Young players

[I.D.10-t]

Young people can play most instruments very well if they apply themselves. There are many child prodigies that can really play technically perfect but I have never really listened to them. Usually it just doesn’t seem to have feeling. As mentioned on another thread some people can play or sing music with depth. Cisco Huston is probably not technically great, but I can sense that he feels the music and places experiences behind his tone. Young artists seem to have power and energy, but often seem without direction, lashing out without direction.

It frightens me that with today’s MTV videos (okay even that is getting old), that no one wants to see, and therefore hear, an old geezer. Look at the most popular music and you will find three week old CDs with teenager singers.

So my question, can young players really give music the depth that makes good music lasting?

[emmline]

My guess is that it's as rare to find a child musician who can give a piece real depth as it is to find a child actor who doesn't remind us of the kid who played the young Anakin Skywalker.

[dubhlinn]

Young players grow up to become old players

Slan,
D.

[SteveShaw]

Young players grow up to become old players

Slan,
D.

My sentiments too. How I wish I'd acquired the skills to play ITM when I was young. Who cares if I'd been crap for 20 years, as long as I eventually got myself well-steeped in the tradition (cliche there - sorry! ). And it would have been much easier had I been a whizz-kid on my instrument first - one less aspect to worry about!

Steve

[Joseph E. Smith]

So my question, can young players really give music the depth that makes good music lasting?

It depends on who the player is and where they come from (...influences etc...). I've known quite a few young players who have shown great deph of feeling behind their music... but then, their parents and other older members of their families and friends were/are musicians, and I am sure that mave have had a lot to do with it.

[chas]

That's a good question. I think that in some cases technically accomplished but emotionless young players become more technically accomplished, emotionless older players. Yoyo Ma comes to mind -- he's probably the most technically accomplished cellist around today, and he's an incredible interpreter of Baroque music and some other stuff, but IMO can't play Romantic music worth a damn. Glenn Gould was the same way -- the moment the music came to depend more heavily on interpretation than on execution, he was a fish out of water. (I know some will take issue with the idea that Baroque music doesn't take any feeling -- I'm not saying that at all, but the ratio of technical requirements to emotional requirements in solo playing is much higher in Baroque music than in Romantic music.)

Then, take someone like Ofra Harnoy or Midoori. Both very good technical players, actually Midoori is unbelievable, but they can just make me weep with the feeling they put into their music. I know Ofra was a soloist when she was about 14 or 15, and I saw Midoori when she was about 12. They both had "it" at a very early age, and I think they have something that can't be taught.

I think that playing with emotion is something that's more innate than technical skills, and therefore, much harder to pick up. Of course anyone who puts forth the effort to become a professional musician has a deep feeling for the music, but communicating that feeling is an entirely different thing.

[Cynth]

chas, I could well imagine someone not being able to play Romantic composers not because the music requires more emotional expressiveness in interpretation, but because those particular composers do not speak to that person. I have definitely listened to fewer composers from that category than from earlier ones. I have felt very emotionally affected by earlier music, I am thinking of Bach in particular. I think that the emotional depth and expression requirement could not be less for any kind of music. Certainly the style of expression is different, but I think the requirement is equal. It has been a very long time since I listened to Glenn Gould, but I recall being very disappointed by his playing when I listened to it long ago. It was something by Bach, but I have no idea what.

[Chiffed]

Gould interpreted Bach as if he were building a cathederal. The effect is structural, angular, strong, and graceful. It has the same immediacy of emotion as a stone, but the sum of many stones becomes an artful accomplishment.

Gould's playing speaks, not to my angst or love or lusts, but to the part of me that is marked with the handprint of God.



Or it could just be crap.

[dubhlinn]

.



Or it could just be crap.

Relatively speaking...


Slan,
D.

[LeeMarsh]

It seems any musician, technically proficient or not, plays what they feel. However, not all feelings are common to all tunes, nor felt with the depth by all players. The young play light, joy, prancing, and dancing with an energy that many geezers have lost. The 'vintage' player can play loss, regret, frustration, and resignation with the depth that only a lifetime produces. However, catch the younger player's release at the loss of his or her first love.... then you'll hear it, in slow air or even their most frantic jig. Perhaps, the main difference is the older generation has had time to master their feelings, and store them up and bring them out as the repetoire requires. While younger players have less skills managing their own emotions so we fail to see it when they are trying to dance at a wake.

Also each group has his own developmental tasks to accomplish as it passes from Childhood, to puberty, to young adult, to parent, and onward. If you look to youth, remember what you felt when young, what you yearned for. As a teen, I wanted power, not over others, but the power of standing on my own, to glory in the freedom to go and do as I pleased. I felt anger with what my elders had done with my world. I felt wonder at all of life's possiblilities. If we elders appraise a teen's play, we should listen for their emotions, and not the emotions dominant of our stage of life. As our numbers of days lengthen, so does the complexity and ambivalence of our emotional life. Each moment becomes more and more a mix of contradictory feelings. So we listen for that in the music, but simple joy, exhilaration of the race, or disappointment, may seem shallow to us. So the kid who plays like lightening in a bottle, or rage on wheels, may be tomorrow's respected geezer as life works out its destiny on the heart from which the music flows.

Just my thought on how the young and the old can ...

[Jack]

I used to be young, but now I am not. I used to play well but now I haven't played anything at all in many moons.

[Cynth]

Gould interpreted Bach as if he were building a cathederal. The effect is structural, angular, strong, and graceful. It has the same immediacy of emotion as a stone, but the sum of many stones becomes an artful accomplishment.

Gould's playing speaks, not to my angst or love or lusts, but to the part of me that is marked with the handprint of God.



Or it could just be crap.

I'm sure it is not that! It just didn't do anything for me.

[Cayden]

There are so many ways to get at this, young musicians are often looking to find a form, to let their energy out. At an early age people seem to be able to absorb a lot, we've all seen children able to play with technicial brilliance but no feeling whatsoever, just playing back what they've rehearsed. On the other hand I have encountered young (10-12) people who had the technique but als othe ability to amaze with musical insights just bubbling up in their minds. I strongly feel the latter is closely tied to the way music was aquired, in all case I encountered music was absorbed from the surroundings as aprt of a continuity stretching back generations.
(I am wondering here did my remarks in another thread, the future face of Irish music, prompt this discussion. I made a remark there prompted by something related to this, hearing the music there I thought of John Kelly's remark: 'this is all fine but where's the cry of the corncrake on the mountain?', where does this come from, what's it tied to, what experiences does this represent, where's the footprint of the players who handed it down. What I find in the playing of some young people I hear wasn't there, not in what I heard anyway.)


I also think Lee has a strong case, I remember playing in England with pipemaker Geoff Wooff during the late 80s, a young piper came up to us asking how we managed to play with such feeling and emotion. Stopping short of telling him what was going on in our heads at that time Geoff told him to wait, raise a few children, care for them, wipe their arses, bury a few loved ones, live life. That would do the trick. Fifteen years on that young man got what he wanted anyway, not something you can 'learn' or 'teach'.

[missy]

several thought come to mind......

I remember hearing someone say "You can't play the Blues unless you've lived the Blues"
And then, there's the Pinkard and Bowden song about "not being able to sing country if you've never stepped in cow sh*t behind the barn...."

I do think it's the rare youth who has enough life experience to FEEL the music and put that emotion into it. I grew up playing piano, and I was technically pretty good. But it wasn't until I was an adult, and really learned how to LISTEN to music, that I feel I became a good musician (and I'm not saying I'm that good of one now). For me, it comes from having the confidence that I know the technical stuff well enough to let my soul come through, instead of worrying about how I'm making the next notes, etc.

And - again - I think it's a rare youth that has that type of confidence.

I've also had the privilage of watch some great musicians "grow up". In most cases, it's also the journey of them "finding themselves" - knowing what they are good at and incorporating that in their work to make the songs their own, instead of playing as another would.

[I.D.10-t]

I am wondering here did my remarks in another thread, the future face of Irish music, prompt this discussion.

The whole thread made me think of it. Between Dale’s introduction and wombat and your comments, I started to think of modern music and ITM. ITM (and fife music for that matter) amazes me in the fact that in one room there will be children adults and teens all interacting with each other. In modern society it seems that people try to find any chance they can get to drive a wedge between people of different ages. I think that this interaction keeps the music lively.

Pop music on the other hand, Seems to be one dimensional and is not inclusive. Modern recording techniques and instruments have made it so that a performer can sound better with less talent. Add to this the age range that the industry looks for and you end up with a limited perspective (in both directions of the age spectrum) and average music. Do you think that Leadbelly would ever get a recording contract today?