I've thought a lot about the meaning or essence of music and making music. My working theory for now is that listening to, playing and singing music is, at best, direct communication between the core selves (artist-listener). That is what is beautiful whit music, it's a direct channel to our souls, maybe. Somewhere I read that one characteristic of a "soulless" human is that they can't enjoy or "get" the music. Abstract, I'm not talking about you here, your writing just launched these thoughts here ;)abstract said:From my perspective, I haven't witnessed you doing any "music" yet! Perhaps you don't have the talent? Just the desire and you do what is easy: make nerve rattling, driving sounds that you call music? (Admittedly, a lot of other people call it "music" too, but consider the society that has made it a norm. I rest my case.)
At first, I considered this a sort of slap on the face...that was this morning. Now I'm going to consider it along the lines
of a challenge/invite. Would you all prefer some clean guitar? arpeggios, perhaps? Diatonic thirds? Would you all like something soft and soothing and comfortable to listen to? I would too, i believe i can finish in a day or so. :D
But wait, why stop there? Abstract has not typically done the softer stuff, maybe a whole album of it
would be cool. It's a different sort of avenue to explore, this might be kind of exciting! :)
Two years ago I wrote my thesis named "Communicating in singing in a performance situation" (unfortunately it's in Swedish) and interviewed some singers and their viewpoints as being an artist and listening to others. The main result I got, which maybe wasn't that groundbraking but interesting confirmation still, was that the communication worked best when the different emotions that the artist had during a piece of music where genuine. Artificial and copied mannerist "artistic interpretations" where by all interviewed perceived as not completely satisfying (that is not to say that those interviewed could always achieve genuine interpretations, but that was their ideal anyway). In many cases those interviewed couldn't' explain what exactly was "wrong" with a technically good but "ingenue" performance, many used the expression: "The chemistry between artist and listeners was missing".
And how to achieve that genuine interpretation? One of the "results" i reached in my research was that in the case of performing something already composed the most important things are:
- Good knowledge of the piece, style, composers intentions and the "world behind it" (lot of work!)
- Good technical mastery so that you can accomplish things in the way you want - in a natural way (even more work!)
- Good psychological health and knowledge of one self. Just trying to please others, trying to offer them some interpretation you think they want to hear will lead you astray and the public will feel this (although maybe not consciously knowing why).
Your MOTIVATIONS and REASONS of WHY you are singing/playing in a certain way (or at all) are important to acknowledge. The first thing I try to learn my singing pupils, especially those who are a little more experienced, is that mastery of the instrument starts with acknowledging your weaknesses (I can say this to myself concerning "esoteric" matters!), one must learn to see and shine a light on those non productive ways of producing sound. This can be very hard, since singing is a very personal matter and pointing out problems is often taken as an attack on ones whole personality. Real growth of the talent can start only when the illusions of one self and ones singing can be removed.
One of the books I used in my thesis and that I can recommend was called "Musical Communication" by Dorothy Miell and Raymond MacDonald. It has some nice graphs and models in it about how different elements effect the communication in music, but I'm not that sure anymore how useful they are.
_http://www.amazon.com/Musical-Communication-Dorothy-Miell/dp/0198529368
Whoops, seems I got carried away with my favourite subject :D What I'm trying to say abstract, that the idea of producing some music that will please the others, this being your main motivator to "change" your playing, could be worth reconsidering. I believe that most of us musicians start to play and sing because there's something inside us that wants to come out or that we want to communicate. If we are sincere and produce genuinely that which is inside us, those attracted to those particularly emotions/ideas, will feel satisfaction. But it could be worth considering which part of you or which "I" this "heavy metal" guitar music is representing, and is this the character in you that you want to enhance and communicate to others? And what types of people would this be attracting?