What Does "Playing from the Heart" Actually Mean?

Talk to people very long about how to write a good song and you will surely hear the phrase "You just need to play from your heart". A phrase that has been repeated so many times that it's now a cliche. What does that even really mean? Why is it important? And how exactly are you supposed to do it? And if it's so easy and self evident, why do so many people have such a hard time doing it?

How can we define "playing from the heart"? When most people describe playing from the heart it sounds like they are describing the perceived level of sincerity of the artist and his message, musically, lyrically, both or otherwise. The word "sincere" is defined as "lack of deceit, hypocrisy, or falseness; earnest" or"pure; unmixed; unadulterated" or "genuine". So we can say when an artist is being sincere, the artist is actually feeling or it is perceived that he or she is actually feeling the emotions conveyed in his song (much like an actor). When an artist isn't really feeling the music he or she is writing, then he or she is no longer playing from the heart. I think this sincerity can also be described as"keeping it real".

So now that we have a working definition of what "playing from the heart" is... how do we do it? And how do we know that when we do it, people will still like it? Is all music that is "real" and "genuine" necessarily good music? To do that you must define what "good music" actually is. And that can only be done on a case by case basis because it is so subjective. And from there you must determine how much of the "good music" is being sincere. This is starting to get complicated, if not impossible.

Perhaps instead we can start to figure out how to be sincere then. I guess the simplest definition of this would be to make sure you feel or mean every note that you play or write. Ok that sounds simple enough. So why doesn't everybody just make sure they feel what they play? Perhaps it is difficult for people to understand what they're feeling, and then find something equivalent musically to represent it. Well what could you do to improve your ability to capture those feelings? (For a detailed explanation of this read my ASR theory article) You could do exercises that involve taking what's in your head and bringing it into the real world. You would want as little as possible standing in your way from getting those feelings into tangible notes. So you'd have to make sure you know the "language of music" well enough to communicate your message. Otherwise, it'd be like trying to write anovel or give a speech without first knowing how to communicate in the language. A great speech won't sound rehearsed, it'll sound like the speaker is making it up as they go along delivering the message straight to you. This would first most likely involve ear training. Knowing your notes back and forth and up and down so that when you hear something in your head you automatically know what it is and can quantify that into the real world. Be that on paper, in your voice, or on your instrument. Going along with this you'd also want to practice improvisation at the same time so that you could get your fears and inhibitions out of the way from letting your thoughts come clearly to you. From there you would have a solid connection to the music in your head, and you could further your studies onto form, composition, specific techniques and then any area you wish from there.


Let's back up for a second and take this in reverse. So what would it be like to not be sincere when you are writing? It sounds like you could divide it two ways. Either don't know you aren't being sincere / don't know how to be, or you do know that you aren't and are still writing anyways. For the people who don't know or don't know how to be sincere...perhaps they are feeling a certain way but don't understand how to capture it,so they settled for something else that they didn't really like. Perhaps they aren't feeling the notes at all, but just putting learned patterns together in rational ways. Perhaps for some music is more of a puzzle, rather than an expression. Perhaps they are writing not for themselves but trying to write for what they think others will like. (this could also fall under the people who do know they aren't being sincere category as well)


For the people that do know they aren't being sincere but still do it, they must be writing for another reason besides expression. For example they are obligated by contract to produce music, even when they aren't feeling it. Perhaps they feel obligated to themselves or others to produce even when they don't want to. Or expression is just not important to them to begin with and music is just a means to an end. They are being reinforced to continue for other reasons such as money, women, fame etc.


So after going through all this trouble to try and be sincere, can we really be sure that it is truly even important to play from the heart? Do we really know how many artists achieve "success" by playing from the heart opposed to those who don't? We may never know. If we defined success by money, fame and fortune surely there have been many pop songs created that are not sincere that have made tons of money. And there are surely artists writing songs that are sincere that remain unknown and penniless. One can see now that there are so many reasons people write and perform music that artists that are playing for self expression purposes only is only a portion of overall music. And of that there's probably only a portion of that who are truly expressing themselves to their full potential. So are we now just left with a bag of opinions?

I think now we are left at a crossroads. We must decide what are goals are musically. And also how we would define sucess. If your goal is to express yourself clearly and success would be to write songs that carry what you need to say, then playing from the heart is most likely in your best interests to achieve your goals. Fame and fortune may be a by product of this if other people like it, but if not at least you met your goals. If your goal is to write music for other people or things like film, playing from your heart may not be in your best interests, because you must convey what other people want, not what you truly believe in.

So the next time you hear someone say "Just play from the heart", respond with "how exactly do I do that?" or "Why should I do that". See what they say. Then send them a link to this article.

The Evolution of Alternative Music

Found this awesome picture the other day. I think it pretty much sums it up, but I don't like how they are implying that bush was a watered down Nirvana or trying to rip them off, I always thought their vibe was going in a much different direction. Either way, enjoy!

Songs That Sound Like Other Songs Part 2: Hey There Delilah & Dancing Through Sunday

When that Plain White T's song "Hey There Delilah" came out I couldn't help but feel I'd heard the chorus melody somewhere before. This one took me a while to figure out but the "Ooh it's what you do to me" line sounds pretty similar to the melody "Oooh we dance in misery. . . " chorus part in A.F.I.'s "Dancing Through Sunday". Even though the rest of each artist's respective songs really don't sound anything like each other, I thought I'd post it anyways since it's such a dominant hook in each song.

Here's Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah"



And Here's AFI's "Dancing Through Sunday"


Check them for yourself. . .

Compositional Techniques: Attack Sustain Release (ASR) Theory

Over the course of the past few years I've been trying to improve my ability to write "good" music, or at least music that I personally find impressive, interesting and / or enjoyable. But I've been worried that I might hit my peak and at any moment I could start going down hill. Pretty much all artists seem to plateau or hit a point in their songwriting where it's not getting any better and most of the time they usually continue to get worse. When I've talked to people about why a certain artist is getting worse I just hear the same few phrases "Well, they're just getting older. . . " or "they're just losing their edge", or "they are just selling out, man / all they care about now is money". I've always thought there must be much more to it than that and there must be some sort of way to maintain your creative edge or at least prolong it. So I've come up with a compositional technique /theory that may help this out.

I find that my focus keeps coming back to three areas, and how they integrate with each other to push you further down the path of creativity. Developing a balance in each area seems to help you continue to progress in your creativity and avoid plateauing.


I've named this theory the Attack Sustain Release (ASR) Theory after the ADSR envelope used to describe how a given sound will change over time. For instance if you hit a note on the piano in an otherwise silent room suddenly the volume will increase from no sound(attack) the note's volume will then begin to decrease,(decay) then stay at a steady rate for another amount of time,(sustain) and finally decrease back to zero.(release)

I find this is most analagous to the way creativity works as well. Suddenly you have an idea that pops into your head from nowhere. (the attack) Then you begin to develop the idea, and begin to try to bring it into the real world by recording and / or just writing it down. (sustain) And then at some point the creativity will stop, and you will stop thinking about creating this idea and move on to something else. (release)

A weakness or imbalance in any of the three areas will affect the other two, and in turn your quality of music as a whole. It is therefore important to develop each area individually, and then try to integrate them together to achieve a balance.


ATTACK

The attack portion of your creativity is your ability to open up to and tune into that creative energy and let it flow through you without getting in it's way... basically your ability to improvise. "Improvisation is the Genesis of Composition". Becoming better at improvising will help you generate ideas that are better,faster and clearer and make them sound more "alive", "fluid" and emotional. You can develop this area by doing ear training, jamming and meditative style techniques involving stopping yourself from thinking. (I'd highly reccommend the book The Inner Game of Music for more information on that) It's all too easy to let your doubts and fears creep in and affect your playing. It is very important to "not think" as much as possible when developing this area, in order for you to be able to tune into your idea as strongly as possible. Currently this is my most overdeveloped area. I can improvise some really great stuff but when it comes to writing it down and fleshing out the idea I pretty much always get stuck.


SUSTAIN

The sustain is your technical ability to capture your initial idea, develop it and bring it into the real world. It uses a completely different part of the brain than improvising does. Developing this area would include doing things such as learning music theory, anaylyzing song structures,learning to be able to write down music that you hear accurately (on paper or computer) as well as being able to play music that already written, actually learning how to play your instrument well, and most importantly taking your own ideas and trying to develop them.

For many musicians it is this area that is the most out of balance. Trying to take a purely technical analytical approach to music is somewhat justified (because it is really the most objective area of music) but it is ultimately foolhardy. That part of the brain / mind cannot fully understand the improvisational / emotionaly aspects of the music, it can only observe them.


However, even though overdeveloping this area can be dangerous it is still vitally important to develop it for several reasons. One is that there will be less in your way of getting your original idea into the real world, you won't have to spend time and energy trying to figure out how to write it down or trying to figure out how to play it, you'll automatically know what to do and you'll have a decent roadmap of what your options are for the next step. The next reason is that you can manually force yourself to break out of the box. By analyzing what you normally do, you can pick up on patterns that you repeat often and avoid them. For example, I was listening to a lot of the ideas I had been coming up with recently and was trying to figure out what it was I didn't like about them. I began to realize I was tired of writing melodies that fit neatly on the downbeats and that I wanted to write melodies that came in on the 3rd beat and continued onwards past the ends of the measures. Sure enough when I looked at songs that I found had a "fresher" quality towards their vocal melodies, this is what they were doing. I find it is best to develop your Improvisational and technical abilities in conjunction with each other, at the same
time so that you get used to having to use both at the same time and having them work together, making sure that neither gets disproportionally further along than the other.


RELEASE

You may be asking yourself, "Why is this a category?". Release is a much more subtle factor in all of this but equally as important. While devloping your Attack and Sustain skills it is very easy to get stuck in a pattern where you are no longer enjoying yourself and you aren't progressing. Sometimes you can become too close to a situation and no longer see things from the proper perspective, other times you can become frustrated or uninspired which will also cloud your creativity. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just completely walk away from it and forget about it. Otherwise you can get burnt out, leaving you uninspired and increasingly miserable. And once that happens you may not want to return to that situation again.

For instance, I was once working on a song and I didn't quite know what I wanted but I was frustrated and determined to come up with something. I worked on a chorus part for it for nearly 2 and half hours before I became completely frustrated and quit. I have not been
able to return to the song since (which has been almost 2 years now) because of all the pressure and trauma I created. I no longer have any desire to work on it, and I no longer remember what my original intent for the song even is anymore.


Another example would be John Lennon. As the Beatles became more popular John started to
become more and more frustrated and burnt out and began to lose sight of why he was a musician to begin with. After they broke up he found himself at home out of the spotlight
raising his family without writing for nearly 5 years. When he began writing again he found that without all the pressure and obligations he was free to write when he wanted and because he wanted to. He was able to write an entire album in a few days. He said it was like writing during the period before the Beatles were popular, he was free to write whatever he wanted and it didn't matter if he failed or not, he was out of the spotlight.


Developing your ability to release or let go is very important in order to stay fresh. You can develop this area by going for walks, meditation techniques or simply "getting out" and
enjoying life and taking a break. On the other end of the spectrum you can overdevelop this
area and become too complacent in your songwriting. This seems to happen as musicians get
older and or famous. Some musicians as they become older and / or famous they just want to take it easy and have a good time. This is important but if you don't continue to challenge yourself you will begin to become predictable and just use the same old bag of tricks.


THE BIG PICTURE - HOW THINGS BECOME UNBALANCED

If you think about what an artist is doing during the time when they are considered to be writing at their peak I think you'll find that they are automatically doing ASR. When an artist is up and coming, usually they are still learning new material, they are writing and perfecting their technical abilities, and writing without pressure. They don't feel like they have to write or top themselves, and they are living in the real world and putting that back into the music. After artists become successful and / or just older the ASR can begin to go out of balance. Artists begin to overdevelop one area or overcompensate for a lack in another.


The attack can become stale because you aren't inspired because all your problems are taken care of, or perhaps the pressure of having to write things when you aren't really inspired starts getting to you, and causing you to put out mediocre material to fufill a contract. Or perhaps you've written so much material you are now finding it difficult to find something new to say. A lot of people who are are more naturally talented seem to find it dificult to recover when they hit a dry spell in regards to their attack, because they've never had to think about what they were doing and they've just taken it for granted. It's just "always been there". They may find it more difficult to anaylyze what they are doing and become succeptable to accidently overdeveloping another area. For example, an artist could write several great songs or albums and not think anything of it. To them they just "wrote themselves", they just came about naturally by the way the artist was living their life. But then one day the songs aren't writing themselves they might think back and say "well how did I do that?". And what tends to happen is one of two things they start using their sustain / technical skills to try to figure them out and construct new ones, and start overdeveloping it and not realizing it. Or the artist may continue to try to keep doing what they were doing thinking well "whatever popped in my head before was good, so now I'll just keep doing the same thing because that must be right as well"... not realizing other factors in their life that were probably inspiring them along.


The sustain can become affected because as you get older you tend to stop learning new things. You are more inclined to keep things the way they are, after all your bag of tricks has gotten you this far, why stop now? Has Eric Clapton or Kirk Hammet been sitting around learning new solo tricks and techniques and been practicing new ways of composing them over riffs the past few decades? Probably not.

They've gotten to a point where they are good enough they probably only need to play a bit
just to keep their skills where they are at. Life can get in the way as well. As you get older you may choose to get married or raise a family and that takes a lot of time and effort. Usually both of those things have a huge impact on your outlook on life, ephasizing stability and consistency over spontanaity and creativity. No more highs and lows all the time. All the while your release is becoming overdeveloped. Sometimes with everyone giving you an opinion on your writing you begin to lose perspective, perhaps they are all telling you it's great and it's not.

Perhaps you know no matter what you write "it'll all be okay" and you just want to relax and enjoy yourself. It gets much easier to become complacent. You can feel like you don't want to "climb that mountain" anymore. Sometimes the way people write things when they were younger was stressful and arduous and you don't want to go back to that when you get older.