I apologize to anyone who was lured here by lust-provoking promises of a free guitar for to whoever writes the most thought-provoking treatise on intangibles. Greed is an intangible I understand.

Okay, let's start an INTANGIBLE PRS CONTEST POSTERS HERE!!!! thread. We can bump it up if it gets too close the bottom of the page, and the mutants...uh, "posters" who are publically baring the depths of their souls in hopes of saying something profound enough to scarf up the PRS SE 1 can post there without bothering the normal...uh, "regular" posters.

Good idea?

G04IT...

Let's dial down the snottitude just a smidge here! I don't like repeating myself!

My guitar playing improved noticeably when my age advanced and my eyesight lessened to the point where my guitar’s fretboard was out of focus when held in the normal position. Rather than do something radical – like wear glasses to see what the heck I was playing – I chose to shut my eyes and play.

So, for me, connecting with the intangibles is an “open and shut” case.

Shut your eyes and open your ears to what your bandmates are playing.
Shut out the light of certainty for the openness of discovery.
Shut out self-consciousness and open a new confidence.
Shut out doubt and open trust.
Shut up and open your heart.

Aw Reif, I was just a'funnin' with the Tree Huggers. I didn't stab one of 'em or nuthin'. You gotta admit this whole thing could have been handled better by the powers-that-publish...

Paul, I was actually just joking around. I really wasn't reflecting on your essay with my immature word salad.

Just that we have all seen this Intangible thread repeated over and over. We are a forum, we have been together for years now--many of us. So of course after 3 or 4 of those we start to just be minorly irked that someone would think we cared to discuss it further.

Personally, I am aware of the zone. It can happen in sports, video games, music. It is just the chemistry of the moment.

That's the part that seems tired all the time

I know that, cuz I know you well enough. He doesn't

I finally saw the article... it was an idea by the editors of the mag... Check out the article.

Is there an online version of the GP article? I couldn't find it on the GP magazine website...

Which month?

...are now being merged with this thread . All rant posts on this subject will be deleted.

I think the best quality in pursuing music is honesty, and if I can fake that, I'll have it all. \:D

Seriously, honesty in pursuing your sound, your note choices, your chords, lyrics (or not having lyrics), rhythms, etc. You have to be honest with yourself and honest towards the music. For instance, playing in a genre or with a tone based on a calculation that it will make you more popular is cynical and not honest towards the music.

Accessing that honesty within yourself requires shedding a lot of layers of insecurity and ego.

Music has never been about math. I suck at learning songs “note for note”.

When I hear something that hits me on an emotional level, I try to cop the feel, tone or vibe of what I hear.
The emotion is the key. Figuring out why I reacted to it, and how to interpret the emotion in my own voice. I think that may take a lifetime.

Many artists have cracked open a door into the vocabulary of playing expressively. Just a few…

Jeff Beck’s primal, aggressively melodic and delicately beautiful music is great. The soulful fire in Santana’s music, to hear the smiles and tears in his playing, that is inspiration. There’s huge joy in the Edward Van Halen's playing. He’s a lion tamer and high wire act, and he seems to be as surprised as we are with what he pulls from his guitar.

It’s the feel, the sounds and tones that that can be pulled from some wire and wood. Communicating with others, whether with words, art, or music is hardwired into all of us. And, on a primal, subconscious level, the things we all feel in our hearts.

We are isolated in our heads. Through art we connect to one another. On a level that can be honest in a way words can’t. Music allows us the opportunity to let people into our hearts and heads. Communicate how we feel and perceive the world at that moment. That is what motivates me.

I am strongly drawn to the effervescent energy in the music of Greg Koch. The existential urgency of his tone poems give form to a Jungian archetypal gestalt in an emotionally charged primordial matrix of nearly Brobdingnagian proportions, engaging both psyche and physique, thus facilitating tangible and intangible experiential catharses.

Plus, he doesn't take anything too seriously. Waaaaay kew-ul, dude.

We're talking intangibles here, we don't have to make sense.

Hey! No trying to win!

Hey guy,
I havent subscribed to GP for years. My first issue was with the Santana article, which floored me. Then I noticed the guitar contest. Would I have registered and wrote my peice on 'intangibles' had there not been a chance of winning a guitar? Probably not just due to time constraints. However looking around the site and seeing all the git players opining is kind of fun.
Greed?..naw..just having fun.

Picker in my opinion you just won this contest. That is one of the smartest sounding paragraphs I have ever heard..

Translate this to a young kid looking for inspiration!

Intangibles are difficult to nail down. Things I have direct control over like which guitar I choose, tone, volume, tempo, and even which band mates I choose to play with are all tangible. The players are tangible but by in large what they do is intangible. This is where the subconscious starts to come into play because when all the tangibles are in place then the door is open for me to take that leap of faith like Indiana Jones and step out of my conscious comfort zone and let go of all the baggage like rent money, tone, and especially ego. This is when my playing elevates to more of a spiritual level. I'm not trying to impress anybody to satisfy my ego, which is a conscious self important fulfillment. I'm trying to express myself from the heart, to say something meaningful. At the spiritual level I consciously take that leap of faith, but all the magic happens on the other side. Like my subconscious says, "go ahead, let go". When this happens my band mates will say, "where they hell did you go man, that was awesome".

The mysteries I dip into to make this happen is what I call my tool box or spice rack. Practicing and listening adds to the spice rack. When I play from the heart I grab stuff off the rack without thinking or planning ahead, it just happens. Playing from the heart is what it's all about. It's not about a pre-planned solo or riff or trying to impress anybody. It's about trying to get to that spiritual level where you just let things flow out. It's like being hypnotized by the music. Like you're in the music, part of it, not a bystander walking around it, but immersed in it. How deep you go all depends on how much your heart will let go. It's like falling in love, it makes you vulnerable, you're exposing you soul, your inner most thoughts and feelings and you don't care what people think.

Despite being firmly in the novice/intermdiate category,there have been times when my playing transcended what I thought was my meager best. By necessity most of my playing is trying to reproduce the music I like, and trying not to concentrate on the bad notes, the failures to sound like the "perfect" recording playing in my head.

But there are times when I let go of preconceptions and just think of sounds and feel, the intangibles. If the conditions are right a cycle starts, originating somewhere within. Something starts flowing out through fingers, through strings and wood, tubes, speakers, and out into the air. Then back through my ears and returning to the origin. I that returning sound carries feeling the cycle is completed and the loop is closed.

I just try to let that energy flow through the loop. If the loop gets broken it is usually due to thinking too much. "What comes next? Should a bridge go here? What key is this? Where are my car keys?" Almost any extraneous can break the cycle, throwing me out of the zone.

I live for the times I find that zone. These are the times that pull me through the frustration, every time I hit a clam,or lose the beat.

Intangible is what describes our material world. The atoms that make our physical universe are not even pin points of light or material structures. When you inspect the atomic structure of an atom you will find that their is an electron cloud surrounding the nucleus so in reality, what we perceive as solid and real is an illusion created by the electrical charges of these atoms. Are life is literally a vapor or mist. Our entire world is a dream land or a hologram, but our minds are so powerful that it accepts what we see as truth.

Matter and energy are two forms of the same thing, but the difference between matter and energy are the frequencies or vibrations. Everything in this reality has a vibration like the notes on a guitar. The ego is deeply rooted in this world and will fight to the death to stay attached. It doesn't want you to realize that the spirit realm is not beyond the universe, but behind it. That is why it is imperative to let go of everything, because the pleasures and worries of this world are anchors.

When Christ Jesus said "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!" do you think he was referring to a magical castle in the sky with fairies and angels carrying harps (Interesting how many sacred beings are associated with stringed instruments, but that is another story) with a white bearded man sitting on a golden chair? Of course not. The place we want to go to is that Kingdom. It is more real than what we see everyday. Love is the highest frequency and that is what will take you to that Higher Place. Love is at the core of genius.

For me there is no mystery because I know where melodies, chords, and songs emanate from. I play from the heart, but this heart is eternal and not from this planet. Passion, raw emotions, soul, and heart. These are not physical, but more real than the guitar that interprets them.

Okay, I'm going to take a crack at this, and it ain't one of those sappy ones!

Over the years, I've been trying to understand why our heroes are better players then we are. I once thought it was their gear, I once thought it was drugs, and the answer that makes the most sense to me, is that there is no real answer. I must have re-written this 5 or times looking for the right answer, and alas, I realized there is no answer that can fully satisfy a question that intends to measure the abstract.

The quantity and variety of these answers stands as testament that there is no singular answer, nor will there ever be. So I can only say that these "intangibles", these surreal ideas that we wish to capture in order to elevate our playing, will never be truly comprehended as far as I'm concerned. All I can honestly say, is that there are those rare individuals who possess divine talents that can influence, change, and amaze people without having ever known them. That kind of power cannot be taught, it cannot be defined, and it cannot be inherited.

Intangibles to me, means that we as humans lack the capacity to understand something that we cannot touch or manipulate, yet at the same times is able to touch and manipulate us.

Where does are creativity come from? It's an age old question that has yet to be answered. All we can do is find ways to inspire our creativity by fueling our emotions, challenging our intellects, and being unafraid to experiment.
Our emotions are an important and often underrated point in our creative selves. Emotion gives us a reason to create music through the inspiration it provides. It creates a demand that we desire to fill - regardless of whether we do it for our own selfish benefit or for others.
But what good are emotions unless we know where to direct them? For thousands of years people have been creating music and, in that time, we've learned a little something about how best to write music. We have developed a complex, precise, profound, and wide-ranging theory on music. We use these concrete guidelines as the building blocks for all music because they have been mercilessly tested and proven from time immemorial.
Experimentation is the final key in creating music. Through experimentation, music progresses and evolves as one great myriad of beauty and truth. Musical groups like "Radiohead" and single artists like "Hendrix" have given us a glimpse of how music can progress and evolve in our time through frequent and extreme experimentation.
These three ingredients are key to creating music and, although this doesn't touch on why we're creative, it does show how we can improve our creativity and write beautiful music.

"What are the personal 'intangibles' that come into play as you develop melodies, riffs, and songs? What mysteries do you dip into to create your music? How do you define 'playing from the heart'?"

My philosophy on music is that there is nothing that can be said or expressed that can’t be said or expressed more truthfully through music. Music has dialect, tone, and phrasing, just like spoken language, and ideally can be a vehicle to reach the heights of euphoria and the depths of anguish. Music can be a portal to the divine.

When I work on my music it usually starts as a feeling that I want to express. Occasionally everything comes at once in a torrent that hits me like a spiritual experience, but most of the time it is not that easy for me. Most of the time it is like an itch at the back of my mind and I feel like I have to fight for each small piece of it, but by the end it feels very powerful to me; a mantra.

While the expression of emotion and experiences are the heart of music, technique is still important. Improving and expanding your technique is like expanding your vocabulary. A larger vocabulary, when used to express yourself, is a powerful tool. Sometimes technique can lend an eloquence to your music, as a larger vocabulary can lend eloquence to your speech, but using technique to impress is like using your vocabulary to impress - it becomes empty and pretentious. I believe the trick to it is learning what needs to be expressed with eloquence and what is more honestly expressed by simplicity.

Music is not about impressing everyone around you or even having them respect the music you create. It is about your personal relationship with the music, and if you are lucky, it will translate in a way that moves your audience (whoever they may be, your friends and family or a venue). Music is (or should be) poetry too powerful to be expressed with words, and that is how it should be approached; with honesty and openness. Life is instilled in your music only when you are willing to be receptive to your muse and your own heart.

I think this really gets to the heart of it, though I would actually disagree that it can't be taught or inherited. Not to say that you can go and take lessons on how to get metaphysical with your soloing or that some players don't inherently possess something special, but I think you can gain the experience through your own efforts as musicians and get closer and closer.

Steve Vai said a few months back (in GP, I believe) that he actually has had to work really hard to achieve his level of success with the guitar; it wasn't something that came naturally to him. Maybe he's just being humble, but considering his talent and the overt "other worldliness" of his general musical outlook, I think it is something you can develop.

The Steve Vai thing just made me think of something: I once read that one of his tracks on "Passion and Warfare" was inspired by music he heard in a dream he had.

And of course there's the famous Keith Richards story of how he came up with the riff to "Satisfaction" in the middle of the night when he was half-asleep.

Now there's an intangible if there ever was one....inspiration coming from a dream state. How often do find your dreams translating over into your playing? Are you ever dozing off when you're suddenly hit with a bolt of inspiration?

I think Steve owes some of his fame to his song-writing abilities. I don't think Steve was ever told explicitly told how a song should be written. Rather his songs were written through inspiration of some sort as you said.

I wasn't exactly saying that one can't learn how to make a guitar sound good, but rather, I was implying that the power to touch and inspire people (like how Hendrix did) can't be taught. In fact, I don't think any musician was ever saying, I'm going to be a really good musician so I can influence people to see things in a new light. Steve's music and abilities did that, that is an intangible in my book.

I'm an 18 year old self-professed guitar addict. I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, an expert on the subject of guitar, or a profound philosopher who can related psychological aspects of emotions to the playing of a musician. I know what I know, and feel what I feel from the experiences in the brief 18 years of my life, and the even briefer 3 years of playing.

Over those three years, the hormonal angst of a teenager pumped full of testosterone from family issues and high school drama pushed me into a world where I used my guitar as my emotional outlet. At first it started as just banging chords to Zeppelin songs as hard as I could through a practice amp. Eventually, I craved to use the guitar for more, because my emotions weren't limited to pubescent frustrations. After discovering Jeff Beck, I realized that feelings of love, heaviness, dissonance... every possible feeling that a person can feel can be emoted using this six-stringed wonderment, at which point, I let go of my hopes and dreams of being the next Hendrix or Page, and started focusing on the palate of emotional colours that were available to me with this paintbrush I called a guitar.

While GP magazine lead me to discover wonderful new musicians and techniques that would influence my playing heavily, it also made me develop something I regret; an addiction to gear in the pursuit of impossible tone. It got so bad, in fact, that I eventually spent more time researching gear and comparing different prices and products than actually playing. The guitar had stopped being a tool of expressiveness, and became an unreachable goal of perfection in sound quality. Music became less fun, the price of gear depressed me (being a broke-assed 16 year old) and I lost sight of what the instrument was. I had spent all my money on a Marshall 1974x reissue with NOS caps, my dream amp. I should've been thrilled. Heck, I was for about 5 days until I decided I needed a fuzz pedal, some reverb and echo. This obsessive compulsive desire to alter, improve, and mutilate my tone went on until very recently, when I read the words of Carlos Santana's interview in the latest GP mag.

I had never in my life felt more humbled. I was shocked that a player's spiritual philosophy would inspire me more than trying to copy his licks. It brought me right back down to earth and slapped me in the face with the reasons I play guitar; it's an extension of myself, a creative tool. It allows me to express my emotions without reservations, and in some small way, allows me to truly be myself. Although gear helps you, it's not the amps, pedals or guitars you use at the end of the day, it's what you're playing, how you're playing it, and whether it means something. Never in my life have I felt so satisfied with my gear than a one channel Marshall, 10' cable and Strat.

I don't claim to have a profound, mystical view for the guitar or music, but I do know this; with every bend, every bit of vibrato, every open chord plucked or power chord slammed, there's a reason behind it, there's an emotion or a sense of purpose. You can play burning hot shred licks sheerly for the enjoyment of playing or you can play a heartfelt melody that brings tears to your eyes because it's so meaningful or personal.

There's a bit of magic in the guitar, the technologies and tonal possibilities that extend beyond chromatics can make an infinite amount of sounds to fully express yourself. My rule of thumb has always been 'if you feel it, it's right'.


I play, therefor I feel.


Quoted from the topic 'Intangible Emotiveness'
http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/2004708/page/1#Post2004708