View Poll Results: How much feeling?
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What's your opinion for how much feeling to add to the music and how to go about doing it?
I'm starting to lean toward it should have feeling, but you'll naturally have feeling anyway. So focus on playing well first and emoting second. Not vice versa, that sounds kind of indulgent and immature. Next you should also moderate what type of emotion you want to convey to the listener and avoid annoying emotion.
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10-22-2025 08:09 AM
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I think emotion can be put into music without there being much literal emotion present in the performer, and also someone who feels deeply may not be able to convey it. I think you're right that you need the technical skills first and foremost, or it wont be apparent. Classical musicians can paint a picture of any emotion they want even if they aren't feeling it.
I'm sure a useful skill for certain performers would be to be able to "phone in" a ballad when appropriate that is convincing to the audience
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Yup. It's a multi faceted question. I'm more trying to zone in on just how to approach making the music attractive to the listener and not have it be annoying. Not how to be able to express emotion in the first place.
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yeah, that's a matter of developing taste...like when we call someone a tasteful player. I have no idea how to approach it, it's not much of a factor to me as a hermit.
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Chris is a tasteful player from what I have seen/heard. ask him?
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Originally Posted by joe2758
I know you need taste to do that. But how is it explained?Yeah, that's a matter of developing taste...like when we call someone a tasteful player. I have no idea how to approach it.
He just follows BH to the T.Chris is a tasteful player from what I have seen/heard. ask him?
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Not the worst approach! Yeah sorry to be captain obvious; it's a good question. Originally Posted by Strat-itis
He just follows BH to the T.
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Yep, it isn't the worst approach. I'm actually going to do just that but want a more detailed idea of it. Originally Posted by joe2758
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Oh I didn't see the poll, but i put even balance...but lean more toward the moderation
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In the Spiritual Life feelings and emotions are present but we cannot rely on them to go forward. Likewise, to me the poll is really not doing anything. I did not vote but will say the playing a tune and improvising is a craft that one rarely does something they have not practiced. If you are having a good day, you might solo better, and the lines seem to work better. All the feeling and emotions might be around, but one can swing and play well without going into a frenzy of emotions. i think when Wes sat down to play it seem like he was having fun but working to keep things going. So, I don't get the emotions aspect, one can play quite nice sound and have zero thought about. I am not trying to be rude just my take on some aspect of jazz and the guitar. Feel free to give me all the grief for this post.
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I want my music to be dignified and elegant like Kenny Burrell and Duke Ellington. I want to create something beautiful and share it with people.
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^ Yep, that's certainly a good goal. Kenny Burrell is pretty stable yet evocative. While Duke could be more dramatic.
Frankly, I don't get not getting emotions lol. Whenever I listen back to my playing it feels like it's churning with emotion even though I'm relaxed when I play and am not in a 'frenzy'. I understand your point of view and actually agree how a seasoned musician is often quite stable but then this nuanced music comes out. I don't get why you're phrasing it in a contentious manner. Not getting emotion in music? Originally Posted by deacon Mark
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I am not phrasing it in a contentious manner you are free to take it however you like. I am just saying the emotions and feelings are fine but they don't play the instrument as such. The better you play and practice you probably can tell a story in your solo in improvise. I find playing the guitar a craft much like any trade. Plumbers, electricians, and other learn and skill and apply it sometimes they even get emotional about it but not different than jazz guitar or guitar. Originally Posted by Strat-itis
For example, one of my all-time favorite players is Pat Martino. He spoke on the guitar in a very personal manner and played fluid stuff that was incredible. However, if you listen to any interview about his playing concepts he went at like a metaphysical endeavor outside the mind even. I just never went in for that myself but wow I sure love his playing. In fact, to just be a bit contentious many people do not at all like jazz music and are turned off by it. Emotionally it even gets on their nerves. I once worked at my civil job besides a worker who hated jazx music and if I turned some on she would tell me to put on headphones.
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An interesting question.
The emotion I try to convey in my playing is "swing". My goal is to make the audience involuntarily move their feet, legs, or other parts, caught up in the musical pleasure to be found from my rhythms.
My harmonic knowledge is not advanced, but I immodestly believe that I can swing, better than average. My goal is to play jazz that anyone will enjoy, even those who think they don't like jazz.
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Given the inherently subjective nature of "feeling", this strikes me as a good subject for discussion, but completely unsuited to a poll. In that vein, my ideal is to know a tune well enough that I don't have to think about the mechanics of playing it, so I can focus on the overall shape of it, articulations, dynamics, interaction with other players and the audience, what I think the tune means, etc. Exactly what emotions come into play and the extent of those emotions depend on the tune, the band, the audience, my own mood at the time, the stars, whatever.
Generally speaking, I see music as a communion between the people playing it and the people listening to it. It's supposed to evoke responses in both, which in turn affect the performance. When it really happens, it's an amazing experience. In the everyday reality of not always being prepared, playing tunes other people call spontaneously, setting, gear, indifferent audience, your own mentality, etc., you often don't get to that ideal, but you at least try to put yourself on the path toward it. You have to be at a certain level of competence and experience for this whole subject to come into play at all, though. Not perfection or virtuosity, but you have to know what you're doing and be able to actually play something without struggling. Some people think that they don't need chops or knowledge because they have feeling; they're usually wrong.Last edited by John A.; 10-22-2025 at 04:53 PM.
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I've seen musicians who emote like crazy but clearly lack the chops to match their own feelings, which leads to the audience not getting it--or at least not getting it at the level felt by the performer*. Which leads me to think that skill is the key to making effective music. If I watch myself work on and perform a piece (this applies mainly to vocals), I don't think I'm focused on how I'm "feeling"--I'm looking at the piece, trying to get it right, responding to it, noticing what it invites me to do with its resources (and mine, which are decidedly finite). My concerns for the audience are pretty practical--can they hear what I think I hear? Will they recognize what I'm getting out of the piece? Hell, will they recognize the piece itself? I don't think I'm putting feeling into a song--I'm finding feelings in it. It's less "Look at how I feel" than "Look at what I found." And sometimes I surprise all of us.
* And not just musicians. A lot of Shakespeare gets over-acted.
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Perhaps Jimmy's explanation of "jazz face" would help
Unfortunately I don't have time to locate it right now; maybe someone else would be kind enough to find it and post the timestamp.
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I don't try to convey any kind of feeling or emotion - at least not one I can describe with words.
Music conveys the ineffable and abstract to me.
I don't understand how you can 'add' 'feeling' to music like it was some sort of optional condiment or something.
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It's actually quite simple: if you phrase like a masterful jazz or blues singer (you know their names), the feeling will come through. That requires attention to detail, developing the facility to articulate a line in various ways at different tempos.
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[QUOTE=RLetson;1430413And not just musicians. A lot of Shakespeare gets over-acted. (and not just Shakespeare[I]..!)[/I]
My concerns for the audience are pretty practical--can they hear what I think I hear?..."
I remember the first time I heard my voice on a tape recording. Is that what I sound like?.
I would not have recognized my own voice..the same when I first saw a video recording of myself..Is that how others see me?
And when I first heard recording s of my playing...Ahh
Now.. I know what I sound/look like..and work with that. In acting its body language..a slight facial expression or hand gesture
that reflects what the actor is feeling. The "magic" is..you feel it too.
This is true of ALL the arts..The first time you heard Moonlight Sonata--Did Ludwig van get your attention..I bet he did.
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The poll isn't intended to represent the full explanation of the topic. It's an overview, but also joking as you can see. Originally Posted by John A.
I'll explain it to you. When you have full competence in playing music, you have command of any facet of the music. From content, to interpretation, to being able to express different emotions through sound. Originally Posted by James W
Ur uppity. Originally Posted by Mick-7
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A lot of your replies are what I'm getting at. There's emotion in the musician, but there's also respecting the craft and form of the music, plus putting in the work to represent it well.
You're right. You just made an example how being excessive with emotion is unnecessary, you didn't accuse me. What you're describing is what I'm getting at. The musician can have emotion, but it isn't at the forefront of their performance. Their craft, discipline, and approach is more at the front, and once that's in place then emotion filters through. It isn't necessary to be in a 'frenzy' as you said to play expressively. It might even be the wrong approach. Originally Posted by deacon Mark
Not a lot of description in this post, but I really agree. A lot of time, a great musician isn't trying to express all these profound feelings, they're simply evoking the good feeling in jazz which is what swing describes. This also kind of excludes immature emotions in the music. Originally Posted by TF
Yep, they're usually wrong. That's my premise in this thread. Craft, respect, and competence should come before emotion. Originally Posted by John A.
Yup. Also what I'm getting at. Acquire the skill to make effective music, then you can moderate expression through that. Attractive music usually isn't someone with poor skill who just tries to put feeling in it. It's usually well organized with a moderated backdrop of emotion. Not always, but usually. Originally Posted by RLetson
I also feel this way about my music. However once you analyze what is attractive to the listener, it starts to be more definite what they would like. Then you can try to focus on that and downplay or eliminate facets that would be unattractive. Originally Posted by James W
Uh huh. You need to record so you can tune how your music objectively comes off. And a lot of the process of music is being able to craft music that objectively creates the intended or attractive effect to the listener. Originally Posted by wolflen
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I'm going to shift to an area in which I am fully competent and in control of my craft, and I strongly suspect that what I have to say will apply to music.
When I write, what I write is what I intend to write, but I don't think about how much feeling is going into it. Since most of what I write is a kind of journalism, its emotional side is not be the first thing I think about, even though it can certainly have an emotional side. But I fuss over precision and grace--over getting it right--and that may or may not wind up having an emotional effect. And as I draft (writing is re-writing), I certainly might notice something that needs toning down (rarely the other way around)--I might "subtract" emotion--though that's not quite the same thing as what a musician does when performing in real time.
When I do write something that necessarily involves "feeling"--these days, most likely a sympathy note or even an obit--I do make an effort to strike the right note, but again, that's not quite what the OP is getting at. I think. I have a file of old sympathy notes and a couple of obits. I keep them around as memorials, and they remind me not only of my departed friends but of what kinds of things one can say on these occasions. What I notice about them is how I work at balancing precision--what the departed really mean to me and others--and the needs of those to whom they are addressed--the bereaved. Here's a note I wrote to myself as I tried to work out how to write a sympathy note:A friend's bereaved, you need to say something, but the choice seems to be banalities or honest but awkward confessions of the inadequacy of mere words in the face of primal grief.
Unwelcome complexity does not fit the situation; "there, there, now" is for children or intimates, but that might-as-well-be-wordless attempt to comfort is what the monkey-mind really wants to offer: touch, embrace.
Of course, there's always poetry, a way of ecapsulating confusion, of holding it at arm's length so it can be both seen and felt--but even that can seem an avoidance. And the lines would like to become a sonnet, and the form wants to impose itself on the squirming, untidy mess of if-only and oh-really and isn't-it-pretty-to-think-so second and third thoughts.
Do you want pretty or true?
Emotion arises from the demands of the form and from one's connection to the occasion, and it is embedded in the final product organically rather than as the result of a deliberate consideration.
How's that for a far excursion from the center of the topic.
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If it ain't got fee-LING, then it don't mean ... shit
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The three transcendental are truth, goodness, and beauty. Musically they express authenticity, appropriateness, and allure, respectively. Emotion is not something added to the music; it is what emerges when you express the transcendental musically.
In other words, "No try, do."
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