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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Problem <> CAN'T f e e l <> THE BLUES
Problem <> CAN'T f e e l <> THE BLUES
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Frank
4639 posts
Jun 24, 2014
3:48 AM
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"Blues is easy to play but hard to feel. A lot of players play it, but can't feel it". Jimmy H. :)
I read the above quote recently in another thread and periodically see it around and read it in interviews and hear players paraphrase it all the time.
It seems Hendrix is accusing a lot players of being emotionless "blues mimes"...
Faking it and turning in shallow performances that often fall flat !
What do you think?
Is it hard to play the blues with "feeling" ?
Please share about your experiences with "feeling the blues" and then playing those feelings?
What does it feel like to really play the blues - does anyone here know?
Does feeling the blues come natural for you?
Can you admit to not feeling the blues though playing them anyway?
Do you feel the blues deeply, but still not able to play the blues like you know you should?
Last Edited by Frank on Jun 24, 2014 4:02 AM
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jbone
1666 posts
Jun 24, 2014
4:11 AM
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There is a part of playing esp. live where a person gets in "the zone", where you become a part of the whole. A connection on a deeper level. That's one element.
Some of the songs I've played and especially ones I wrote, I definitely felt and feel. A good breakup, unfair treatment at work, a brush with the law, or good old fashioned depression about life can all fuel a real and true feel for playing blues.
On another board I recently saw a thread about who's "qualified" to play blues. I don't know about that but I know if you have had hard times personally, you probably feel the emotions which can be expressed in a I-IV-V 12 bar format, whether you sing or play or both.
Now there are times where I struggle to get to the "zone" out playing live, but usually I find my way there. That's about maybe being jangled from the day's work or the trip to the gig or some external distraction. When I relax and focus on laying out the music for the people, I see by their response if I'm reaching them. It's something we know instinctively once we learn to let go and let it flow.
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Jim Rumbaugh
1000 posts
Jun 24, 2014
4:12 AM
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A few thoughts
1) A local singer wrote a song "I'm just to dog gone happy to sing the blues" and I can attest there is some truth to that line.
2) A few years back, a singer asked me to record a harmonica track to her song. After hearing the soo I did she said, "I can't hear what you're trying to say. I want to hear the pain and the anger that this song talks about" I re-did the track a while thinking about what the song was saying and tried to express thode emotions in the dynamics of what I played. She said,"That's what I wnated hear"
3) We can talk about scales ad what motes to play. We can write down what to play. But I have not seen notation on how to play the blues. My guess, that explains why some people can play the blues with just a few notes, while others unsuccessfully attempt to create the blues by adding more notes to their solo.
4)Walter Tore declined to teach a class at Harmonicollege, but offered to come and let people learn by spending time with him. That was how he learned the blues, by living with Louisiana Red. Some things are hard to convey with words and numbers and can only be expressed from emotions, and it's hard to teach emotion.
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theharmonicaclub.com (of Huntington, WV)
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BronzeWailer
1324 posts
Jun 24, 2014
4:15 AM
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Interesting question, Frank. I am generally positive by disposition. I consciously embrace happiness as a prime target of my spirit. This has served me well. Like everyone, I guess, I have had good and bad experiences. Sometimes I tap into these (or what I know people close to me, friends or neighbours are going through or have gone through, and let it out through the music.)I think you can also play the blues from a point of empathy. I think people respond because they may not have faced the same situation but have something similar going on in their lives.
Once I was busking by myself in the middle of the financial district. No one was paying me any mind. This went on for half an hour or so. I got frustrated and started wailing away in frustration, then suddenly people took notice and I started getting a few tips.
Sometime it is about adopting the swagger of a persona or a bad guy, like in Folsom Prison. It is an act; everyone knows it is an act, but it is a fun act.
BronzeWailer's YouTube
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The Iceman
1764 posts
Jun 24, 2014
5:34 AM
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One problem is what I call "Toomuchlickitis".
Memorizing licks and spitting them back, one note following the next, is mechanical unless one gets inside the notes.
Can you play a sustained 2 hole inhale over changes and "suck the marrow out of the note?", doing something with this one note - coloring, shaping, slightly altering the pitch, etc?
This is where the feel for blues lives.
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The Iceman
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Frank
4641 posts
Jun 24, 2014
8:57 AM
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So if a player can answer yes to your question, then he or she is able to play the blues with feeling, or is there more to it?
Last Edited by Frank on Jun 24, 2014 8:58 AM
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Tuckster
1438 posts
Jun 24, 2014
11:00 AM
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I'm a pretty happy guy. I sometimes can draw on past bad experiences but mostly all I have to do is watch the local news. Almost daily,it seems,there is a shooting of a young black man or the mother who shot up heroin and passed out and her 18 month old ate the morphine pill she left lying on the table or the decaying tree that decided to fall just as a car with 4 children was passing beneath it. And that was just today's news and all true-I didn't make them up.
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JInx
806 posts
Jun 24, 2014
11:29 AM
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For a while, not long ago...whenever I tried to play a minor blues, tears would well up and my nose would run. I was a blubbering mess. It's not so bad anymore.
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jnorem
314 posts
Jun 24, 2014
12:01 PM
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Connecting emotionally to what you're playing is pretty important, I think, playing expressively, but it's not restricted to blues. Watch a good classical performer play; they're practically swooning.
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Call me J
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timeistight
1595 posts
Jun 24, 2014
2:16 PM
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A clarification: Hendrix said, "Blues is easy to play but hard to feel." I said, "A lot of players play it, but can't feel it."
I fixed my original post to make that clearer. Sorry for the confusion.
Blues is hard to feel because it seems so easy to play. Players miss the subtleties in the rush to show what they can do.
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Komuso
321 posts
Jun 24, 2014
6:17 PM
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It's a misnomer to characterize "the blues" (as in music blues) as being purely about -ve emotions. Maybe when it's used as an expression of sadness (as in I have the blues) but in terms of musical expression Blues encompasses the full gamut of human emotion, from joy to sadness and everything in between.
The Blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding.
Willie Dixon
Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.
Billy Gibbons
Once I was checking to hotel and a couple saw my ring with Blues on it. They said, 'You play blues. That music is so sad.' I gave them tickets to the show, and they came up afterwards and said, 'You didn't play one sad song.'
Buddy Guy
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Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa
HarpNinja - Your harmonica Mojo Dojo
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slackwater
62 posts
Jun 24, 2014
9:02 PM
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I reckon Komuso is pretty right.
" I want you to squeeze my lemon 'till the juice runs down my leg." I don't know about you all, but to me that aint about sorrowful pain and suffering!
Another quote: " The sorrow songs of the slaves we call Jubilee Melodies. The happy-go-lucky songs of the Southern Negro we call blues."
-W.C. Handy, in 1919.
I agree with jnorem too, it's emotional expression and, being connected to those emotions is the key to connecting with an audience.
Blues is fun, it's sex, it's laughter, it's sarcastic, it's sex, it's longing, it's sex,... it's life! As someone once said though,
"Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary."
- Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, from "Rainy Day".
Do I feel it? Yep, unless I'm feeling numb.
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