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Post by Kris on Feb 12, 2019 14:00:03 GMT
Life has been throwing me a few boulder sized curve balls of late and so I went over to my best friend's place last night to reset my mind a little. I took a guitar, he's not a bluesman but a great musician and I thought we could have a wee noodle on the six strings together. I started playing without thinking about it and completely let loose on the guitar whilst talking away and telling my buddy my woes, occasionally singing a few bit and pieces here and there. Somehow 3 hours of this goes by (with occasional brief breaks to sip my tea OF COURSE, I am a Brit after all  ) I wasn't thinking about what I was playing or worrying how I was performing in front of him (I tend to get bad performance anxiety and usually immediately cock up if I play for people or try to record myself!) I wasn't worrying myself with the strict rigours of adhering to specific techniques or concentrating on trying to follow a Youtube tutorial with "you must get this perfect and right" at the back of my mind as I usually do. I just remember it feeling and sounding really organic, good and natural. More so than anything else, just really therapeutic, enjoyable and totally from the heart. Somehow the guitar was just playing itself, new material was spilling out, stuff I would never have thought or tried to play. When the next tea break came along, my friend played me a recording of some blues, I said it sounded really good- who was it? "Its you!" he said! I was sort of in disbelief! The talking content over the music was of course deeply personal so we deleted it all, rather gutted about that but needs-musts! Its a shame I had to be in a dark place to really, REALLY, feel and touch the blues but it will offer a memory of a place I can draw from in the future I hope. Sorry I have no music to share, I wish I did but it really has offered me a musical epiphany. Somehow it has also caused my performance anxiety to diminish enormously. Though times have been a bit hard, it felt like absolute magic to have got in touch with the true soul of the blues so I really intend this as a happy post!  |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2019 15:30:23 GMT
Yip--you've found the blues. You don't get them from being a successful hedge fund manager! Epiphanys are what make it all worthwhile!
'If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn'. Charlie Parker
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Post by davetracey on Feb 14, 2019 14:53:08 GMT
Excellent article, Kris-I kept thinking about it yesterday. I think what you experienced applies in other fields, too. I qualified as a social worker about 30 years ago, passed the exams, got the job, went off to change the world. I always used to feel like an imposter though, and this feeling stayed with me for quite a while. Somewhere along the like, this feeling went, and I realised I had become what I was pretending to be. It must have taken about 5 years or so.
Its never happened to me playing the guitar, though. Sure,, I can play Dark is The Night, Come On In My Kitchen etc-and it sounds pretty cool, though I do say so myself. But it wouldn't fool anyone on here for a nanosecond !
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Post by Michael Messer on Feb 14, 2019 15:42:13 GMT
"Blues", "Soul", "Feel", "Emotion", or whatever we like to call it, has absolutely nothing to do with technique, choice of tools, or what we call our art form. It also doesn't have to come from a sad or lonely place, but it does have to come from a real place. Too much music these days comes from a career oriented fake place, and that has no place in my heart, or anywhere in my life. I am just not interested in fake "feel".
To create soulful music, you don't have to think about your dead budgerigar, but you do have to dig deep to create the real thing, and doing that has to be natural, not contrived. As soon as it is contrived, it is no longer real.
Shine On
Michael.
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Post by Kris on Feb 14, 2019 19:16:50 GMT
It can be very easy to lose sight of things, we live in such a high pressure world where we are made to feel that only the highest echelons of perfection and success are what we should be striving for and satisfied with. The true path to satisfaction is really something quite different and it is easy to lose sight of this even in our hobbies and passions. I guess that is why we see so many disillusioned musicians/artists grappling in a bloody-minded way for success alone. If you can pick up your guitar and express yourself and really feel the music resulting in a lift of your mood, THEN you have touched on the real thing. I think that is what it is all about anyway!
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Post by stevie2sticks on Feb 14, 2019 20:21:11 GMT
I found comments by Eric Bibb on his Guitar Tab Songbook (In My Fathers House track) interesting. He describes his reaction to some nasty events in Sweden, it pushed him to write that particular song. His point being that he developed something positive & creative out of his bad reaction to nasty events.
His songs and how he got to them is real interesting blues stuff.
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Post by Michael Messer on Feb 14, 2019 21:03:46 GMT
This is not a criticism of Eric or anyone else, but I prefer the song to speak for itself and for the listener to form their own meaning of what is being said. I feel that when the meaning of the song, or their reason for writing it is explained by the writer that it has lost something, or maybe never had it.
As a rather obvious example of my comment - There is no need for Bob Dylan to explain why he wrote this, or what it is about...
Shine On
Michael
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2019 22:16:55 GMT
I pretty much concur with your post Michael except there are occasions when an artist may feel that his/her message is so important,to them at least,that they don't want to risk it being misconstrued. Years ago I was given a book in which Donald Fagen and Walter Becker explained the symbolism of their lyrics. The difference between what I assumed and what in fact was the message in many of their songs was quite an eye opener.
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Post by richclough on Feb 15, 2019 0:05:58 GMT
Hey Kris,
Good for you! I find it’s always best when I don’t think about my fingers, or the guitar or my voice, when I can be completely unselfconscious and just zone out. That’s when the best music happens. That’s when I surprise myself. On the occasions I’ve been in the studio, the outtakes where I’ve just been messing around always have a looser, better feel than the takes themselves. And the best takes are always the ones where I’ve stopped “trying”.
At its best music for me is a kind of creative mediation. It’s “playing” in the best sense of the word. Once you’ve found that moment once, I’m sure you can find it again.
Okay, enough waffle from me, shouldn’t have had that third beer....
Cheers,
Rich
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Post by creolian on Feb 15, 2019 2:22:42 GMT
I pretty much concur with your post Michael except there are occasions when an artist may feel that his/her message is so important,to them at least,that they don't want to risk it being misconstrued. Years ago I was given a book in which Donald Fagen and Walter Becker explained the symbolism of their lyrics. The difference between what I assumed and what in fact was the message in many of their songs was quite an eye opener. ? Talk about misconstrued... ... I read Michael's posts here for near a year thinking that his salutation was a nod to Pink Floyd... im still cringing. All music, blues in particular for me is a sense of humor put to rhythm and melody... in psychobabble terms, its my coping mechanism. all best, J |
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Post by Stevie on Feb 15, 2019 8:26:37 GMT
A great, nay classic song there from Robert Z, but didn't he do a Paul Simon on it by appropriating it from Nottamun Town? Words can be so powerful.
e&oe...
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Post by petej on Feb 15, 2019 8:54:47 GMT
Just watched this girls reaction to listening to PINK FLOYD for the first time thought it was quite touching.
petej
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Post by Malc on Feb 15, 2019 10:09:46 GMT
I remember listening to this Miles Davis tune many years ago. I was with a friend and we were talking about how a song or tune can give a different feeling to different people. I said that this reminded me of a lonesome rainy night. Oh no she said. A sunny day in the country side.
Hope this makes sense.
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Post by Michael Messer on Feb 15, 2019 10:31:12 GMT
I pretty much concur with your post Michael except there are occasions when an artist may feel that his/her message is so important,to them at least,that they don't want to risk it being misconstrued. Years ago I was given a book in which Donald Fagen and Walter Becker explained the symbolism of their lyrics. The difference between what I assumed and what in fact was the message in many of their songs was quite an eye opener. ? Talk about misconstrued... ... I read Michael's posts here for near a year thinking that his salutation was a nod to Pink Floyd... im still cringing. All music, blues in particular for me is a sense of humor put to rhythm and melody... in psychobabble terms, its my coping mechanism. all best, J Jeff, it's all just another brick in the wall. Shine On....(you crazy diamond) Michael |
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Post by Kris on Feb 15, 2019 12:25:49 GMT
I must have listened to certain songs a thousand times as a kid and known the lyrics through and through, only to listen to them in adulthood and suddenly realise, sometimes with some shock, what they were really intended to be about. Or, indeed, that their meanings had changed to me personally or had adapted to my growing experiences. I think, indeed, lyrics and songs we write can be meaningful to our own personal situations in such a multidimensional ways, we can take what we want from them whether it was the artist’s intention or not (same with artwork.) I wrote some very obscure lyrics in a past band I was in and gave people a dulled down summary of what they meant if asked as they were thoughts so unique to me they were hard to really explain. So many songs have a double entendre element to them in which the lyrics may seem obvious but, to the writer, they are particular and personal.
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