Hendrix for Guitar Players

[Robert****]

Jimi didn't know any music theory - he just played from the heart. He had SOUL, man!

I know what you are after, but it's really difficult to theoretically analyze Hendrix and make any practical sense out of it. His style, soul, persona, mojo, whatever you call it, is quite "un-duplicate-able" (don't think that's a real word ).

I am not aware of any "Hendrix Playing Analysis" type of publications, but I haven't looked that hard either.

[rcwilk]

Robert,

You are probably right about the unduplicability - but (waxing philosophically) I think if the brain can hear it or see it, then it has to be representable, even if we don't have the expertise to represent it.

Following Kant here, so really waxing on ancient concepts... where we first grasp something by getting a sense of its proportions - how big it is compared to a tree, a mountain, a drum, a clanging church bell, a brush against the hair, a punch in the gut.... then we have to be able to reproduce it in our minds, so we hold it up to our concepts and get an understanding of it. If we can't measure that thing (starry night, unfolding storm at sea) then there is only one concept, infinity and the experience is called 'sublime.' If it is measurable, and we can reproduce it, but there isn't a concept that it adheres to, then it is what we call 'beauty' or purposeful purposelessness since it hasn't a category and just cycle around pleasantly without one, seeming like it could find one, but never doing so.

Certainly Hendrix falls into all three of these conditions - sometimes being so "large" that one can't really measure of grasp it, and so finding itself sublime. Other times one grasps it, but as you say, on a non-verbal level - and in this sense is more like Kant's idea of beauty, where it moves us, but we can't speak it.

Still, I hold out hope that after repeated listening and analysis, and perhaps after physically repeating the notes until on takes them on as one's own, some analysis can fall out.

I did read that either Hendrix or one of his entourage said about his music (oh I recall, it was miles davis about hendrix and music in general) that the important thing is not what you hear. Again this harps back to the Kant and the Romantics view of things, which I happen to like in terms of explanations, but it doesn't get me very good analysis. (and that is just my bias of loving analysis as a form of improvisation - I see Hendrix music as often being an 'analysis' of all the music that influences him.)

Interesting anyway we look at it...

RC

[Robert****]

The emotion present when Hendrix improvised, that's what's hard to duplicate. It's not about which notes he played. It's about how he played them.

Michael Landau is like a modern Hendrix. Check out his playing here. Great solo.

[rcwilk]

Very nice. I can definitely see the hendrix in his playing, both in the heard and unheard - not just the quick licks and playing against his own sound, but the improvisational interlacing that (i think) contributes to the unspoken spaces. Thanks for Landau, I hadn't heard him before and will have to explore more of his work.

This is making me think that a "Hendrix Analysis" party is needed, were the group picks a particular piece and works it to death, ha ha. Well, not this weekend, I have to head up to Sacramento for the jazz festival. Not my cup of tea, but they have lots of blues bands as well. I like jazz for maybe one or two pieces, then, I guess like a very rich pie, I am filled.

RC

[ToddK]

Hendrix knew plenty about music threory. Sure maybe he didnt know the proper terminology, but trust me, that guy knew exactly what he was doing
harmonically, and intervallically. Just cause he couldnt write it down doesnt mean he doesnt understand it.

Paco de Lucia, Wes Montgomery, i could go on and on, same phenomenon. They "knew"...

[Robert****]

That's not what I meant Todd.

[rcwilk]

Philosophically, that is an interesting area - of theory as practice. That is, I would posit that my theoretical knowledge of songs increases as I learn the song, even when I "murder" it, which, if I were hauled into court each time that happened with my playing, I would have several life sentences by now.

Humility aside, I have to say I know something that I didn't know before I learned (learned de notes) Jimi's Red House.
And the other day when I started learning Come On (Let the Good Times Roll) I was able to hear in the lead, so much that was familiar, or as some might say, so much that is also in Red House. In a way that is kind of like learning theory, in that I learned something that I was later able to represent (in my mind) and hold up to something else for comparison, and say, oh, I see (on an abstract level) what is going on (in the sense that I saw repetition).

ON a larger theoretical scale, I would say that the repetitions I heard (in Jimi's playing, not in the notes) were not like mechanical repetitions, but rather, (philosophy-poetry here) more like Deleuze's view of repetition of difference.

What?

Yes, like Monet's water lilies, or like the Carnival that repeats each year, each repetition is not of the same, but of some internal difference that repeats itself in creative ways. Or each time Purple Haze is played well.

OK, that may be a bit poetic to be philosophy, but I think Whitehead gets at the same thing (if you are into mathematics and prehensions) in that each process in the universe is like a mind-body, or an awareness-position, or more simply, a feeling. And this process or perspective can repeat itself in the same way, or produce creative variations. Thankfully, the molecular structure of my guitar is mostly the first kind, repeating itself in such as way that it doesn't fly apart while I am playing. However, the process of playing improvisationally, or even playing the song the same while understanding the essential thing about the song that makes it alive, demonstrates the latter, or the process retaining something of an identity yet finding novel ways of expressing itself. (If we can talk about a song expressing itself ).

My point being, that as we enter into the process (learn a song) or to the degree we enter into the process and "get it", then we are being theoretical, in that we can apply the concept (the song) to other things, concepts, songs, or in a more deeply theoretical stance, deepening the concept itself (playing the song better than the original writer/player).

Or heck, we can just play the song to someone and hope they love us, a sneaky application guitar players have learned over the centuries. ha ha.

RC