We all know what technique is: the ability to play more or less challenging musical material. Your fingers must be well trained, regarding independence, strenght, stamina and mobility (stretching). You have to be able to move fast and coordinated, with maximum accuracy. No shred of a doubt on this topic.

BUT...

How about you begin to ask yourself questions about a rather misty subject - that of "feeling". I mean, what in the name of Uncle Sam's undershorts is this mysterious ...[gulp]... "Feeling" anyway? What are the parameters of feeling? What defines it? How can you tell if a musician has... well... "feeling"? How can you improve your feeling and expressivity? Heck, as a matter of fact, is feeling that important?...

Now, I have a pretty clear picture in my mind about how feeling looks, sounds and, well... "feels" and about how important it is for a self-respecting musician, but I'm pretty curious what you guys think. WarriorOfMetal, I'm especially curious what YOU think, since last time we chatted, you were in... Berklee? Hope I remember that correctly, 'cause I'm too darn lazy to look up anything, this time of the year.

And now, amaze me!

i think its basically when your love of the music permeates out of the music itself in the form of highly melodic/emotional phrases.runs,bends
for example...
no-feel / feel
rusty cooley-no, jason becker/marty friedman- yes
most tremolo black metal-no, dick dale-yes
most malmsteen clones-no, YJM- yes

i hope that sort of clears it for you

Well I think feeling is being able to take something musical and express your emotions through it through something like improvization. I would classify a band like the Red Hot Chili Peppers as a band that plays with alot of feeling in there music because they don't just play stuff the way that it appears on the album they change alot of stuff up with improvisation and play it differently everytime as to not repeat themselves and to keep everything fresh. Also I believe that feeling has less to do with knowing all these scales and transpose them into different keys on the spot but to let the music take control of you and have it take you wherever it goes.

You can always catch feeling if you hear it... feeling is just meant to be felt... that's why music is more than just a sequence of perfectly executed notes... otherwise we would all be using computers to make our music so it can be perfect...

I think Jimi Hendrix is a good example of feeling.. Just listen to him.

Watch live videos of Steve Vai playing. It looks like he's fucking the guitar. He gets a sex face. That's feeling. (music. not sex)

lol well said Jerk haha. Well I define feeling as something that make one artist better than another. If one guy can play incredibly fast and complex guitar melodies but you can't seem to find the color in its play that means he hasn't mastered the part yet because feeling is acquired when you know a music part by heart and then you put all your love and confidence in this part and it gives something that is called feeling, well that's how I define it.

Guys, I appreciate you all trying to explain what you think. Thanks a lot. What could be better, 'though, is that you could be more specific in your description of feeling. I mean, from your descriptions, I kinda remember that most people told me some pretty naive stuff: that "feeling" is some mysterious, esoteric, "magical" thing, which some just... "have" and some don't... that it is some feature granted only to a chosen few and there's no way into that place where you can learn what feeling is... that, in order to have... "feeling", you have to keep your fingers crossed and hope that destiny, or god, or karma, or the Fairy-Godmother-Who-Sits-in-the-Sky will be generous with you... YEAH RIGHT!...

I think it's WRONG to see anything (including "feeling") as being "UNLEARNABLE". Everyting has a pattern to it and anything can be copied, pasted and ultimately modified at will. There is nothing that I've put my mind to that I couldn't accomplish - and I find it highly advisible for everybody out there to get yourself into this frame of mind (or a similar one) - if you want to accoplish anything of value, that is. The way I see (or hear) it, there are certain aspects of "feeling" which are... [gulp]... quite... "technical". What I'm trying to say is that, if you can watch closely and listen intently and get the hang of what the masters are doing (by masters I mean those guys who are... "blessed" with that "special sense of feeling"), then you can start to notice how there are specific reasons for their playing sounding the way it does. If you could see into the way they (the masters) do things and listen to their playing while you just focus on how you could discover what makes them so good, what could you tell me the next time you think about... "feeling"?

Paciently waiting for your new insights...

Well, feeling is...it's your heart playing the music, rather than your brain I suppose. Whenever you first learn a piece of music, you don't care about tempo, dynamics or anything like that except on a very basic level. You need to get the technical side of the music under your belt first. Then, once you've learnt the basics, you start to bring the speed up and paying attention to the artist's/sheet music's dynamics...louds/softs etc. But that's not 'feeling'. That's more or less sight-reading. Once you've learnt a piece, you can get into the habit of just playing it as an exercise, allowing your mind to drift. While that's good as a finger exercise, when you come to perform the piece, you need feeling. You need to take the basic formula laid down by the piece and actively THINK how you want it to sound. You need to add your own personal thoughts into the music, adding dynamics where you think they should go, slowing down certain parts, extending pauses etc. etc. Feeling is a technique as well, but its something you need to think about. For example, Glen Tipton's solo in Judas Priest's 'Beyond the Realms of Death' has feeling (and a half!), and playing that live you would want to think about what this solo represents. The song is about a person contemplating suicide and 'leaving the world behind', and this is an emotional solo. You want to get that through the music, perhaps hanging on to certain notes a little longer, slowing down a scale only to speed it up later, perhaps making the bends more aggressive and sharp...it's up to you; feeling is something YOU have to think about. To contrast, Herman Li's solo in 'Valley of the Damned' lacks feeling-it's very good technically, but it's just a bunch of notes loosely connected together, making it very shallow. That's my thoughts on feeling, anyway...;)

I think having feeling is important when you are a musician, otherwise you are boring...
Like you can get feeling that you want to display in music by being able to tell what scales and what notes you can play to create that emotion and I know alot of people that try to display emotion in their music, but they just dont know what to play or how to structure anything to where you can actually feel the music. If an artist doesnt have emotion he isn't a good musician. Technicality is appreciable, but feeling and emotion are half of what music actually is.

Take death for example, you can feel chuck emotions when he plays, and he is technically good, so he is excellent guitarist\musician. But people like Michaelangelo batio where he plays with a double necked guitar with hammerring is technically good, but IMO he has no feeling.

@silky: best answer so far, me thinks; anyway, any bright ideas about how to improve your capability to feel?
@Hellraizer: I kinda got what you were tryin'a say, but how about making it a bit more specific? just check out my last message (right above silky's) and try to think about that a bit; I'm very curious to what conclusions you might come after that.

Feeling is like "your own way to play music"
bassist use the concept "Groove" instead of feeling

@Ameretat,
In other words, technicality and feeling are two halves to a musician, they cant live without each other; you can be technical but without feeling you are boring, you can be really emotional but not know what notes or scales to play or what to play so the technical side of you isnt there making you an impotent musician.

Ok, I got that from your first post. But what exactly is it that makes up "feeling"? How do you have to play in order for others to recognize you as a musician who has... the feel, or the groove or whatever? What's the physical side of feeling? Modified tempo? Dynamics? Tone? Anything else?...

Yes yes, tempo: being able to know how fast to go with a certain amount of notes, like do you think chuck shulinders solos would be as good if he didnt keep pace with the band or played much slower?
Speed:Do you think a musician would be as good if he didnt know how to connect notes with arppegios (and differrent strings) and hammerring rather than playing on one string?

Also feeling is differrent to everyone else, feeling is also how the audience appeals to it. Otherwise I think everyone would listen to metal. But what a musician has to do to have that funk or groove is to

1. be into the music (a musician who hates his instrument will never progress), so its up to each musician to find his calling
2. and to find that calling, if you take the ammott brothers i.e. they are mainly melodic gothenburg but the brothers play mainly jazzy scales and the minor pentatonic scales which could represent what their musical character is. Karl sanders, he plays in middle eastern scales so that is obviously his character.
3. The physical side of being a musician is knowing music, theory, knowing differrent instruments, knowing how to represent his character by using his knowledge of music and scales to make his character.

Let's take 2 players and compare them.
Michael Angelo-Probably the fastest guitar player on earth. but no feel why? couse there is no "great melody" something that make you go "holy shit!' not from the technical point of view but the musical.
When you listn to Mendelsons Violin Concerto you just "feel" the sadness and you can really understand the hole thing.

Now as I mentioned before Michael angelo is the greatest from the techincal point of you BUT after 10 minutes of listning to him it all sounds the same boring crap.

Now let's take Marty Friedman- One of the greatest players the world have seen...He has so much feel the you can almost hear the guitar crying or on the other hand the guitar making you go 120 mph couse the song just blasting from you speakers and that what it makes you feel.

So as you can see the more the player can make you get emotional while listning to his music and the more he can let you understand what he felt\ment\wanted to proove or whatever with his track the more feel he has.

Take Jeff Loomis from nevermore He got some INSANE guitar solos there just shred the guitar but in the same time he has alot of feel in other solos sad melodies etc.

Shawn Lane is one of the greatest players as well and he manged to play technical music the gives out alot of feeling.,

and I can go on and on Zakk Wylde,Michael Romeo(Dont agree listen to accolade II),Greg Howe,Jhon Petrucci,Vinnie Moore,Steve Vai,And alot alot more.

So basically as you understand the more emotions the more feel you got.

Not you asked how to improove your feel.
1)Try playing slow and still expressing yourself making the track intersting
2)"Surprises" as I call it- When you play a slow melody and you break into an Insane arpeggio tapping lick or so.
3)Listn to alot calssical music and try to learn to licks and get ideas about the music.

I have posted some time ago on the "I recorded Something" thread one of my improvission tracks I thing I showed alot of neoclassical feel there and some asked about it I think.
Check it out and maybe my point will be a bit clearer

Written by [user id=4223] on 18.07.2006 at 11:34

Ok, I got that from your first post. But what exactly is it that makes up "feeling"? How do you have to play in order for others to recognize you as a musician who has... the feel, or the groove or whatever? What's the physical side of feeling? Modified tempo? Dynamics? Tone? Anything else?...

Man, there's not much a person can say to you to help you develop feeling. As a human, every musician has it. There's no formula to it, and there's no singular method to achieve it. You're trying too hard man. Let it come naturally, because that's what feeling is. It's natural. Just let everything go and play. Play till shivers come up your spine. That's my definition of feeling. Remember, the main part in feeling is feel. Everybody has that one song that just grabs them by the balls and doesn't let go. That's what feeling is, you know, people feel that.

To me feeling is the personal touch you give to any given song once you know it like the back of your hand. Even if it is a cover song you can still give it your own touch. The feel you get from a song is what you should be presenting whether in a live show or on a recording. When you can play a song without worrying about whehter you make mistakes or not is when I think you can start actually paying some attention to the feeling you put into playing that song. Once you get to the point when playing the notes comes as second nature, and when you can close your eyes and sway your head and just feel the emotion which the song is intended to convey. That's feeling baby...

I believe that "feeling" or "feel" is essentially not what you play, but rather how you play it. This involves things like note placement and accuracy (this could be a case of microseconds above or ahead of the beat), dynamics (including internal dynamics between voices for drummers) and general musical awareness. A lot of people stress that you "can't learn feel", and whilst I believe that to be true for some people, I think overall it is a myth.

Even the most simple thing can be played with feel - feel is not cramming as many 128th notes into the bar as possible whilst spinning your sticks or swinging the guitar around your head! That said, extremely fast and technical things can be played with (and without) feel. However, feel differs from technical proficiency - although your technique will most certainly affect your natural feel. Feel is also about good musical taste and also confidence.

Err this is sort of a ramble, but I hope you get the gist of what I'm trying to convey. I apologise for the number of "feel"s in there. Great thread by the way!

Here is a recording I made a while ago. I think there is quite alot of feel in it.
http://www.mytempdir.com/846763

Hey man, that is some awesome piece of music!

Have you got more?

i dont think it has anything to do with facial expressions or anything. reason being, the faster the guitarists get, the more people say they lack 'emotion'. and the slower you play, the more people say 'you are full of emotions' no paticular emotion(eg sad, happy etc).

for example, i went to this show where this guy was playing one of mozarts peice on the piano without being backup with any other instrument. and then it switched to the other guy playing the EXACT same thing on the guitar. when the piano was going, everyone was like 'whow what an incredible piece. its so sad and beautiful' and then the guitar came in and everyone was like 'the fuck? this guy needs some emtions man!' even though the guy on the guitar was playing the exact same thing with the same tempo and same everything



this was taken from some other forum. some guy named Grimlock posted this:

it is easier to make a slower solo sound more emotional because note selection means more at a slower pace which means the solo can sound anyway you like it to sound.

faster solos mean less because it is harder for our ears to latch on to the notes that give across certain sounds that our brains link to certain emotions (minor = sad, major = happy for example).

@Nervel: Yeah you can go to the topic "I recorded something" There is another track there.
Comments will be great!

I already have that one too!

I'm not sure if I commented there, though. I'll check it now.

Feeling... It's a lot of things. Part of feeling comes from the theory side of music - speaking as a guitarist, for me it's the scales I use and the time signature. There's "sad feeling", "happy feeling", that sort of thing.

But all in all, I think what's referred to as FEELING is when music conveys some sort of actual emotion. Well, besides angst. Emo makes me rather angry. It's like having my ears violated with barbed objects.

You're playing with feeling as long as you're not trying to show everyone how good you are at playing some instrument. That's how I see it. If you love playing,that's enough.

Feeling... love... music.... very related believe it or not... to make a band without feeling your music is like to getting married without actually loving your partner... Feeling is what makes an artist to create that kinda song or album that makes you feel powerfull... that shows you that teaches you new feelings or makes stronger the ones you already have... Metal music has a very reduced audience... but I CAN assure you that a true Burzum fan will really feel any Burzum song and enjoy it 100 times more than a techno or pop fan... Why? because most of mainstream artist focus on make hundreds of millions of dollars and cant actually feel their music flowing to their veins... meanwhile Varg Vikernes (the sole member of Burzum) sitting in his home letting his true feelings and passion and Ideals flow in his veins and body writing and composing the music that HE really wants to play for himself or for the ones that will apreciate his art and sometimes even take in consideration his ways of life and his points of view and ideas of anyrhing he wants to express.. Burzum is just an example to this.. but passion and feeling can only be seen when you are really into -you art- and you really FEEL it.
So, it's important? that depends... if you feel passion about your music.. if you do then it's more than important... it's just everything.. if you dont feel it then dont mind this post and keep doing music just for profit.
It's impossible to express that kinda thing by words... but maybe this could give you a little idea of it.

P.S: I apologize if a made some mistakes in my writing but My english is not perfect as I am from Venezuela and my main language is Spanish...

In my point of view feeling is how we are thinking.Everyone can show his unique feeling at his music because he was born special.Because music is actually what we believe and what our ideals/opinions/purposes are in life and you cant find and show me 2 people that are absolutely the same.

As for Michaelangelo Batio and guitarists that do nothing but shredding all the time,maybe it sometimes shows PoSeRism,but there are songs by Batio/Gilbert and all those guitarists that show those guys can have this feeling even on those fast runs(little though:/).

i think its a combination of things, spacial skills, (like being able to play with your eyes closed) but more has to do with beats and rythms, for example, when you tap your foot or nod your head to the music people would say your "feeling" the music, and you nod your head or tap your foot to the beat or rythm usually.

Well, in my point of view, the feeling is not the skill, for example, you can be an excellent drummer, but with a total lack of feeling, as the same, you can be a bad drummer but with a feeling that amaze you... The feeling is the way that you play, is the way to show the love that you have to the music, you can notice feeling in a person when you see that in normally, when he starts to play te instrument he looks like he was doped but it isn't like that.... tha is feeling... The best example of feeling in a musician are the jazz players... only notice how do they love the intruments and the music in their way of playing...