The Enemy Within

Subject: The Enemy Within
From: Pied Piper
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 07:38 AM

" "soul" is simply the collected affects of glitches, errors, human inconsistancy and distraction"

The above quote from another Trad music site made me incandescent with rage yesterday but I've calmed down a bit now (I'm just fuming).
I can't believe that any musician that has played trad at sessions (or any music any ware) could so completely misunderstand the reality of musical performance.
Have the absolute-relativists, solipsists and strong AI myth disciples managed to corrupt some of us here in this wonderful little garden of regular, practical, and social music making.

Angry and sad

PP

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Pied Piper
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 07:48 AM

The concept is soul in music, not the religious idea.

PP

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: kendall
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 07:49 AM

Rage requires a lot of energy. Why waste it on idiots?

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: *daylia*
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 08:00 AM

Actually, rage turns people into complete idiots. Laughably ugly complete idiots. Keep it up and it eats'em up too.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Pied Piper
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 08:12 AM

Thankyou Mrs Cottontail.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Paul Burke
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 08:30 AM

You've been posting around, you naughty boy. What do YOU think a "soul" is then? Where do you think it comes from? You're not a.... creationist.... are you? Or does the idea that you aren't what you seem to be yourself send you crackers? Or is it the idea that someone could be so, uh, ill- mannered, as to examine it?

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Jeri
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 08:40 AM

Excuse me for looking at PP's post a sort of different way, as something to understand rather than bitch about. It's a stretch, but please indulge me.

For one thing the quote " "soul" is simply the collected affects of glitches, errors, human inconsistancy and distraction" is saying that all the straying from the 'proper' music is accidental, as opposed to a person understanding possible variations and feeling when to sing/play them.

Generally, people who can't understand creative adaptations have to call them mistakes or admit they just don't get it.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Pied Piper
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 09:23 AM

This thread is not about mind body problem it's about music

I don't believe in life after death or creationist bollox.

Thanks Jeri you seem to have understood the point.

I, and practically everybody I know can tell the difference between a pedestrian and a great performance and it has nothing to do with "accuracy" and everything to do with interpretation.

Clearly some people have never experienced the intensely in the moment aliveness of bringing music fully to life.
This is what the "Audience" wants and they know it when it happens.

PP

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Paul Burke
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 09:42 AM

Oh, that... however, it does have a great deal to do with mind/ body problems, and in particular where the material for a great interpretation comes from. For example, a great player can bollox things up, grab hold of that, rescue it from the flames and get back on track, and the punters (even the cognoscenti, the equals who make up the session) only hear a great new take on the tune.

Other times, you'll do that process in your head, in bed or on the bog, so only the polished result gets heard in public. And then as often as not you'll wonder why it didn't go as well as expected.

The thing to take issue with is "simply". Nothing simple about sessions.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Jeri
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 10:00 AM

Clarification: what I was being snarky about wasn't any one person, but the tendency to talk about anything other than the subject: tone of voice, words used, grammar, how offended one is by whatever, etc. Plus I'm off work and in a good mood. Now, to quit doing what I'm complaining about...

I think people who don't get it, whatever 'it' is are upset that someone else can comprehend or do something they can't and so they rant about it or simply dismiss it. It's one thing to be without a clue but cluelessness is best not advertised. It's like getting mad and calling someone "u iddeot!"

You can have fun with these guys if you have the patience; you can try to explain, but the train to Enlightenment has left the station and they've burnt their tickets in protest.

I agree with Paul's last post too. Some really great things happen when you make a 'mistake' and have to pull it out. You can say mistakes are the subconscious trying to be heard, but an awful lot of greatness comes from the unplanned and unexpected. It's just that the cognoscenti can recognize and take advantage of a good 'surprise'*.

*There should be a pleasant-sounding (probably non-English) word for a happy mistake. Is there one?

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Pied Piper
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 10:02 AM

I didn't say this has nothing to do with the mind body problem just that this thread is about the musical aspects of a grossly misleading statement.
He is not discussing what leads us to come up with an interpretation he's talking about how that comes over at the time.

PP

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Peace
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 10:03 AM

Ain't soul the thing that's kept on ice?

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Pied Piper
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 10:08 AM

Thanks to who ever cleaned up my post.

PP

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Jeri
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 10:12 AM

The key may be in the term 'human inconsistency'. This is someone that seems to think consistency (as in plodding repetitiveness) is desireable and any variation must be a mistake. It's likely s/he counts the raisins in every box. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: jeffp
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 10:22 AM

There should be a pleasant-sounding (probably non-English) word for a happy mistake. Is there one?

Would serendipity suffice?

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: *daylia*
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 10:23 AM

As a music teacher with almost 30 years experience, I know that the vast majority of 'divergences' during a student's performance are not due to personal creativity or stylistic interpretation but simple inaccuracy, poor technique and/or memory lapses. Confident, experienced performers with a passable understanding of the style of the piece can, occasionally, handle such performance glitches so creatively and smoothly that the "surprises" are refreshing and absolutely delightful to the audience.

BUt "soulful"?   Hmmm. The jury's still out on that one!

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: *daylia*
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 10:30 AM

ok, the jury just got back and yes, of course, anything musically and uniquely creative could be construed as "soulful".

Sheesh, what was I thinkin'?   :-)

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Jeri
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 11:23 AM

Ya gotta learn it well to know what to do with boo-boo's.

Jeffp, I thought of 'serendipity', but it's a state one finds one's self in. I'm looking for a word for the results - the actual serendipitous events. Like 'serendipitydoodah', 'serendippy', 'serendiddly' (fiddle tunes)... This isn't getting any better.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 12:02 PM

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 12:05 PM

There's a great tune in "Allan's Irish Fiddler" called The Happy mistake. For those who don't know it, it's a tremendous book, the first trad. tune book I ever bought.
Richard

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Jon W.
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 12:09 PM

This reminds me of a review of a technically brilliant but, dare I say, soulless pianist. The reviewer said of the concert "immaculate, but no conception."

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: frogprince
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 12:41 PM

During the Great Folk Scare, I kept stumbling on examples of a weird sub-phenomenom on television; the opera star, guesting on a talk show, who had to get in on the folk music scene. Vibrato that chipped your teeth... diction so forced it sounded like someone was about to dislocate their jaw....   Not lone ago I was reflecting on this with an avid opera fan. I told him that it was generally the most musically correct, totally soulless, singing imaginable.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Kaleea
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 07:53 PM

I once read my horrorscope, which warned me that some Virgo feller was bad news. "There's just no soul to that man," it stated.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Once Famous
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 08:52 PM

Seems to me soul music is from Detroit.

You know what means more to me in music than soul?

Heart.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Dec 05 - 04:12 PM

I agree, the liver and kidneys are virtually superfluous, and the spleen...

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Dec 05 - 04:28 PM

The spleen is frequently in evidence, however.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: *daylia*
Date: 10 Dec 05 - 10:37 AM

You know what means more to me in music than soul? Heart.

Ahhh .... this is so romantic .... but the Heart is quickly reduced to a lifeless hunk of meat without the Brain.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Amos
Date: 10 Dec 05 - 11:39 AM

I concur, PP; the writer obviously did not understand the magic of happy mistakes and the soul-sense that steers them. MG is just splitting hairs.

A

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 10 Dec 05 - 01:38 PM

I think the problem is this: anybody age 35 or younger has had little chance of hearing a song sung with expression. Listen to the pop music of today. There is a handful of styles, such as Male with a Sore Throat, Female who Sounds like a Sick Kitten. Everybody sings every syllable as loudly as possible. Melody is almost non-existent.

Unless a kid's family makes an effort to expose them to something else, this is what a modern person gets. I hear this in the voices of the younger singers in my church choir - they all sound like voices in the supermarket.

Last week I took my tenor recorder to church, hoping to shine a bit on "O Come, o come, Emmanuel." Give up. Our 28-year-old "star" soprano bellowed the song throughout, drowning out the recorder and ignoring everyone else in the choir. She has probably never heard anybody sing chant and had no idea that the rest of us were trying for a warm tone to express an ancient longing.

I went home and told my husband that she had sung "O Come, o come Emmanuel" from the smash hit "Chicago."

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: HuwG
Date: 11 Dec 05 - 06:00 AM

To leenia's list of pet peeves, may I add, "Boy band extra annoying" pitch and intonation.

People who start life speaking perfectly adequate Mancunian or whatever, go on stage with a guitar, and sing an ode to a "Mrs. Rabbinson", in a nasal style which reminds me of a 50cc motorcycle race.

What annoys me is that style is actually taught, and given as an ideal to be striven for. This is musical Macdonalds, or Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Once Famous
Date: 11 Dec 05 - 09:13 PM

Daylia, I am a hopeless romantic.

But actually, forget soul or heart. First you need ears.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Dec 05 - 01:42 AM

particularly if you wear glasses

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: M.Ted
Date: 12 Dec 05 - 03:41 PM

If it wasn't us insipid, soul-less, mechanical, mediocre musicians, the great ones wouldn't stand out--

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: GUEST,Billy
Date: 12 Dec 05 - 04:17 PM

I'm with you M.Ted.

Subject: RE: The Enemy Within
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 12:10 AM

Serendipialty! Or, just the Whiz-bang!