I think that you’re right. But the real fun starts when the artist has great technique and can start to make it sound exactly as they want, basically “owning” it. I think that this concept holds in art in general, and some people just provide a vision that is amazing, and perhaps that’s what people mean by “feeling” (?). Even simple covers can have this property. Careless Whisper is a great piece of popular music (from George Michael), but this cover by Seether is really pretty awesome, they just took it and made their own song that is so different, and yet so similar.
I love watching MAB so much, but when I’m just listening, I can no longer tell that he’s playing cross-armed, etc., and much of the magic suddenly disappears… I love him because of his incomparable technical skill, not his interpretation of music.
There’s a lot more to “feel” than the presence of bends, and if you dont believe that, have I got some out of tune, sloppy, uncontrolled bends for you!!
I think there’s another closely related aspect to this too, though - for me, right or wrong, I think a lot of “feel” comes down to the interprettion of a peice and the various articulations/the guitarist’s touch on the guitar that comes across in the interpretation. But there’s absolutely a composition side of it too, I don’t know if I’d call that “feel,” exactly, but when you get to another variation, “soul,” I think you’re closer to the mark, and it absolutely has to do with musicality. A lot of the less interesting shred stuff I’ve heard, certainly from amateurs but occasionally from some pretty well known players, often musically can sound more like a technical exercise than it can a song. MAB gets a little close to that here based on the first thirty secnds or so of the video in te OP, which is probably ok because in context i suspect this IS a technical demonstration and not an example of a serious composition, but I’ve heard plenty of bedroom shredders write things that are…
…like, idunno, example that’s coming to mind here is a guy who keeps posting videos in this Mesa/Boogiue facebook group I’m in, where they’re all sweep arpeggio peices played with a TON of gain and low end so the whole thing is a sloppy mess (sloppy technique doesn’t help here either), but even if theuy were played with perfect accuracy, the “song” is always just a series of arpeggios, chord after chord played with the same basic sweep moving around a little bit, no harmonic movement within the peice or anything just a series of same “shape” arpeggios played over and over and over again, with every once in a while a pause to bend a note and strike a big Yngwie pose for the camera, etc. It’s not that there isn’t “feel” in the playing, although that would be a fair comment too perhaps, so much as there’s zero thought to melody and lyricism and tension/resolutionb in the writing; it’s just a technical exercise masquerading as a song.
So, when one of the “blues lawyer” crowd criticises a shred solo or song for lack of feel, sometimes they’re just turned off by the sheer number of notes being played, and while this is all subjective, I’d disagree with them because I think speed can be an incredibly useful texture in a compositional sense. But, sometimes it’s also because the solo, or song, or whatever, is just repetitive, and it sounds like a exercise that’s being driven by technique rather than a song, and IMO that’s a pretty fair critique, regardless of whether it’s a sweries of unending 32nd note alternate picked scale runs with little variety in note grouping, melodic contour or intervalic jumps, etc, or if it’s 8th note blues playing with little variety in note grouping, melodic contour, or intervallic jumps.
But, IMO, I think the compositional side of this (“is this a song, or is it being driven by some pattern on the fretboard?” is a different question than “is the guitarist executing this song with feeling?”
But seriously to be on-topic, the whole “playing with feeling” thing in my experience… 9 out of 10 times you’ll see it as a comment below a video of someone with insane chops, and it is meant as a dig against the person. It’s such a tired remark that it is basically a meme. I can’t take it seriously and cringe whenever I read it.
Shredding can have a ton of “feeling” and can convey aggression, anger, etc. I know Chris Impellitteri said a lot of his shredding was meant as a conduit for the anger he felt over losing his parents.
Ozzy has always had amazing guitarists in my opinion. The only one I ever heard criticised for playing without feeling was Gus G. Why? Anyone have any thoughts on this or how they feel when they listen to Randy or Jake?
@Drew I’m not saying that playing with feel means bending more, just an observation that most players that “blues lawyers” seem to imitate, or at least specific songs, seem to be heavy on bending. Just my personal observation, not a fact.
That being said, I always thought the “with feel” argument is dumb. IMO there’s playing that fits the music or it doesn’t. Plenty of shoegaze stuff is trem picking a few notes (which arguably a beginner could do within a few sessions) and can elicit all kinds of emotions, frisson. Same holds true with bands like Sunn that just hold out chords forever.
You are right. I think that Ozzy’s guitarists put every drop of their blood into making Ozzy’s individual song as good as possible; they exist to make Ozzy look glorious (or Shanon will surely smite them).
In contrast, when MAB was working the above cover of Cat Scratch Fever, he jammed in a totally inappropriate solo that was dripping with his incredible technical talent. I don’t think it was about the song, but the opposite: The song was a means to showcase his chops. Just because MAB can melt somebody’s face off doesn’t mean that he always should; the song might not want that.
I know this will sound condescending to some but I think if someone says something like “no feeling” or “where’s the feel?” then they lack the vocabulary or observational skills to be more articulate about their negative impression from the playing. The critique is never valid as the term is so undefined and subjective. They probably mean something like “this playing did not have an emotional impact on me.” And I think that may be because there wasn’t anything in the content of the playing that ‘accessed’ that sort of aesthetic-pleasure switch in their brain and ears, but I think it also can be because they get distracted by some other complex ego cycle related to the virtuosity.
Because as much as someone can mock John Cage’s 4’33" or think it’s a silly idea, seems I haven’t heard anybody say “that piece has no feel.”
Something I do think is valid and I wanted to point out:
I think the difference between different ‘levels’ of guitar playing abilitycan be codified or ranked in categories and such, but I think the difference between music connecting/communicating or not can not be codified and organized into some quantity of tangible variables. I think this is a different issue than simply personal taste varying from person to person, it’s more so that guitar playing can check all sorts of boxes of correctness for dynamics, tone, technique, even creativity, and I don’t think it necessarily means it will have that type of impact that separates good music from bad.
Not to be overly philosophical but I do think there’s a sort of other-worldly quality to certain music that by definition is impossible to parse out. Or more specifically, the relationship of certain music to certain ears, part of the reason why some music connects with some people so well.
So ‘there’s no feel’ could mean something really f***ing stupid like “that was really fast and kind of cool and I feel really bad about myself that I can’t play fast cool stuff like that, and I don’t want to sit with that feeling so I’m going to find something negative to say about this other player so I don’t have to feel inferior” or maybe it means “this music doesn’t make me feel the special good feelings I feel when I’m listening to playing I really enjoy, and I can’t articulate why, though I do recognize the skill required to perform this music.”
There’s certainly a lot of category A when people complain about music, especially very technique-forward music, lacking “feel.” I think Category B is a bit more valid, and I think you’re right that a lot of this is just lacking the vocabulary to express why something fails to connect emotionally, though I suppose in some instances it’s also just a shorthand - “I can exprss why this doesn’t connect with me emotionally, but it’s a pretty long and convoluted point to make and the upshot is the same, just that it doesn’t make me feel much of anything.” Which I guess is fair too, though sometimes the why is pretty helpful.
For me, I think, certainly with technical music but even with less technical stuff like slower sparser blues playing, I think it usually comes down to “does the technique serve the music, or does the music serve the technique?” IT doesn’t have to be blazingly fast for a solo to be very pattern driven and mechancial and even and, well, uneventful, and you certainly CAN do some very fast stuff that, used judiciously, keeps the listener on the edge of his seat.
The tune in the OP probably inst the greatest examnple becase even at full shred MAB isn’t really an egregious offender here, but to @kgk’s point this is pretty clearly a situation where the song was being used as a jumping off point to showcase a very technical solo rather than a solo being something that takes the song to another level - the song was kind of the plain white bread around the solo as the meat of the sandwich, rather than this being a well-crafted sandwich where the solo is just maybe a spicy dressing to take the sandwich up a notch and elevate the whole thing. So, given that from a compositional standpoint this isn’t really a scenario where the solo is trying to add something, it’s also a little hard to go and evaluate it in terms of “feel,” since it’s barely even a composition.
I think the key thing about this shorthand is that comparing the statements
“this doesn’t connect with me emotionally”
and
“this playing lacks feel”
I think the language in #1 acknowledges that there’s the signal (the music) and the receiver (the listener) and the comment is on a lack of connection and there is no blame or judgement. To me, #1 can be just as much something lacking with the listener as there is something lacking with the music.
In #2, all is shifted to the player/music.
Real simple example of this distinction is the difference between
Though, I do think there is music that on an absolute basis can lack feel, just as there are people who are on an absolute basis unattractive. It’s just, much like physical attraction, we probably overuse the second when we should be thinking about the first.
There is quite a big difference between playing the notes of a song, and actually playing a song.
There is such a thing as playing with feeling, but that’s not something that you can analyze or debate. You can only feel it. In your case, you clearly feel that MAB plays with feeling, in other words, you feel that the type of music MAB plays is emotionally expressive. Others might not share the same sentiment. And that’s fine, not every kind of music appeals to everyone. I can certainly understand why someone wouldn’t find MAB’s type of music emotionally expressive. Sometimes, guitar playing can become a demonstration of technical prowess, instead of music-making. We can become so obsessed with going fast and impressing everyone with our chops we end up forgetting that music goes beyond that.
A good way to know if someone is playing with feeling or not is: if they miss a note, does it sound good? Do you still want to listen to that musician? Do they still touch your soul?
Take Freddie Mercury and Live Aid. He wasn’t actually technically flawless in that concert, but who the hell notices that? Or Jimmy Page. Everyone talks about how he is a sloppy guitarist, but you never hear anyone saying about how he is an uninteresting one.
Didn’t read one response . If you like it, it has feeling. Art is purely subjective. Steve Vai’s opinion is absolutely no more valuable than Eric Cranston’s who lives at 133 General Way
I think it’s the same concept as text or words, you can use a lot but say very little, or use little and say a lot. Or you can use a lot and say a lot. It’s all about the context, and where the reader is personally.
Sometimes I go on a van Halen binge and it really speaks to me, other times I’m on a tears for fears binge and that speaks to me. It’s all about where I am and if I can vibe with the music.
I read about how some people can totally lose interest in music after certain bad illness etc, it’s got to be down to the chemicals in our brain either reacting or not. And our chemistry can change a lot. Thats why if you drink or smoke weed or whatever music can seem so much more powerful.
So in many ways I agree it’s subjective. But I also think there is a definitive aspect of music that is not subjective. For example the whole concept of tension and release. It is a landscape to transfer your message. I think some music is objectively good, and some bad. But just like morals, it can be stretched and warped depending on your personal baseline
