howseth - Posted - 01/16/2010:  13:31:11

I was listening to a singer the other day belt out a song with a terrific technique - great vocal control - and was left impressed and yet bored. Just no magic. Sometimes great ability can even just be irritating.

This is often the case with instrumentalists in guitar and banjo too. I am always impressed by great technical skill in a player - how can you not be? However, what really is exciting to me is how a few musicians filter great technique - or maybe even not such great technique - through their personality and produce magic: an exhilaration, a deep sense of satisfaction...

In singers I get those feelings listening to Billie Holliday ... and in instrumentalist/singers ... old Louis Armstrong recordings ... in banjo recordings - I remember, long ago, hearing a Library of Congress folk music anthology of Wade Ward playing a few tunes ... it just came back to my mind - magic ...

Howard

Texasbanjo - Posted - 01/16/2010:  13:39:20

Some people sing and play "from the heart" and are fantastic, others just play and sing by rote and sometimes are very boring, although technically correct. There's just nothing that can beat that "soul" feeling in music.

eagleisland - Posted - 01/16/2010:  13:42:39

Couldn't agree more, Howseth. Great technique is great technique - but music is an emotional form of communication. If the player doesn't understand how to move people - if the singer doesn't become part of the song - then all your left with is a sequence of perfectly played notes.

And that ain't music.

pernicketylad - Posted - 01/16/2010:  13:47:09

I think music must have heart but it's not enough on its own. A painter needs colours on his pallette......you need a certain amount of technique to express yourself with heart.
Just my two cents.

timberliner - Posted - 01/16/2010:  14:32:36

I have seen this many times too guys and I just always called banjo players that did this "method players" for lack of a better description. They have outstanding technique and know a tremendous amount of banjo. However, many times they have just decent tone and sometimes in a couple of cases I have seen, no drive. They do not put anything into their playing. No heart, no feel, no soul. Kinda like Bill Emerson said on the Jimmy Martin DVD, they run through it like a typewriter lol.

n5odj - Posted - 01/16/2010:  15:42:38

I won't mention any names, but her initials are RS & she used to be on Hee Haw. That's how I feel about her banjo playing. Technically correct, but her music just has no soul. Boring.

Robert in the hills of Tennessee

mrbook - Posted - 01/16/2010:  16:55:05

There are a lot of hot pickers today who play a lot of notes, but my own music is more influenced by the record collection I put together 30-40 years ago. Maybe I'm just old, though, and those recordings bring me back to a time when it was all new and exciting, when each group sounded a little different. There are good players in every era, but I've never been impressed by technique alone - although I love the people who use that technique to make good music.

Don Borchelt - Posted - 01/16/2010:  17:03:41

Robert wrote: "I won't mention any names, but her initials are RS & she used to be on Hee Haw. That's how I feel about her banjo playing. Technically correct, but her music just has no soul. Boring."

I don't know about that, but she has had a hard life, just the same. I kinda like this one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xac...ture=related


Check out my webpage.

Edited by - Don Borchelt on 01/16/2010 17:06:57

Cornflake - Posted - 01/16/2010:  18:28:23

Interesting you mentioned Billie Holliday. I've often wondered what's the big deal with BH because she didn't seem to have much of a voice or range. I bought a Billie Holliday-Lester Young album recently and listened to it several times. Each time both artists seem to get more and more interesting to my ears. It seems BH could take just about any song and make it moving. Her voice IS thin and underdeveloped, like a young girl's, but she sure uses it well! I could listen to her phrasing all day long.

Cornflake - Posted - 01/16/2010:  18:36:58

Also, I think your comment about soulless virtuosity applies to a some modern bluegrass bands. Technically they're perfect, but all that perfection leaves me cold. I don't remember Lester Flatt doing anything more technical than his G-run, yet his performance with Flatt and Scruggs will always be wonderful.

mike gregory - Posted - 01/16/2010:  19:07:58

Louis Armstrong had a vocal delivery that no Singing Coach would ever deliberately try to get a student to develop, but when he sang a happy song, it made us happy; and when he sang a sad song, it made us sad.

That's not perfection- that's magic.

figmo59 - Posted - 01/17/2010:  04:20:52

this is a great thread! ive been tring hard to find my personal (soul) ive been praticing tecneek,but am juuuust starting to (feel) the music from within me. thanks

Banjophobic - Posted - 01/17/2010:  09:47:00

The old saying covers it all: "It's not how many notes you play, but what you say with them that matters most."

minstrelmike - Posted - 01/19/2010:  12:44:35

If you notice, we all use pretty much the same words to write here but some folks say a lot more than others.

Hemingway used a much more limited vocabulary in his writing than the academics who wrote about him did.

Too many people focus on learning banjo technique without first learning how to just -play- music. They figure first they will develop a complete vocabulary and then worry about what they are actually saying with it. Copying Hemingway will help you analyze and understand -what- Earnest wrote, but it won't tell you what -you- want to say.