grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
It was probably me that said it. I'm awkwardly logical that way.As to the thing somebody said up there about playing emotional solos without emotion at all, (sorry, I stopped reading after the first 10 or so posts...too many essays in this one)...I have written emotional solos that I like and have played live many, many times. After about 50 times or so, I DO start to do them without even thinking about it. No emotion involved, yet it still sounds like it.
I think far too much is made of "the emotional dimension" of singing and playing music. Sometimes a performance is packed with "emotion" and "feeling" and is "connected to the heart" and sometimes it ain't and sometimes it's part yes, part no. Sometimes audiences want a song that the performer can no longer stand. But they'll play it and have the audience purring like kittens. Sometimes the performer plays a song with lots of feeling and all their heart that the audience is bored shitless by. Also, there is more than one feeling and one emotion.
When it comes down to it no one can really tell what someone else is feeling while they play just by listening. We just like to kid ourselves that we do, rather like the way we "can tell" when a politician is being sincere or a lying scumbag.