Musicians are emotionally flawed? ...

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scunny

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Just thought I'd throw this up here as a change of pace...

I remember reading a book a while back in which a doctor suggested all musicians are emotionally flawed - he claimed he could not listen to Moonlight Sonata without being moved to tears every time, yet a pianist would have to practice and hear the music a hundred times to learn to play it.

How many of you beleive it is true that to learn to play & understand music is to become de-sensitised to its emotive power?

(kind of like how knowing a magicians' secrets changes your enjoyment of a magic show into a critique on technical skills rather than wonderment at a spectacle)

It is an interesting paradox if it is so, as the people with the power to create the music will never hear it in the same way as the majority of it's audience?!?!?
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sneakyjapan said:
define flaw.

Don't want to get caught up in the detail as is quite a broad issue, but I s'pose I mean this...

"A condition or change that indicates a non-normal condition in a part. A flaw is not necessarily a defect since only flaws that are unacceptable are defects."

A difference in appreciation rather than a disadvantage per se

Am interested to hear people's own experiences of whether they feel becoming a musician has altered their emotional response to music... do they feel, as a musician, they can ever appreciate music in the same way as a non-musician?
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What a crock of *****..!!!
So Paul Kossoff sounds emotionally retarded when he solo's?
He's one of the most emotive players I've ever heard...a role model for myself and thousands of others on how to express oneself via the guitar.
Gary Rossington and the other guys from Lynyrd Skynyrd?
Jeff Beck?
Eric Clapton...Tears in heaven is an emotionally bereft tune?
Hundreds of thousands of people weep to this day when they hear that song...and to shoot down the cold,robotlike musician theory, Clapton himself still sheds a tear when he performs that song.
Bah Humbug says I..!!!!! :evil:
 
I may not be the guitarist I want to be (I suspect I never will be), but playing music has enhanced my appreciation, not diminished it. Even though I have a reasonable understanding of how B.B.King plays, that doesn't mean I can sound like him. But it does mean that I appreciate how hard it is to get that degree of feeling and emotion from playing just a few notes. B.B. has certainly moved me to tears a few times when I have seen him, especially on his farewell tour of the UK last year. I managed to catch him twice, & it was tough knowing that I'll probably never see him play live again.

Maybe the original comments referred to classical musicians? It has always struck me as a bit clinical the way they have to learn everything note for note, whereas those of us who don't read music have no choice but to put a bit more of ourselves into what we play.

I expect I'll now get shot down in flames by any classical players on here!

Mike
 
playing music has enhanced my appreciation, not diminished it. Even though I have a reasonable understanding of how B.B.King plays, that doesn't mean I can sound like him. But it does mean that I appreciate how hard it is to get that degree of feeling and emotion from playing just a few notes.

Playing music no doubt provides an enhanced appreciation of musicianship... but who beleives a musician can also enjoy the naiive (magical) experience of music once they have learned the tricks of the trade?

I agree B.B.King is a master of emotive guitar playing. As are the other players cited above. The question is not whether tears in heaven is emotionally charged - it obviously is ... but when Clapton (or any other guitar player) listens to say, Free Bird by Lynard Skynard, is he capable of being moved with the same power as a non-musician ... or is pure musical appreciation marred by a conciousness of, or preoccupation with, the musicianship?
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Hmmmmm!.
When you don't know anything about how music is made I do think you have a different angle on it.
All I have to do after years of playing is listen to a song and I know what chords are being used and all the tricks of the trade that are being used so it does become boring especially if the song isn't great.
But if I knew nothing about how music was made maybe the song would sound new to me.
Just look at the crap that become hits.
I can pick the chord changes and crappy melody out instantly when I pick up a guitar.
With stuff like Oasis and U2 and the crap that's around now like Greenday , even Britney Spears etc I can just about shout the chords out as the song is playing when I'm hearing it for the first time probably because it just sounds like remanufactured stuff from other songs.
I remember back to before I started playing and I think I did have a more emotional response to it and that's why I started playing but now the song or playing has got to be pretty special to get much of a emotional response from me.
I have written a few songs and when I play them they can still make me respond emotionally but not always.
Even though I know exactly how my songs are contructed they can still get me sometimes as do some of my solos, sometimes I'm amazed at stuff I play and I can't explain why I played the solo that way but I don't feel that way often.
When I hear solos or songs from my favourite players or songwriters I can still get emotionally involved with them even though I know the chords and can play them.
Even now when I hear the start to Sweet Home Alabama or Smoke on the Water they do still hook me in even though I know how to play them and have heard them a million times.
And out of all the Death Metal that I've heard and I've heard a fair bit I'd be hard pressed to remember any riffs because they all have the same boring chromatic riffs and guitar solos and most of the bands are a clone of the other one and the singers have that Cookie Monster thing going on.
The solos don't bounce off the main melody like they did in the past usually with a blues touch because there is no friggin melody so the guitar solo just sounds like a generic insert this solo here routine so I don't respond emotionally to it because it's musically dumb.
I don't think there is a complete answer to your question.
 
Ok...now it's probably MY turn to get shot down in flames but here goes:
One of my all time favorite bands is Journey.
Neil Schon is a brilliant guitarist and despite knowing how to play their songs...solos and all,I still get moved by the lyrics and sentiment behind songs like Faithfully.
A song about the toll that being a touring muso has taken on a relationship.
My marriage of 24 years ended due in no small part to my wife being fed up with being a band widow.
So I can relate VERY well to the lyrics and emotion of the song.
"They say that the road aint no place to start affairs,
Right down the line it's been you and me,
Lovin' a music man aint always what it's s'posed to be,
Oh girl if you stand by me...I'm forever yours....Faithfully"
When you're going through emotional turmoil and upheaval I believe we find comfort in music whether we can play it or not.........nuff said....blurted too much already :cry:
 
A non musician would probably not pick up on songs that have other bits of songs in them and would be less cynical or jaded.
I saw Ozzy Osbournes I don't want to stop or something like that the other day and I'm listening to the chorus and I'm thinking somethings familiar about that and then I remember.
A part of the chorus is from part of the verse of the Kinks You've Really Got Me.
But then again Black Night by Deep Purples main riff is used in 2 previous songs (one by Ricky Nelson) and it's still a great riff when I hear Blackmore do it.
So knowing how music is put together doesn't always mean that your emotionally distanced from it.
When I started trying to play some Django and Barney Kessel stuff it made me more aware of how great they were and when I listen to Bach or Beethoven I am in awe sometimes of how great they were and I can play some Bach pieces pretty badly on classical guitar.
I think my long winded answer would be if the music has something special about it then it doesn't matter how many times you've heard it or if you can play it and understand it's harmonic content it's still going to result in an emotional response.
 
10-4 good buddy i hear ya now let's move this Convoy on outta here......Over and out
 
My view is this.

Stuff the quacks. I worked in the British NHS for 6 years and half of the quacks don't know s*@t from clay. They have about as much common sense as Britney Spears with a hangover behind the wheel of a Ferrari .

Here's a tip. Next time you see a quack, ask the tosser to wash his hands before he touches you and watch his face ignite :lol:
 
oldflame said:
Next time you see a quack, ask the tosser to wash his hands before he touches you and watch his face ignite :lol:

Are you sure that's wise? I make it a policy not to p*ss off anybody who may be about to insert a needle into me....

Mike
 
No mate, you have to empower yourself with the same disciplines that they are supposed to be following. Statistically, Doctors are the worst offenders when it comes to spreading germs around. Why do you think there is so much MRSA in UK hospitals? The hospitals will say it's come from an outside source for example OAP nursing homes. Fair enough, but they should be trying to stop it spreading in their own establishment. If you are seriously going into hospital then ask to see the infection control nurse for your ward. Have a chat with them and they will tell you what standards should be met by all staff treating you.

Drug errors are another big cause for concern but I wont go into that one.

Here's a good read:

http://www.wegenersgranulomatosis.net/Hospital-Stay%20Alive.html

I done lots of research on this. It's common knowledge that 'clinical mistakes' are the third biggest killer after heart disease and cancer. Go look it up.

Good luck!
 
Right you are, oldflame (I've always wanted to say that - it's so stiff-upper British :wink: )

Years ago as a reporter I wrote a series on two local oncologists who accidentally overdosed one of their cancer patients with seven (7) times the amount of prescribed chemotherapy (extremely toxic stuff) over a few weeks, discovered their error (oops!) and then tried to cover it up WITHOUT TELLING THE PATIENT (who proceeded to die in excruciating agony - he was burned alive internally, basically.) The whole mess would have gone unreported had not the same patient's radiologist forced the two oncologists to tell their patient that they had given him a toxic dose of chemo. He also ratted them out to the local hospital board.

He had to, because he was unwittingly giving the patient radiation therapy DURING THE SAME TIME that the other two quacks were frying him with chemo. He was as legally liable as they were. Of course the radiologist didn't know what the two bozos were doing to his patient until he noticed that his patient's skin had turned bright orange (from the chemo overdose) and was deathly ill. All the while, the two quacks, who were hoping their little boo-boo would go unnoticed, did not tell the radiologist, even though THEY KNEW that the radiologist was beaming the poor schmuck with tons of nuclear radiation (which of course intensified the damage from the chemo). They were, apparently, hoping the patient would be a decent fellow and die quietly.

I thought (silly me) that the two docs would lose their licenses to practice, but they were just disciplined by the New Mexico State Medical Board for a few weeks and told not to do it again. Meanwhile, the radiologist who told the hospital board what happened was run out of town by his physician peers (you just can't rat out the noble profession - bad behavior) and is now practicing in another state.

During the weeks before the public hearing (which was, not surprisingly, packed with the two doctors' supporters and faithful patients) I received the usual rabid phone calls that I was trying to destroy the careers of two great men, you *?@&^! muckraker, etc. During the hearing, one of the offending docs even complained to me "I just can't understand why he (the radiologist who had the decency to blow the whistle) would want to do this to me." Yes, that's right, he was being victimized. :eek:

Of course it never crossed his mind that his patient was a little more inconvenienced than he was. What amazed me even further was that the poor victim's sister never even filed a lawsuit against the docs. "Oh, I don't want to be vengeful," she told me.

So we have the same nonsense over here, I'm afraid. The two oncologists are still practicing today and making buckets of cash. In fact one of the local hospital vice presidents told me privately that they were very concerned that my coverage would force the quacks to leave town, because cancer specialists are hard to attract and keep happy in our rural part of New Mexico.

But I sleep well at night :wink: - can't say the same about them.
 
japanstrat said:
With stuff like Oasis and U2 and the crap that's around now like Greenday , even Britney Spears etc I can just about shout the chords out as the song is playing when I'm hearing it for the first time probably because it just sounds like remanufactured stuff from other songs.

That's just personal musical taste, though... you could say the same about plenty of music from the 60s and 50s that was drawing on the popular dance band songs of earlier eras. It all goes back to music hall!


adrian
 
oldflame said:
Why do you think there is so much MRSA in UK hospitals?

Well, part of it is because the Daily Mail and Daily Express insist on using Chemsol stats for their articles :wink:

Dr Malyszewicz has a bad reputation.


adrian
 
Ozeshin said:
So Paul Kossoff sounds emotionally retarded when he solo's?

Eric Clapton...Tears in heaven is an emotionally bereft tune?

He didn't say that, though... he said emotionally *flawed*. That suggests a difference, not an absence or a restriction. And it may be true, or it may be false... at least we're happy when we play :)

I've heard suggestions that a lot of very good musicians have varying levels of mild autism, which could explain the superhuman concentration and singlemindedness required to become *really* good on an instrument. Leaving aside the dubious issue of "natural gift", people like Guthrie Govan or Shawn Lane got where they are by dedicated practice, but how? Just how do you get that motivated? I certainly haven't found the answer ;)

As for whether an increased familiarity with music spoils the naive enjoyment for a musician, I don't think that's the case. You just discover deeper levels. It's like fractals... as one mystery is solved, more develop.


adrian
 
I've heard suggestions that in fact ALL MEN are somewhere on the autistic spectrum!!!
I use this fact on occaision to explain away my faux pas...

...I should add - when I say something inappropriate to/about/in front of my wife :)
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