Voices of Passion (Muses please)

Some questions I hope you ponder (and share prognostications on) are:
 
1) What is heart-felt, in your opinion?
 
2) How might you detect the fake from the real?
 
3) What inspires your soul vox?
 
4) How oft do you detect the fake and real ... in yourself, in professionals, and/or other talents you encounter.

Rain


This is a great topic, Philip. Thanks for bringing it up. And BTW, I'm not much of a singer anymore. 

I'm actually wondering how I connect w/ music these days, and the importance "feeling" has. The rambling below sum that up, though I don't have a conclusion for you. It's just what's on my mind.

Authority, confidence, fun, that I can get. But "emotional connection" is something I have issues w/. Especially considering that, a lot of the time, when people think "heartfelt" and "feeling", they think of something at least very sad and intense. If not over the top and absolutely self conscious. 

Right now, I feel neither sad, neither happy - but I feel, nonetheless. Slightly irritated by the noise in the hallway. Hungry because I skipped breakfast. Amused when I look at the plush bat on the monitor. These types of feelings constitute the majority of our "feelings" - but there's nothing to brag about there, no matter if these are the vast majority and the most common of all feelings we experience. 

If a singer could convey that in a song, he'd get my attention, he'd probably really feel what he is singing, much more than say, Trent Reznor singing about his poor sorry ass in Hurt, no matter how good the song is.

That song wouldn't exist if the guy had a day job or went out for a 5 minutes walk. He probably just needed to grow up and get his head out of his butt for 5 minutes. Which he eventually did. And now his music is boring. :s

Authenticity and emotional delivery often seem poles apart to me. Unless you play the part, get into the feeling, and, as such, become an actor. But acting isn't feeling - it's blocking what you really feel under the actual circumstances to make room for something else that has nothing to do with the reality you're dealing w/. 

It's turning a nearly pathological state into a rule. The sad thing about the saddest events in our life is that we go on living and we learn to make room for the pain and live with it. The pathological pain eventually subdues. That's the real tragedy - we learn to cope w/ the unbearable, we run out of tears. I know of one song that tells about exactly that, by the french poet Leo Ferré - and it's the saddest song I've ever heard.

On a human scale, I don't see what the over the top tragedies and drama brings, not anymore. Clearly, these have been around for the longest time, and we still haven't learned to feel better, learned about ourselves. We still ignore 99% of what we feel because we're so busy impersonating the most pathological cases. We're still like a bunch of twelve years old girls who just broke up, sitting in the dark in our bedroom and listening to that same old painful song over and over and crying our hearts out, feeling sorry for ourselves.

As such, whether it's Kiss singing Rock'n'Roll All Night or Leonard Cohen singing Hallelujah, in the end, it's all more or less the same, notwithstanding the skills of the lyricist. As long as they aren't singing about Tom Sawyer or a Red Barchetta... ;) 

As far as writing lyrics and singing myself, the older I get, the more silly it would seem to me to write how I feel and to make a big fuss out of it. I've lost pretty much any sense of self-importance, so I guess I can't be a singer. ;)

I'd have to ask my wife. She's the singer - she's dynamite, and she "connects" w/ stuff. I'm just an old boring fart. 

I don't know. To me music is about fun. Enjoying music itself, enjoying the play. That's the only thing authentic - the feelings the song convey besides that are incidental, an excuse to make noise and get out of yourself. 

Danny Danzi

Hey Rain...deep post there brother. Totally respect where you're coming from too. You actually put me in a different place by reading your words....which was pretty cool I must say. :) Let me see if I can maybe let you see the other side like you have let me see your side.
 
Have you ever had something that affected you so much, you wrote a song about it? It doesn't necesserily have to be sad. Look at Van Halen for example...the old stuff before Hagar was always up beat, party like, some of the words made sense, some didn't...but none of those songs really struck me as "sad". VH was all about up beat and partying/enjoying what they do, ya know? It's feeling because they are living/writing the music.
 
But getting back to the feeling part. When I've written songs, the topics I chose were topics that I wanted to speak about in song differently than I would just come out and speak about said topics in a conversation with someone. Instead of voicing my anger with my voice, a driven guitar may do it for me. Or a string line that had something to say that literally made you feel something when you heard it. It doesn't need to be about being sad or angry or even happy. But whatever it is...you have to feel something....even if that something is just enjoyment.
 
Now all the above said, this seems to take on a different twist when you ARE the singer. You not only express musically, but with a melody and words to further drive your point home. If you're not a singer, I sincerely believe it's not the same. I wrote hundreds of songs in my life before I started singing and writing words. All those songs were "cool riffs" or "fun to play" or "wow, that's technical and cool" etc. I felt them, sure...but I didn't feel my songs until I wrote words and melodies behind them...and it took quite a few songs for me to get in the right frame of mind.
 
Songwriting and feeling that feeling you seem to be missing was like....hmmm...how can I explain this.....oooh, I know! This is terrible...but it's the best way I can tell it. LOL! I smoked weed back in the day...but when I first started smoking, it didn't do anything to me. For 3 years I smoked just to be cool with friends and it never did anything for me. One time...after 3 years, I literally got high...and man, it was something I'll never forget because AFTER that time, I got high all the time no matter how much or how little. Ah to be young again...lol...I miss those times. Hahaha! Anyway...my point in that...for some odd reason, it took time for me to get the effects of this drug everyone loved. Why? Because I think I was just going through the motions without really partying and enjoying myself. I did it to do it...because it was there...because the gang was doing it. Yeah, all the wrong reasons.
 
Enter writing...I did it to do it...it was there...ideas in my head that I just experimented with for fun. When I got serious about my writing with words and melodies, I started to live the material. When I lived the weed and partied with my friends to party instead of going through the motions...that's when I got high. So I think you might need to just look at your writing a bit differently. Writing music (unless it's instrumental with some sort of melody) doesn't give me the same effect. I don't get high off of it at all. It's just a fun riff even if someone else writes a melody and words...and it becomes a great song. It's not the same as the one you do all on your own. Nothing compares to that really.
 
For example, I did my own version of the Coffe House Band's "Countdown to Insanity". I had hoped the other guys would have played and sung on my version...but if they would have, that song wouldn't have the meaning it has for me now. Even though Ed, Phil and Steve wrote the song and came up with the initial ideas...me adding my own flair to it and performing it all gave it so much more meaning to me. I lived it. I'm a pop rock writer. In this song, I kept to my pop rock roots but I tried to add a bit of "insanity" to it...as much as a man like me can try to show "insanity". LOL! It wasn't easy...my voice is clean...insane means a little dirt under the nails..maybe a bit of dissonance....maybe some struggling on notes purposely because you're dying inside. I never screamed in my life on any song like I did on the one part of that one. And man...it hurt...BAD! I tried to add some of that in even though that's not the type of person I am nor is it the type of writer I am. But once I lived with the song, it just came out the way it came out and I was quite happy with it....even if I was the only one happy with it. LOL!!!
 
Sometimes we take a topic of a song and flair up the meaning. That's where your style comes in. The CHB went for a more demented version of the song. Neither is the wrong approach...they felt one way, I felt another. The outcome? Two really good versions of the same song ideas really. So maybe your feelings inside of your music are just different due to how you are living inside your songs...or maybe NOT living inside your songs. There is no right or wrong way to let out your feelings. This is why music is an art...the language of expression.
 
But I'd seriously try singing and writing your own words and melodies a bit more. Even if they suck and you just do a few ideas for your head. The more you do it, the more in touch you become. At least that's how it has always been for me. I can't just grasp something when I haven't done it a lot. Like I said...hundreds of songs that I never wrote words or melodies for. They were good...but I never "felt" them like the ones I did completely on my own. And, even at that...it took me a good 75 to 100 songs there to really start to feel what I was supposed to feel. :)
 
-Danny