Title kinda says it all. Some folks like speedy technical stuff, some like slower stuff, etc.
What I am asking is where does the line blur for some WRT technical ability and “soul”? Clapton was called “slowhand” for a reason and Yngwie at a time was considered “God”. These are two extremes in terms of examples, but the line gets even more blurred when you introduce players like Steve Vai who showcase the ability for technical prowess in a less in-your-face fashion.
engender any emotion? The big knock on guys like Vai is technique over feel. Does Vai have feel? This video, if you care to watch it all the way through (although the song title is ghey!) I think demonstrates that yes, there is emotion there, despite the rock-star faces being made.
What do you think? Does rock and roll always have to be gritty or can it also showcase emotion through technical ability or some combination thereof?
Ygnwie J. Malmstein was never known as “God”. You must be talking about some other guitar playing Yngwie.
Guitar is a very expressive instrument, and while a degree of technical proficiency can help a player, it’s nothing without an appreciation for rhythm and melody. For instance, knowing how to resolve a solo on the downbeat = awesome impact. Flailing away and never resolving a solo = bullshit noodling wankfest.
I think it’s It. It plagues all performers, no matter the instrument. Some people have It and some people don’t. It and talent are correlated, but not 1:1. Johnny Depp has It and talent. Keanu Reeves has It without having much talent, while some people in garage bands have talent but not enough It to ever break professionally.
It is impossible to pin down, that’s part of It’s appeal. But it usually means having such a mastery or intuitive understanding of the rules of your art that you can break them at will and to affect emotional response in your audience. It’s not science, it’s art.
Playing with “feeling” tends to refer to the ability to distort technical perfection in order to create emotionally evocative nuances. Ironically, I think it actually takes a lot of technical ability to able to do that. It shows a fluency with the instrument great enough to be able to express the exact emotion you want, which actually takes more ability than just being able to hit the notes.
To put it most simply,. I would say that playing with “feel” is the art of playing the notes slightly wrong (in a controlled distortion of pitch and timing) in such a way that it creates a certain kind of calculated tension which creates a more evocative effect than just playing the notes.
By the way, I’m going to stand up for Yngwie a little bit. I think he shows a lot more feeling than people give him credit for. It’s subtle and very controlled, but it’s there, and you can hear his love for the instrument in every note he plays.
The technique is there to allow the music to flow. As a listener, I never want to be aware of the technical difficulties of a piece, neither because the performer barely makes it (needs more technique) nor because the accomplishment of the technique overwhelms the musical feeling (needs more feeling). The technique is there solely to let the music speak - if the technique is doing the speaking, then the music is being stifled.
Robert Fripp used to say that discipline is a means to an end, never an end in itself.
I think that they’re two entirely different things.
You can have lots of technique with lots of feeling, ala Stevie Ray Vaughn; or you can have lots of technique with little feeling, like practically every guitar shredder you’ve ever heard.
You can have simple technique with overwhelming feeling, ala David Gilmour; or you can have poor technique with little feeling (no names necessary).
Define feeling and prove to me that Yngwie doesn’t have it. Just because you or I may not get the emotion, doesn’t mean it is not there.
I am not a huge fan of Malmsteen. He is an ass. He is also a hell of a player. I might not like his stuff and get bored with it easily but that does not mean that he doesn’t feel what he plays. It just means that I don’t get it.
“Technique” covers a lot more than just how fast a person can play, though velocity is usually what guitarists are talking about when “technique” is argued about on guitar forums.
There’s no line between emotion and technique. You use the technique to express the emotion. If the musical piece you are playing requires a raggedy, loose, and “un-technical” feel, then playing in that way is the correct technique. If that’s all you can do anyway, so what? If you do it well, in way that people enjoy, you’re a good guitarist.
To put it more simply; if you sound good, you’re doing it right.
“Good”, of course, is subjective. I love Neil Young’s lead playing, some people hate it. I never liked Gary Moore’s playing, but some people love it.
That’s fine, it’s music, not a competition, and everyone likes what they like. Nothing is provably better or worse, it’s all personal taste. People who insist that one guy is a “technically better” player than the other are completely missing the point of music: if it sounds good, it’s right.
Seriously, you are right in that regard. But you can still have one without the other I think. A sloppy player given certain advantages like modern processing, distortion, delay and a myriad of other ways to alter the clean sound of a guitar can still evince emotion in another person. Hey, how do you think I got laid in High School anyway?
But you’re also right that you cannot hide bad technique forever either (in that technique is more above subjective judgement than feel). At least not from people that really know how to play. Of course, modern rock fans getting their giggities out on Guitar Hero are not likely to recognize that and nor is the modern music consuming public at large. I suppose there’s a relevant correlation there about the duration of most pop/rock bands as well.
Great perspective. Mine has changed a LOT over the years, even as my playing and practice time have pretty much gone out the window with the advent of life, responsibility, job, marriage, kids, mortgage, etc.
I was actually a pretty proficient shredder as a late teen/early 20’s guy, but I always preferred delta-style blues from a listener’s standpoint. I never could get really good at the blues then. I LOVED slide guitar from guys like Cooder.
Now when I play (only for myself these days), I cannot shred at all even when I try. I am out of practice with the harmonic minor scales, my tendons and quick-twitch response are degraded and…I have completely lost interest in playing that junk.
I am better at the blues now, but I still suck as a player. But I have more feel now than I did before, I am confident of that. Does this in any way lend relevance to what I am trying to ask?
I suppose not. I apologize ahead of time for asking a question that is at least partly unanswerable because of the subjective nature of human perception.
But still, there has got to be a way that guitar playing in some form or another at a certain place in time affects more people emotionally than a different style of guitar does at some other point in time.
Once you have acquired the skills to do what you want technically with the instrument, you have the potential to do what you want with feeling. It’s not a “line” situation – any level of technique can be combined with any degree of emotion.
I think what happens in some cases, often enough that we talk about it, is that technical proficiency is highly developed while emotional expressiveness is comparatively ignored. The “line,” such as it is, is in having recognizable emotive content that is not overshadowed and obscured by display of technical prowess.
