Several years ago this lady at my work started gushing about her ten-year-old son being some blues guitar prodigy.\u00a0 She went on about how he could outplay older guys and play the same things.\u00a0 Being the nice guy I am, I sat, nodded my head and said, “That’s nice” when appropriate.\u00a0 Deep down inside I wanted to call her an arrogant, unknowing idiot.\u00a0 Of course, a lot of people would think this would be mean to say, at\u00a0the least.\u00a0. . and they would be right.\u00a0 Saying those things would not\u00a0give her one moment of enlightenment and would upset her (though it would be true).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Wait!” one would say, “you never heard a note this boy played.\u00a0 How do you know he isn’t as talented as she said he was?”<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t but that’s not the point.”<\/p>\n
“It wouldn’t be the point?\u00a0 What do mean?”<\/p>\n
Getting away from the imaginary dialogue, I will explain.\u00a0 If she said any other music but the blues I might have been a\u00a0bit more indulgent.\u00a0 One thing that a lot of people don’t understand about music (especially the Blues) is that the mechanics are only one part.\u00a0 In fact, I would go so far as to say, a small part.\u00a0 It’s down to feel.\u00a0 The soul you put into it makes the difference.\u00a0 It is your feeling and life experience that informs the music.\u00a0 This is the intangible thing that drives some people crazy.\u00a0 You can’t pigeonhole specific elements that make it good.\u00a0 Music can be technically correct and still leave you cold.<\/p>\n
Think of it.\u00a0 If operatic singers with a five octave range were what constituted good singing, we certainly wouldn’t be listening to Michael Stipe.\u00a0 Chris Cornell has a four octave range but if there wasn’t anything else to it we would go, “That’s nice,” maybe be impressed, walk away and forget him tomorrow.\u00a0 Certainly, Dark Side of the Moon wouldn’t have sold so many copies!\u00a0 Playing your instrument or singing in an individual and unique way takes many years of soul mining into the core of your being.\u00a0 How many years depends on the individual but not at the age of ten!<\/p>\n
Which brings us back to the Blues . . . . Case in point . . .<\/p>\n
A friend of mine’s little brother could play all sorts of technical stuff.\u00a0 He impressed lots of people.\u00a0 Nothing seemed beyond him\u00a0. . .as only a teenager.\u00a0\u00a0 He used to sneer at blues artists.\u00a0 He used to envision these old guys sitting around a campfire playing the same repetitious, limited crap over and over.\u00a0 We then goaded him. We said, “Well, show us.\u00a0 Play it exactly as they do.”<\/p>\n
He tried for a couple weeks and came back a different guy and a different player!\u00a0 He had been truly humbled because he couldn’t do what they did in the same way.\u00a0 It was quite a deep experience for him. He realized that it took more than technical ability.\u00a0 It took soul and imagination.\u00a0 Finding your own <\/em>voice.<\/p>\n I can’t remember the singer I heard on the radio one day but she illustrated this as well in an interview.\u00a0 She said that one night she was watching some music award ceremony and there was this 17 or 18 year old girl accepting an award.\u00a0 In her speech she said, “I worked sooo hard for this, it’s unbelievable!”<\/p>\n The interviewee’s response was, “Honey, you don’t know what working hard is.\u00a0 When you’ve spent years of\u00a0playing bars behind chicken wire, people telling you are crap, telling you\u00a0that your going nowhere for the same music that eventually makes you money later.\u00a0 Then you can say that.\u00a0 Not when some scout whisks you in front of a camera, puts a bunch of studio musicians behind you and pours a lot of money in for advertising.”\u00a0 This, or course, is not an exact quote but it\u00a0is roughly what she said.<\/p>\n When a ten-year-old plays at a technically high level, it is\u00a0indeed, impressive. But it does not mean that he can “play\u00a0better” than the older guys.\u00a0 When music becomes a sport, it’s time to pack it in.\u00a0 It’s like what Roger Waters said in “Live in Pompeii.”\u00a0 “What we learned in art school is that at the end of the day what matters is, ‘Does it move you?'”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several years ago this lady at my work started gushing about her ten-year-old son being some blues guitar prodigy.\u00a0 She went on about how he could outplay older guys and play the same things.\u00a0 Being the nice guy I am, I sat, nodded my head and said, “That’s nice” when appropriate.\u00a0 Deep down inside I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,50,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-in-general","category-observations","category-perfomance"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themusicalalchemy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}