Perception of the word 'technique'

I've been thinking about this for a while - I just saw somebody write - 'technique is not as important as feel'.

I can see what this person meant, although the thing I've been wondering about is this - isn't feel a part of technique?

The reason I say this is that when you get feel, it's because you use techniques. A good feel doesn't happen just through magic - it's created by how you play your fingers on the strings. So in what way is this not technique?

An example is this - I was watching Ry Cooder play guitar, and I was watching what he did with his slide and how he struck the strings. While I was watching I was thinking, 'man those techniques would take a while to get to grips with'. But I'm sure that most people would describe this as 'feel' and specifically NOT as technique.

It seems like people tend to confuse technique with economy.

When I'm teaching, there are ways of teaching feel - and they're all techniques!

[Billnc]

Feel is a function of technique.

[fearceol]

While feel can be considered part of technique, as in how a bass feels in your hands, neck size, are the strings smooth (flats), ect. However, there is also a non physical side, IMO, i.e. "feeling", which is a completly different thing. It is said that blues is not good unless it is "played with feeling". If you dont have this "feeling", the music wont come across well, no matter wheather your technique is good or bad.

Could this be what the person quoted meant, in the OP's post ?

[Richard Lindsey]

I don't think feel is primarily technique--I think it's more the way in which you apply your technique, or perhaps one of the ends that your technique is meant to serve. Among other things, feel involves the details of note choice, note placement, and timing. These things are not primarily dependent on technique as it's generally understood. Technique is the tool you need to express or embody your feel, not the thing itself.

But perhaps that's just me. You could also make the argument that all the means of yielding a musical result, outside of gear, are a part of technique, which would mean that your sense of timing and your sense of what notes to play, to name two things, would be part of a broader conception of tehcnique. I don't know that I would make that argument, because that would seem to make technique so broad a concept as to be practically useless, but you could.

[BobaFret]

Originally Posted by Richard Lindsey

I don't think feel is primarily technique--I think it's more the way in which you apply your technique, or perhaps one of the ends that your technique is meant to serve. Among other things, feel involves the details of note choice, note placement, and timing. These things are not primarily dependent on technique as it's generally understood. Technique is the tool you need to express or embody your feel, not the thing itself.

But perhaps that's just me.

Pretty much the way I see it too but I think the "feel" part ( or note choice ) can be part of the actual mental technique you employ. The thing itself is music. The feel you put into producing it is technique IMO.

[mambo4]

As i posted in another thread, I view technique as a discipline of physically overcoming muscular habits and limitations that stifle our feel.

Really good technique ought to go unnoticed: you should only hear the music.

But that's just by my definition...

[JustOpenYourMind]

I'll take a guy in my band that can write a good song or come up with good parts for songs even if he doesn't have the perfect neck angle or the perfect way to play (but can still make his instrument sound good) before I take a bedroom player that has been practicing for ten years, can play lighting fast with with precision but can't play anything that isn't already written or just try and plug his ''licks'' without thinking if they suit the song or not.

To me the ''feel'' is playing music, you feel the interaction with the other players, you know when to play and when not to play, you play for the song.

Technique is only playing the instrument physicly it has nothing to do with being a musician.

Like I said, you can spend 10 years in your basement learning covers, playing them perfectly note for note, even the hardest songs and still not be a musician. Doing that only makes you a jukebox.

[PBass101]

Techinque is the concious effort to play cleanly and accurately.

Feeling is as much subconcious and it is concious and I don't know if it can be entirely described in words.

Technique alone is not musicality. Few people want to dance to somebody playing scales at blinding speed. It's cool to see but otherwise irrelevent. Playing music is as much about technique as it is feel, but the feeling is what makes it interesting for people to listen to.

And the best players do not have to constantly worry over whether they are playing with good technique - they practice and rehearse enough to know that they are.

So in the end, the most important thing that good musicians and listeners have to really be concerned with is the feel of the forward motion of the song.

[azureblue]

Theory came from studying music. What sounds good, why, and making rules from that.

Technique came from studying difficult passages and figuring out the best way to play them, then creating etudes to pay that would develop the chops to play that passage. A nice round about...

feel always comes before technique. Technique is nothing more than mechanics, and, as we all know, can sound awful if it has no feel. Feel is understanding the music itself and putting emotion into it.

[PJSShearer]

A Band leader I once worked for paid me a wonderul complement:

"You've got a good feel, Peter."

On my travels I've always thought of "feel" as musicality - knowing what to play and how to play it in a given situation. For instance, going from Free's "All right now " to Count Basie's "April in Paris" via Dawn's "Tie a Yellow ribbon 'round the Old Oak Tree" and "Moon River" (yes we do play waltzes!!), need totally different styles of playing or different "feel" as we used to say. Never mind the obvious differences in Volume or Tone, there's an almost indefinable something involved in playing different styles that you pick up by osmosis over time. If you've ever heard a "rock" Drummer trying to swing - or vice-versa - you'll know how important "feel" is.

As to technique, I submit that anyone with average dexterity can get there, you just have to put the time - and the scales - in. What you do with the chops you got when you've done that - that's down to "feel".