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You don't have to be incredibly skilled technically, however, to be expressive. You just to play within your limits. Even a relative beginner can be an expressive player, and play with feeling. They only have to be in full command of just what it is they need to play - it might just be a couple of chords. There also needs to be a kind of "window of opportunity" above that. IOW you need a little spare technique beyond what you're playing, to enable you to add expression as you feel it, in the way you articulate what you play. So you don't play at the limits of your technique, but a little below it, to leave room for freedom of expression. Of course, you have to know what it is you want to express in the first place! You have to feel the tune or the song is saying something you yourself want to say. It's not about having some kind of feeling in yourself, and then trying to express it through music. Nor is it about trying to enter the mind of the composer and guess what he/she was trying to say. It's about feeling an affinity for the tune, that you recognise what it's saying. (That's probably why you want to play it in the first place.) You understand it, because you feel the same way (often or sometimes). It's something you can't put into words (otherwise it wouldn't be music!;),), but it feels "right". It's also important to stress that you are not in the grip of any emotion while playing. You have to remain fully in control. There may be intense emotions communicated by the music, but they are achieved through very small and subtle techniques, that require consummate conscious control. It's like being actor: an actor can communicate intense emotions without actually feeling anything at all at that moment; he needs the complete control in order to perform the techniques that will communicate the emotion accurately. If he wants to communicate sadness, it's no good if he breaks down and cries. He'll just look like someone crying. IOW, you have to "keep the channel clear". Real emotion will clog it up. The emotion in the music will only get through if you remain somewhat detached. It might seem counter-intuitive to want to minimize emotion, to play music effectively, but it's necessary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJRjE...feature=relmfu |
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as for becoming a better guitar player, i'd suggest recording yourself and listening as unbiasedly as possible, as well as practicing. there is an interesting article about maximizing practice time here: http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...d.php?t=248191 |
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IMO the philosophical approach or if you want the wisdom of an experienced player about musicianship, technique , expression is not really helping a player with questions like the one of the OPs Christos |
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I would define a musician as someone who speaks the language of music fluently.
(Caveat: I know I harp on this a lot, but I can't understate the impact on my own development.) You don't lean to speak the language of music by drilling your fingers. It's something that happens in your mind: the ability to manipulate musical ideals fully in your head. This can seem sort of foreign to somebody who doesn't have this skill. (And it's not a binary skill, either - I'm orders of magnitude better at it than I was two years ago, but I'm still improving). The stereotypical "non-musician guitarist" is someone who's got amazing finger dexterity, but who when asked to play something cool is focused on showing off all his tricks. You make the transition through ear training. NOTHING has helped me as much as the functional ear trainer (downlable for free at miles.be). Getting an ear training book also helped, but the functional ear trainer has been the biggest thing. It's giving me the ability to hear the relationships of the different notes in a song, to understand what the musician is doing not physically but musically. |
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The conductor's job is to have the orchestra play the best piece of music it can. If every individual musician just did what they felt like, the whole thing would be a mess. But a good classical musician can, absolutely, positively play the music *exactly as written* and still add their own artistic expression to the performance. After all, when the conductor makes a big loopy wave with his hand, what's that mean? There's a reason why people, not robots, play in orchestras. Good orchestral musicians are performing with an unbelievable amount of precision, and their control over that precision gives them a lot of expressive power. Get louder? Okay - how? There are a million different ways to get louder over the course of a measure. etc. Listen to different performances of classical pieces. You'll hear the same music, performed exactly as written, sound very different. |
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Steve |
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See, now we're hitting at some real stuff here.
A musician understands. They know their role in the music that's being played. |
I'll be honest...the definition of 'musician' doesn't interest me at all. Why should it ? I play guitar because I like the guitar as an instrument, I like how it sounds and I can create and play music using its sound I enjoy. Personally, it's my choice of what to learn about playing the instrument. What else is there ?
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Y'all do realize that this "guitarist vs. musician" thing is just a way to put people down, right?
"Guitar? I guess it's OK for folk songs, but not Serious Music. Real muscians play instruments like the flugelhorn." You cannot move from being a guitarist to being a musician. It's an illogical proposition. Sorry, that's just how it is. If you play guitar, you are a musician. DEAL WITH IT! You may be a lousy musician, or a great one, but you are a musician. Well......If you can sing, you can move from guitarist to musician by having your arms and legs removed -- assuming you can't play with your nose of course. If you want to say the same thing without being quite so illogical, invent a term like "Musicality." Well, re-invent. The guy who taught my college Music Theory class was a touring sax player on the side. I was talking to him one day and he made a comment about teaching sax. Actually he launched into a rant along the lines of, "It isn't about speed, or accuracy, or technical proficiency. It's about Musicality. It's about having the feel, and ear, needed to produce sounds that people enjoy hearing. Give me a choice between two students, one making great technical progress but with no Musicality, and another really struggling but with a lot of Musicality, I'd much rather teach the kid who has that Musicality because when he gets it he'll be able to make music people want to hear." Even that comes down to "good musician" vs. "bad musician." |
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Steve |
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