless believers that many specially request it to be played at their funerals. The emotion comes from the lyrics, which express the singer's gratitude for the "amazing grace" of God that offers forgiveness of sins and redemption. The tune associated with those lyrics has come to carry the same emotional effect for many familiar with it. When I play that tune on slide guitar in Open D, I have those feelings inside, and I'm trying to express them. I think I can do that pretty well, but it took me a long time to gain the experience and develop the techniques necessary to do so. I have a good friend in England, an older fellow of mixed Jewish and Catholic parentage who's an agnostic himself, and doesn't like the song. He thinks it's a corny piece of tripe. He's a gifted player with an extensive background in classical music before he got hooked on blues. He recorded me an instrumental slide guitar performance of "Amazing Grace" that I thought one of the best I'd ever heard. But he was doing it completely insincerely, intending it as a parody of the emotional manipulation he felt players often engage in. From my standpoint, though, it succeeded perfectly in inspiring the emotions I was prepared to feel from that tune.

Truly, emotion is in the soul of the hearer. A musician can do his best to transmit his intended message, but the listener interprets it according to his own experience and mental/emotional state.

I do understand that. But is not just what one person is doing on a fretboard though. I meant what KP is saying. On technical skill alone being the only thing that conveys emotion. I mean, do those chords A-C-Em-G, speak an emotion when they are together? Is it always the same emotion no matter what? What about Cm-G6-G-Eb5-G5-B5? *progression in a song I wrote*

On a side note, Amazing Grace depresses me when I hear it. The first time I heard it was at a funeral. So everytime I hear it, it takes me back to the funeral. So I guess that proves Ricochet's point.

The question is, Ric, how could he inject that emotion into his playing, no matter how "insincerely", without understanding that emotion. It means that he was acutely aware of the emotion, that he was creating. No matter how you look at it, he was doing the same as an actor - he was using his knowledge (through past experience, perhaps?) of emotion to "portray" the feelings that he was trying to convey - with obvious success.
The way you speak, the inflection in your voice, etc., conveys emotion - it's only your eyes that show whether it's genuine or not. You can't fake it without understanding the genuine emotion that you're faking - ask any confidence trickster.
So, in my opinion, there is no way to dissociate emotion from music.

And that takes long hard hours of practice. It's not about "playing with emotion." It's about spending the time to perfect the craft.

So would you agree that it is emotional draining spending all those hours practicing/perfecting?

Technique is good, emotion is better.

Come on, how can you say emotion is not important? It is everything. Ever listen to computer generated music? It is dead as a doorknob.

If all you know how to do is play in pentatonic and mixolydian scales, then every thing you play will sound like running up and down pentatonic and mixolydian scales.

Time after time you see polls on the greatest electric guitarist. And who wins every single time? Jimi Hendrix.

Jimi Hendrix did not even read music. He didn't even know the names of chords. He described music in colors. His technique? He wrapped his thumb over the neck all the time. He rarely used his pinky. His technique has been described as poor many times.

But who could play with the emotion Hendrix had? Nobody. And this is what puts him at the top of polls every single time. Nobody could express emotions and feelings like him.

Ever listen to his version of Star Spangeled Banner at Woodstock? Man, you can hear the bombs and missles dropping. It is scary. He takes you right to the scene of a battle. You can imagine the death and destruction all around you.

I would like to hear one single song from any of these guitar virtuosos that can do that. Name the song, I'm all ears.

Hendrix almost always used the Minor Pentatonic. At the same time he was known as one of the most creative guitarists ever. Believe me, there is still plenty of music to be gotten from this scale.

Personally, I think these guitar virtosos are completely boring. Most of their music is stale and lifeless. It is just super-noodling. It is like listening to a computer. I know there are exceptions, and sometimes these guys play some truly meaningful music.

Neil Young is not a very technical guitar player. But I bet he has sold more records that all of these super-noodlers lumped together. But he knows something they don't. He knows how to communicate with people's feelings and emotions.

Wes: Agree 100%

Yeah, I pretty much agree with Wes as well. The emotion of playing is not built into great technique. Technique may help one express emotions, but I've heard many technically-limited players who manage to produce great performances within the limits of their abilities. Richie Havens' Woodstock performance always strikes me as good example of this. OTOH, one can play a "great" and difficult piece as written -- perfectly as written -- and it may very well be neither inspiring nor beautiful. The emotion in music is a real, perceivable thing that is created in the spur of the moment variations in timing, phrasing, dynamics, variations and similar. Sometimes the emotional content is subtle, sometimes not. Emotion is what a conductor brings out of an orchestral piece by manipulating timing and dynamics among the various instruments. No two performances are the same, even though the score may be the same. The difference is the emotion -- or lack thereof -- in the performance.

Everybody is different. That's apparent in the performances we hear as well as the comments in the thread. Some feel they can through technique reasonably simulate emotional content. Others can't play if overwhelmed emotionally. Still others feel they are at their best when emotionally immersed in the music. And on the flip side, there are listeners that dig on the music and what's going on there, others that at times are totally isolated from what's going on, and still others that supply most of the 'emotion' in a piece all from within themselves. Does it really matter? It's up to each person to decide what (s)he wants, likes and needs. Me, I find even simply 'hitting the groove' is definitely a process that both requires and returns emotion. And in my experience the other players (at the very least) can tell the difference between a performance that is technically good -- and probably pleases 90% of the listeners -- and one that really snaps-to emotionally -- and gets that last 10% believing.

Faking it? Never as good as the real thing.

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Ive got the best way I can to explain it... Technique means nothing to expressing emotion. Technique is what allows you to repeat that expression reliably once you find a way to do it. In that sense hendrix's technique was perfect.

And that takes long hard hours of practice. It's not about "playing with emotion." It's about spending the time to perfect the craft.

So would you agree that it is emotional draining spending all those hours practicing/perfecting?

WHAT??? NO!!

The argument boling down to "feed the computer the notes and see if you'll like the result" is inherently flawed in this discussion. Even if you had two people with the same exact skill, same number of years playing, the same taste in (or at least exposure to) music and had them play the same Em to Am progression, they would still play it differently.

You'll say "that's what I'm talking about, Emotion!" , but I think it's not that simple either. All humans are inviduals. We are unique. It would be incorrect to describe everything that makes a human being different than another as just "emotion".

Going back to what I said about computers. Computers are not a good example because they only know two possible explanations. 0 or 1. This or that. Yes or no. True or false. Black or white. Nothing in between. That's what "digital" is all about. We don't live in a digital world. The world we live in is "analog". Analog means, for the temperature to go from 50 to 51 degrees, it has to go through all possible values between 50 and 51 which is an infinite number of values.

So when I'm playing Em and switching to Am, I'm playing it with only one of an infinite number of possibilities. This cannot only have something to do with emotion. It has to do with an infinite amount of variables including emotion, technique, taste, hardware, mood, age, time of day, season, whether you're girlfriend is hot etc. The computer cannot have a hot girlfriend. It can't even have a hot 0 or 1. All zeros are the same and all ones are the same :)

Argue all you want about whether it's emotion or technique. You'll only be discussing a "model" of the real world with only two of an infinite number of possible influencing variables. Well. Still. Do it though. That's what science does and it seems to work to some extend.

I personally find this discussion self serving and corny. Everybody wants to think that what they're doing is the right way. Or rather, they do what they think is right (or both). And in these discussions one find him/herself having to play the devil's advocate and be pushed to either extreme. The truth is, in an analog world such as ours, nothing is really at either extreme. It's somewhere in the middle.

There's no spoon ! :)

oktay

I personally find this discussion self serving and corny. Everybody wants to think that what they're doing is the right way. Or rather, they do what they think is right (or both). And in these discussions one find him/herself having to play the devil's advocate and be pushed to either extreme. The truth is, in an analog world such as ours, nothing is really at either extreme. It's somewhere in the middle.

There's no spoon ! :)

oktay

Good point (and good points with the other stuff as well). It's also worth noting that many discussions about a "right" way are in reality a discussion of "preferred" ways. "Preferences" are personal choices so (big surprise here) folks tend to get personal about them. Then the "discussion" becomes a clash of personalilties and the discussion itself is no longer the issue. Perhaps it rarely is, when it comes to these sorts of discussions, that is.

This is why word choices, especially on the Internet where you have only got words, you truly need to think about what you mean. And about how it reads and how other people will take things.

If the word "personality" had been used instead of "emotion," which may have been a lot closer to the mark, I doubt that this thread would have had so many extreme viewpoints. But I could easily be wrong about that!

Peace

Okay, replace every emotion in my post with personality. Works for me.

I personally find this discussion self serving and corny. Everybody wants to think that what they're doing is the right way. Or rather, they do what they think is right (or both). And in these discussions one find him/herself having to play the devil's advocate and be pushed to either extreme. The truth is, in an analog world such as ours, nothing is really at either extreme. It's somewhere in the middle.

There's no spoon ! :)

oktay

That computers only work on 0's and 1's is pretty much an extremist, simplistic and self-serving argument as well. There is lots of in betweens -- and it all depends on the algorithms used to approximate the analog world. 0's and 1's are what low level coders see passed among registers and gates. If I look at anything that closely, the composition looks deceptively simple -- just as western music in its elemental form looks like it's quantized into 12 steps per octave. It's not really that simple, is it?

There may be an infinite (ignoring quantum theory :wink: ) paths from Em to the next chord or note, but most of them are not interchangeable and most are not even close to good. It takes technique crafted out of a combination of technical abilities and imbued with personality to make it interesting. You are correct -- few things are extreme.