What make a great musician?

[Kenneth Palmer]

You can have two individuals, with similar musical technical ability, play the same exact notes on a guitar and receive completely different reaction from the audience. You can also have musicians who train day in and day out and become extremely good at technically manipulating their instrument but when you hear them play, they hardly evoke any emotional reaction in the audience. On the other hand, you have the other kind of musicians, who may either be technically good or not, but their delivery always triggers a palpable emotional reaction in their audience. So what is the element that makes the difference?

[Chris Alpiar]

for guitar, its all about facial expressions! :D

[Kenneth Palmer]

For real?

Chris Alpiar said:

for guitar, its all about facial expressions! :D

[Bob Morabito]

Hi Kenneth-

I believe its the ability to be inside of, and actually be part of the music, as opposed to being outside of it, and simply performing or playing the notes..

A kind of merging and being one with the music, and letting it play you...

Bob Morabito

[Kenneth Palmer]

Sounds right to me------- THANKS!!

Bob Morabito said:

Hi Kenneth-

I believe its the ability to be inside of, and actually be part of the music, as opposed to being outside of it, and simply performing or playing the notes..

A kind of merging and being one with the music, and letting it play you...

Bob Morabito

[Adrian Allan]

For me it means complete technical mastery plus interpretive genius.

[Kenneth Palmer]

Perhaps knowing greatness in a musician is directly dependent on each one's innate sense of musicality. I use to believe most people don't know squat about music they just know whether they like it or don't. Iv'e since come to believe that people generally know great when they hear it. On the other hand, too often people listen with their eyes instead of their ears and so it goes.

[Adam Weldon]

I definitely subscribe to Bobs comment as I've had that feeling many times when performing. Hard to describe, but it feels like you're not actually you doing it, more like your channelling energy or a force. Sort of an auto-pilot sensation where your normal characteristics and mannerisms have been put in a limbo or trance-like state allowing this connection to happen. I think it has alot to do with the intent of the musician, their state of mind and also how the piece affects them. A very interesting subject!

[Kenneth Palmer]

My experience performing is usually one of figuratively disappearing. All thought stops and I am totally enveloped in a world of sound. For me when the thinking stops the music starts------

Adam Weldon said:

I definitely subscribe to Bobs comment as I've had that feeling many times when performing. Hard to describe, but it feels like you're not actually you doing it, more like your channelling energy or a force. Sort of an auto-pilot sensation where your normal characteristics and mannerisms have been put in a limbo or trance-like state allowing this connection to happen. I think it has alot to do with the intent of the musician, their state of mind and also how the piece affects them. A very interesting subject!

[Simon Godden]

Imagination is a vital component.

[Kenneth Palmer]

Perhaps additionally, I think it's possible that people amassed in an audience will, if only to a minor extent, ( OFTEN TO A MAJOR EXTENT)succumb to "mob behavior," thereby occasionally (or habitually) cheering a performance which has no great virtue over another one. THANKS THOMAS!!

Thomas Green said:

It's a good question.

You could superficially address it by posing a hypothesis.

If we imagine a blind test, using only a recording (no live performance), if one was generally found to be the preferred performance, then we would have to conclude that there is something different about the way the preferred one is played.

Alternatively, if we did the same test and our results were that there was generally no great preference, and yet we knew that in a live performance one of the performers was preferred, then we would have to conclude it had something to do with their stage presence.

From this little thought experiment, it seems that the pivotal factors are the subtleties of the delivery and/or the performer's stage presence.

Perhaps additionally, I think it's possible that people amassed in an audience will, if only to a minor extent, succumb to "mob behavior," thereby occasionally (or habitually) cheering a performance which has no great virtue over another one.

[Aaron Marshall]

It's personality and feeling. You can have a brain surgeon who is extremely smart and skilled, but to talk to him at a party he might be a complete buffoon. A performance is a suave interaction with the audience. You make each of them feel like the individual that they are. Just because you can play 64th notes doesn't mean you have anything interesting to say or have had life experiences that translates to others. You have to feel it. You can be at any technical level, but you have to feel. I think that's how the audience judges the performance. There are droves of technically competent musicians. The ones that can actually feel are few and far between.

[Andrew Gleibman]

Thomas, music is not athletics, and I think the comparison with tennis is not relevant. Tennis playerst do not EXPRESS, they simply play with the passion and aim of winning. Examples of genius performances with the EXPRESSION of deep feelings: Van Cliburn at 1st Concert by Tchaikovsky, Bella Davidovich at 1st concert by Chopin, Sofronitsky at Scriabin.

After listening their records (I did this dozens of times) I feel that the majority of other performances of this music are simply tennis playing, although technically they are very good and almost as versatile as a computer...
Thomas Green said:

Aaron Marshall said:
"You can be at any technical level, but you have to feel."

In addition to what Chris said, I'd add that I cannot remember seeing a performer utilising extremely good technique and not "feeling" what they are doing.

It certainly works the other way around - that is, you can have someone with limited technique perform beautifully. A good performance might be constituted by all sorts of things, not just technique.

But I don't know about having excellent technique and not performing with "feeling," beauty, power and all the rest of it... because these things precede technical development: If you're not a beautiful performer, in all likelihood you're not going to have the staying power (or the opportunity) to develop a good technique in the first place... that is, people who are technically versatile have already proven themselves at lower rungs of the ladder. Put it this way: how many champion tennis players are there who are entirely without passion when they play?