A kung fu fighter in a disco

Alas Lex is on a long-haul flight to Japan today - but yes it's an interesting question. My eyebrows raised slightly because I wonder if Lex would apply that judgement to anything other than vocal technique - no fan of the extended guitar solo he!

Soul is a bit of a weasel word because it's hard to agree on what it means, but technique is deceptively like that too. One reason soul and technique are seen as a binary is that people can easily define technique as 'all the bits of a singer they don't like' and assume the stuff they do respond to is soul. But most great soul singers have also had amazing technique, even if that technique hasn't involved Carey-esque range and control: I was listening to an Al Green song last night ("I Didn't Know") - it was about 7 minutes long, not much tune, but the way he used timing to build tension and keep your attention throughout was incredible.

So I'd agree that soul and technique are intertwined. Is "technique" in the Mariah sense primarily a means to convey emotion? I think yes that's the intention - whether it succeeds or not is down to the individual listener.

(One interesting argument I read is that the vocal feats of Whitney (and the post-Whitney school of soul technique) are quite Churchy, Gospelly - if God's given you this amazing voice you should use it to the max to praise him - so high-technique soul voices originate as literal "sonic cathedrals"! I dunno if I buy this exactly but it's an interesting angle.)

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Yeah that line doesn't really make any sense - "technique and soul are intertwined" may be true to an extent but using it as a defence in itself suggests the Lex doesn't believe in the concept of empty virtuosity, or is conveniently ignoring its existence.

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jauntyalan.livejournal.com

(lex is on hols of course)

i have a messy attitude to vocals. on the one hand i find it hard to admire technique and could care less about whether someone is a good/powerful/varied singer, on the other i am often put off music i would otherwise love by vocals and also like the voice as an instrument.

(lyrics i'm similarly messed up on. most time i'm not listening to them)

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Yes his using it as a defence doesn't work - technique COULD only 'triumph over soul' if the two were related surely.

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i think the point lex is making -- in ref the gospel side of the R&B tradition -- is fairly uncontroversial (though it's rather compressed there, and a bit obscured under his use of the word "soul"): within the gospel aesthetic, to unfold yr awesome technique in its virtuosity is to give appropriate thanks for it, to your maker who blessed you with it... in other words, the key emotion in gospel being religious, your revelling in it in itsd fullness is precisely appropriate

this is an aesthetic very sharply at odds with rock's come-as-you-are vocal aesthetic -- which derives primarily from dylan's refiguring of folk styles, and somewhat from white euro misgrasp of blues technique

it's also more complicated by the shift from religious to secular (gospel --> soul) where i think tensions and contradictions flood in (but they are also part of the point: the expressive excitement, if you like) (this tension is probably most obvious with gay disco passion divas, where the submissiveness to the lord has become a submissive to sexual desire)

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Oh I certainly wouldn't question that technique and soul ARE intertwined (taking soul as 'conveying emotion' rather than soul music) but I think that where the point falls for me is that tecnique at some point became an end in itself, not a means of conveying emotion well. Mariah is a prime example of this, as are the reams of singers you hear on 'X-Factor/American Idol' who are brilliant singers but could be singing the phone book.

I think of people like Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen - I don't think anyone could claim that these people are technically great singers, but they are undoubtedly great singers. I recall Q Magazine making the same point in their review of Madonna's ballad collection, 'Something To Remember', saying something along the lines of 'this collection demonstrates that while she is by no means a great singer, she is undoubtedly a great singer'. Except not as clumsily as that.

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i have to say *i* don't believe in the concept of empty virtuosity

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On ILX any time this topic came up we would all be regularly schooled by Dan Perry, who is a choral singer and whose wife is a voice coach: it was interesting reading him to learn that what yr average music buff sees as 'technique' isn't really, or is just the most obvious elements, and the really good stuff is happening behind the scenes, to be picked up on largely by the trained ear.

I think it's very interesting the sort of techniques that get free passes and the sort that don't, in various sectors: math rockers and metallers who would despite Mariah but who adore virtuosic drumming, pop mavens who idolise state-of-the-art production but frown on guitar soloing, indie kids who love grainy, grimy productions almost as much as they love hyper-literate lyrical technique, reality TV judges who can calibrate a voice exactly but have no appreciation of complex song structures, etc etc.

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My other problem with that line is that he's arguing against the wrong point - leaving aside questions of 'soul' surely the criticism of Mariah is that all the vocal bells and whistles are there to distract from the fact that there's not much else there, in terms of song or delivery. Or, alternatively put, "too much fanny dangle".

Mind you this applies across the board really - hip-hop and metal are pretty much the only styles of music where virtuosity is seen as a virtue in itself, and even then not all the time.

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I think the word 'soul' certainly confused the point, but he clarifies it with 'conveying emotion' and the criticisms which he is referring to are in the vein of 'she is a brilliant technical singer but utterly bland in terms of conveying the emotions of the song'. Your latter paragraph is quite interesting in terms of the Mariah album, as she is at many times on it a 'gay disco passion diva'.

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Also there's a difference between technique to convey emotion and technique to go "hey look at what I can do".

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mariah isn't conveying emotion to YOU bcz you're not listening to (or perhaps "for") the way she conveys emotion

mariah's a very funny and joyous singer -- a lot of her strength is sheer athletic exuberance, and yes, the subtleties are easily missed if you're not especially literate in this whole tradition, which white rockthink certainly isn't: also i don't think her singing is much to do with passion (in the old-fashioned sense, which derives from the word "to suffer")

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But - though he hates those singers - Lex isn't saying "you need technique to express emotion", he's saying you can't separate technique and emotion, and that technique is a vehicle for emotion. I think Dylan is a bit of a red herring (and lots of people would deny he's a great singer - I've seen the "he's a great SONGWRITER but not a great singer" argument a billion times, though I totally disagree.)

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plus jazz plus gospel -- ie two central strands of black american culture which get short shorft and poor comprehension from rockthink

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i.e. Lex might believe that the relationship between technique and emotion goes one way, but he's not actually SAYING that - abjuring technique for emotional effect (which is the post-Dylan norm) is still relating technique and emotion.

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I don't buy that at all - I can think of plenty of singers in that 'tradition' (and I even think that argument is a bit of a crock, because Mariah has moved largely away from traditional soul/gospel and now operates mainly in hip-hop/pop/disco) who engage me. I never listen to a Mariah song and feel moved by her vocals. I don't think that's a problem on my part.

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Yeah but I disagree that you 'can't separate technique and emotion' because, as I said above, i think this has already happened. All of these reality tv shows value technique over anything else, and none of the other singers I mention would ever get past the first auditions.

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sorry that isn't meant to be as aggressive as it comes across -- "white"* rockthink is an interesting and important aesthetic, but it's not the only one ever, and obviously it's not possible to be "literate" in every tradition... what i'm getting at is that something like matt's line ("there's a difference between technique to convey emotion and technique to go "hey look at what I can do") is orthodox rockthink which just doesn't apply (uncomplicatedly) to other strands of the american semi-pop tradition

*(i shouldn't have used that word really)

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I'm now wondering whether its a straightforward case of 'technique' vs 'soul' or whether the debate really centres around 'drama' vs 'melodrama'. Do the criticisms boil down to "you have a technically fantastic voice but I don't really believe you*".

I'm also trying to crystallise why this criticism seems to get thrown at Mariah, and maybe sticks, more than it does with, for example, Beyonce.

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Well i think it has been aimed at Beyonce many times, but perhaps one of the reasons for it is that Beyonce has largely made her name with quite cutting-edge songs that crossover into pop and don't really allow her too much room to cut loose vocally, whereas Mariah made her name with big, histrionic power ballads where she turns each syllable into 10 notes?

I mean, Beyonce's vocal on 'Emotions' is painful in terms of the bombastic over-singing, but it's just not something she's really identified with in the main.

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the weirdly excessive kneejerk unthinking dismissiveness mariah gets -- a sort of pathological inability to connect generously with some thing so blatantly obviously generous in its spirit aned content -- has always fascinated me

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sbp.livejournal.com

Hip-hop? Virtuosity? Or has the label hip-hop been reappropriated in much the same way as R&B?

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infov0re.livejournal.com

On ILX any time this topic came up we would all be regularly schooled by Dan Perry, who is a choral singer and whose wife is a voice coach: it was interesting reading him to learn that what yr average music buff sees as 'technique' isn't really, or is just the most obvious elements, and the really good stuff is happening behind the scenes, to be picked up on largely by the trained ear.

Totally. A lot of what passes for "technique" in supposedly technique-obsessed circles - eg, Metal - is just a kind of technique, and it's a notably obvious one; there's an awful lot of "technique" that is ignored by the untrained ear, even though it may be the thing that makes a record. (For instance: a lot of people praise "production" but mean songwriting; few people ever praise "engineering" despite its impact on certain genres, notably dance and pop).

The reality-TV comment is good; a lot of your points are the kind of things that are emphasised by a media that focuses on praising more obvious "technique", pointing out the things that can be seen and heard, and if not, then explained very easily.

I'd be interested to know if there was any degree of subediting in the quotation we're referring to, simply because Lex's opinion on other kinds of "technique" (guitar solos in particular) are pretty much known to this community.

A thought: a lot of what we call "technique" is perhaps better called "virtuosity", in that a degree of showmanship is implied; the technique we're all pointing out as being less obvious could never be called virtuoso, and yet is just as much a hallmark of a skilled musician.

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sbp.livejournal.com

Most of the time I don't listen to the lyrics either. Some people think this is odd.

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