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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Playing with "FEELING" easier said then done!
Playing with "FEELING" easier said then done!
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Frank
605 posts
Apr 12, 2012
2:51 PM
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And with tribute covers I've noticed that the deeper I'm able to get into the soul of the song, the easier it is to tell the story of the song with conviction and courage.
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hvyj
2324 posts
Apr 13, 2012
5:02 AM
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I've worked with some singers who wouldn't sing a tune unless they could personally relate to the lyrics/theme/story somehow. These were not arrogant, picky, temperamental performers. They just felt they needed to be able to be able to personally relate to the tune to a certain extent in order to be able to deliver it properly.
I don't sing. However, I've found that being required to play material I don't like or can't relate to has improved my playing every time I've had to do it. It gets me out of my comfort zone and focuses me on figuring out and learning whatever technique the tune requires in order to play the tune properly with the right feel. Then, eventually, instead of thinking, not this again when the tune gets called, I start to think, I can handle that and just shift gears accordingly.
I think this sort of thing is where technique and feeling sort of merge. I mean, for example. i don't like playing country, but if i have to, i can chug, work off a major pentatonic scale, bounce the right 3 hole draw bends at the right pitch and get that good ol' country feel goin' even though it really ain't my thing. It's just a matter of adjusting playing technique to suit the style in order to produce the desired/required effect convincingly whether i happen to be personally into it or not.
Last Edited by on Apr 13, 2012 5:14 AM
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nacoran
5533 posts
Apr 13, 2012
8:21 AM
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Hvyj, it's funny what you say about having to relate to the lyrics. We have two 'love songs' in our set that mention a girl by name (and original called Sammie Brown and a cover of Molly's Lips). Our lead singer doesn't like to sing them anywhere close together in the set. I think he thinks it sounds unfaithful!
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Nate
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waltertore
2184 posts
Apr 13, 2012
9:49 AM
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Iceman is right. One can fool most everyone with "feeling". I use to be able to set my watch by some of the "soulful spontaneous" stuff I saw in the clubs by bands that were labeled playing with Feeling. Also what some percieve as Feeling others would not.
For me, it is too subjective to really say anything other than- if it moves me I move and if it doesn't I don't. My youngest brother had a great run the REM and MCA labels with Grunge. His band played tours with other Grunge bands doing full tilt feeling so they and the critics said. For me it was just noise........... Walter
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Last Edited by on Apr 13, 2012 9:51 AM
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loscott
11 posts
Apr 13, 2012
12:43 PM
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Elijah Wald, in his book Escaping the Delta, talks about this element of Robert Johnson’s music. “Me and the Devil Blues” well illustrates his point (p. 175-179). In both takes, Johnson includes the asides “Now, baby, you know you ain’t doing me right” and “I don’t care where you bury my body when I’m dead and gone” in the same places and in almost exactly the same manner.
Wald writes, “[Johnson’s] models were some of the most careful and prepared artists in the field and no blues singers have ever polished their work more thoroughly than he did ‘Me and the Devil Blues.’ Virtually every musical phrase, every falsetto ‘ooo,’ every offhand comment has been planned in advance.”
There is a tension between the spontaneous artistry of a country blues performer, such as Son House or Charley Patton, and the cultivated styles of urban musicians, like Lonnie Johnson or Leroy Carr. RJ seems to have been caught in the middle. His legacy, due largely to his reception by white audiences, often falls into the stereotype of “wild Delta primitivism,” but Wald is right to point out that Johnson “was attempting to place himself on the Carr side of this aesthetic divide.”
In Feel Like Going Home, the first part of the PBS documentary series on the blues produced by Martin Scorsese, Corey Harris remarks, “People are looking at blues like it’s this Shakespearean canon. I’ve even heard people do remakes of tunes and they’ll duplicate all the vocal asides, just like verbatim. That’s not the point… You got to make it your own cause it’s all about personal expression.” Ironically, right before that Harris quote, the documentary discusses Robert Johnson and plays one of his tunes (Traveling Riverside Blues). Harris, however, was making a different point. I don’t think he would have a problem with RJ duplicating his own asides exactly because they were his own personal expression. He rather was critiquing musicians who adopt that expression instead of creating their own. Eric Clapton, for instance, covers “Me and the Devil Blues” on the tribute album Me and Mr. Johnson. In his cover, he deploys both of the original vocal asides (“Now, baby, you know…” and “I don’t care where…”). Not that the Clapton version doesn’t contain its own personal touches (including some very nice harmonica playing by Jerry Portnoy), but I think in this respect it falls victim to the tendency that Harris was criticizing. I have a personal soft-spot for Me and Mr. Johnson; it was the first time I began listening to blues rather than bluesy classic rock.
I don’t think that polish and emotional expression are necessarily incompatible, but I do agree there is an inevitable feeling of disillusionment when one realizes that an artist like Rod Piazza or Robert Johnson has premeditated their ostensibly spontaneous flourishes
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wolfkristiansen
111 posts
Apr 13, 2012
1:45 PM
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Interesting discussion here.
I'll tell the truth, on stage, I play with more feeling if I have a beer or three in me. It makes the stage fright disappear, and the feeling appear.
Sometimes a really good song, by virtue of its lyrics or music, summons the feeling. If the song means more to you, you're bound to play it with more feeling.
Blues has always moved me. The feeling is (almost) always there when I play blues, as opposed to playing in other genres.
One more thing-- if you step up on stage, strongly feeling one emotion or another as you start to play, it's bound to come out during the playing. I'm talking about joy, love, sadness, anger, whatever.
About feelings generally-- if you supress your feelings in real life, or aren't in touch with them, you're likely not going to be able to communicate with feeling in your music.
So, yeah, I'm in the camp that says feeling can't be manufactured or imitated. It has to be there.
One and a half years ago I posted in this forum on the effect that one emotion, anger, has on my playing. Perhaps some of you have experienced the same thing. Have a look:
http://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/board/board_topic/5560960/746153.htm
Cheers,
wolf kristiansen
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XHarp
482 posts
Apr 13, 2012
5:20 PM
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I'm not sure you can define it because it is defined by the listener. The artist can impart all modes of timing, changes, inflections, or other things including our own relation to the tune into the playing but the 'feeling' is felt by the audience.
When you can play and have the audience relate to their emotions in the song, then you've played with feeling.
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"Keep it in your mouth" - XHarp
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Conflictz
4 posts
Apr 13, 2012
7:19 PM
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Eventually you will get the blues, because it sounds like you havent yet. and when you do, youll know it, and it immediately transfers to your playing. i like you think of certain people or events that apply to the song i am playing(ex. Help me, Born Under a Bad Sign, etc.)
Last Edited by on Apr 13, 2012 7:19 PM
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Frank
612 posts
Apr 14, 2012
9:31 AM
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"Eventually you will get the blues" or I have a "FEELING" we will all die tryin to get em....I was watchin U2's "Rattle and Hum" video and it has a part showing the band working with BB King on the new song at that time "When Love Comes To Town" WOW - BB was in his 60's then and every note he picked hit ya between the eyes with deadly "BLUE" accuracy, amazing feeling he pulls out of that guitar!
Last Edited by on Apr 14, 2012 9:35 AM
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LittleBubba
212 posts
Apr 14, 2012
12:15 PM
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I side with the posts that indicate there are techniques that help communicate feeling. Punctuation, dynamics, phrasing, attack & decay, tonal changes, rhythm (including things like staggered notes & triplets), controlled bends. It's not an imprecise science, even when it comes naturally. There are ways to engage your listeners. That's why orchestral music has dynamic notation along with the notes.
You may really "have the blues", but your technique communicates that.
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MP
2164 posts
Apr 14, 2012
12:32 PM
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"I've worked with some singers who wouldn't sing a tune unless they could personally relate to the lyrics/theme/story somehow. These were not arrogant, picky, temperamental performers. They just felt they needed to be able to be able to personally relate to the tune to a certain extent in order to be able to deliver it properly."
@ hyvj,
yeep! i can't sing it if i can't relate.
@wolf
"I'll tell the truth, on stage, I play with more feeling if I have a beer or three in me. It makes the stage fright disappear, and the feeling appear."
me too. but sometimes i think beer has a placebo effect on me. just the thought of beer makes me relax. so i relax.
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MP
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colman
154 posts
Apr 14, 2012
4:42 PM
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It`s all dialect,you can be a bloody bloke or a hoochie coochie main...but the blues is funk on the back burner... it`s a style of tongue,inflection and grunt...mabey a whisper of whooa ! and you can speak in tongues.the flow of notes are.can you ride it !
improvisation is ride`n it.do it to it !!!
Last Edited by on Apr 15, 2012 3:48 AM
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