State of mind

[Ze.]

I'm practising a chord progression C Am7 F G7 C fingerpicking with five fingers at a fairly slow tempo and its hitting me how powerful music is when i'm hitting the Am7 (man what a sad chord that is ) .The more i practice on the picking pattern playing with the first two strings its dawning on me i'm going to have to stop as its making me actually feel sad inside .How do you coop with the emotion when practising melancholy progressions ...how can you get a polished piece of music if you cant practice it enough without getting emotionally involved.

[paulp1960]

Are we talking real tears here? Maybe go easy on the minor chords.

[Ze.]

Originally Posted by paulp1960

Are we talking real tears here? Maybe go easy on the minor chords.

lol no no real tears ...but it has an effect

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by Ze.

I'm practising a chord progression C Am7 F G7 C fingerpicking with five fingers at a fairly slow tempo and its hitting me how powerful music is when i'm hitting the Am7 (man what a sad chord that is ) .The more i practice on the picking pattern playing with the first two strings its dawning on me i'm going to have to stop as its making me actually feel sad inside .How do you coop with the emotion when practising melancholy progressions ...how can you get a polished piece of music if you cant practice it enough without getting emotionally involved.

You need to get emotionally involved with the music you are playing to play it well. As far
as just practicing things, the novelty effect will wear off when it's no longer a novelty.

[Arthur Blake]

Originally Posted by Ze.

I'm practising a chord progression C Am7 F G7 C fingerpicking with five fingers

You've got to keep things in perspective. At least you're not upset at the freakish quality of five fingers.

[Ze.]

Originally Posted by Arthur Blake

You've got to keep things in perspective. At least you're not upset at the freakish quality of five fingers.

haha i know but they do things automaticaly now its my fret hand thats poor in comparison

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Ze.

I'm practising a chord progression C Am7 F G7 C fingerpicking with five fingers at a fairly slow tempo and its hitting me how powerful music is when i'm hitting the Am7 (man what a sad chord that is ) .The more i practice on the picking pattern playing with the first two strings its dawning on me i'm going to have to stop as its making me actually feel sad inside .How do you coop with the emotion when practising melancholy progressions ...how can you get a polished piece of music if you cant practice it enough without getting emotionally involved.

Tricky! Can't say I've ever had that problem myself. Music can move me to tears occasionally (not often), but only when listening, not when playing it. Not ever.

If you're getting tearful over a plain ol' Am7 chord, wait till you play a maj7, or m(add9). How about these?:

x-3-2-0-0-0

0-2-2-0-0-2



To perform music - even the most emotionally moving music - you have to be in total control, not moved unduly by it yourself. Otherwise you risk losing control. Obviously you have to understand the expression in the music, to be able to play it in the way the composer intended (whether that's you or not). But the message, essentially, is in the music, and you are just the channel.

Essentially you're an actor playing a part. Actors can even cry real tears without actually feeling sad (at least not to the extent of the character they're playing).

In any case, even the "saddest" minor chord is not really "sad", in the sense it should make you tearful. Music doesn't express emotions as easily defined as that. If it makes you feel like crying (sorry to say this), that's down to some circumstances in your own life that you need to deal with. You may just be a hypersensitive person (which is OK!), but you need to forget about all that when playing music.
In fact, one of the purposes of music is to make you feel better when you're sad! (That's what the blues is all about - not to make you feel sad, but to exorcise your misery and make you feel good! It's getting it out of your system! Blues deals with depression and misery, but is not itself "sad" - nobody cries when listening to blues.)

Here's a great jazz piano lesson, on the need to remove emotion from your playing (I totally agree, btw):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJRjEpjd9S4&t=320 - "Don't feel anything, because anything you're feeling is excessive."
His point is that emotion gets in the way of the music. If you're feeling emotion, you can't play properly.
It seems counter-intuitive (goes against all those myths about the emotionalism of music and musicians), but I think he's totally right.
Play the music properly (with a cool command of your technique) and the music will express itself. That's your job, to allow it to do that, and not force it.

[Ze.]

For anyone interested i learned my picking from a tab that this bloke http://www.giltrap.co.uk/ when he was resident tabber for Total Guitar .It was a realy good one for anyone who can get it ...learned me a fantastic picking technique right from the off just in one piece of the Boxer .I would say he would be a great artist to learn from

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Ze.

For anyone interested i learned my picking from a tab that this bloke http://www.giltrap.co.uk/ when he was resident tabber for Total Guitar .It was a realy good one for anyone who can get it ...learned me a fantastic picking technique right from the off just in one piece of the Boxer .I would say he would be a great artist to learn from

Gordon is great!

Here's a video that might interest you: Gordon attempting to get the late great Bert Jansch to show him the fingering for Bert's classic Chambertin (probably over 20 years after Bert last played it, and clearly struggles to remember it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_mWY8tASjk
Gordon plays it his own way in the end (very different from Bert), but it's interesting that he wants to know the composer's methods in detail, even if he uses his own in the end. That's a good lesson in itself.

[ManyMartinMan]

Originally Posted by Ze.

I'm practising a chord progression C Am7 F G7 C fingerpicking with five fingers at a fairly slow tempo and its hitting me how powerful music is when i'm hitting the Am7 (man what a sad chord that is ) .The more i practice on the picking pattern playing with the first two strings its dawning on me i'm going to have to stop as its making me actually feel sad inside ........

Sounds like you're ready for some blues.

[Ze.]

Originally Posted by JonPR

Gordon is great!

Here's a video that might interest you: Gordon attempting to get the late great Bert Jansch to show him the fingering for Bert's classic Chambertin (probably over 20 years after Bert last played it, and clearly struggles to remember it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_mWY8tASjk
Gordon plays it his own way in the end (very different from Bert), but it's interesting that he wants to know the composer's methods in detail, even if he uses his own in the end. That's a good lesson in itself.

In your description you hit the nail on the head ,i am an emotional person and have taken all kinds of medication nothing works so well as a guitar (acoustic).Thanks for all you give

[Ze.]

Originally Posted by ManyMartinMan

Sounds like you're ready for some blues.

I am starting to get into my 7ths a lot more ...Something tells me the key of E is going to be a belter

[tonyo]

Originally Posted by Ze.

For anyone interested i learned my picking from a tab that this bloke http://www.giltrap.co.uk/ when he was resident tabber for Total Guitar .It was a realy good one for anyone who can get it ...learned me a fantastic picking technique right from the off just in one piece of the Boxer .I would say he would be a great artist to learn from

I'm keen to learn the boxer, went to the giltrap site and couldn't find any details of it, is there a link you can put here or other details of how to find his tab / lesson for the boxer?

[Ze.]

Originally Posted by tonyo

I'm keen to learn the boxer, went to the giltrap site and couldn't find any details of it, is there a link you can put here or other details of how to find his tab / lesson for the boxer?

Sorry i can't it was a long time ago and an acoustic edition of Total guitar magazine there was some great tunes in that acoustic edition "Don't think twice" was another i learned ...cram packed with techniques .Thought there might be versions of this edition still in circulation in guitar circles but i'm just newly returned to guitar so i wouldnt know sorry

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Ze.

In your description you hit the nail on the head ,i am an emotional person and have taken all kinds of medication nothing works so well as a guitar (acoustic).

There you go.
When you play music, you get in touch with something truly primal, something essentially human. It cuts beneath all the bull.
It's a language that probably predates verbal language. It's the human equivalent of bird songs and animal calls. We can't explain what it means, but we know what it means.

The epiphany I had was the first time I played in rock'n'roll band. Up to that point, for six years, I'd just played folk music, with friends at home or in folk clubs, where people sat and politely clapped. That was nice, it obviously meant something, and the group sessions were a rewarding social get together in many ways. I also got a lot of personal satisfaction and expression out of playing fancy fingerstyle and composing songs. It was kind of therapeutic, in the sense you mean, but also more. (I was shy, with the usual teenage frustrations, but not particularly depressive.)

But then I found myself in this rock band, on a big stage in a hall, playing Johnny B Goode or something like that - and I looked up from my fretboard and people were dancing. It was a light bulb moment. People are having a good time. And (as I thought crudely at the time) we're the good time they're having. It was a sense of power. In fact, it wasn't personal power, it was more like the sensation of plugging into something eternal, feeling part of something important. This is what music is for.

That was 45 years ago. I still think that's what music is for: for communal celebration, bringing people together in this mysterious primal rite. Its individual therapeutic role is one thing (a kind of personal communion), but the social one is the big one for me, especially with all kinds of popular music. I don't really have much time for the refined classical viewpoint - I've been waiting a lifetime to "get" classical music, and it hasn't happened yet.
On that, I like a quote by impressionist composer Erik Satie, a rebel in his youth:

'When I was young, people told me "you'll see when you're fifty". I'm fifty. I've seen nothing."

That's not to say I think classical music is meaningless! It clearly means a great deal to some people. It just doesn't speak to me, and I don't feel bad about that.