How to Enhance Your "Musical Connection"

Here's some food for thought that will help you develop your musicianship and how you express your emotions through your instrument!

Music is a fascinating thing. It can reach deep inside us and connect with our emotions in a very powerful way. It can change or enhance our mood, fire us up or soothe our hurt.

I’m not sure anyone yet really understands the science of how this works - I know they will get it one day. But I have some ideas on how these connections happen, and even if there’s more to it (which there almost certainly is), it makes for very interesting food for thought.

Spending some time thinking about how music works and how you might deepen your own connection with music can significantly impact your playing. I would encourage you to spend some quality time with an open mind and get curious about musicality!

The Universal Language?

Music is known as the ‘universal language,’ but it has no words, and there is no musical phrase that says “I am sad,” “I am happy,” or “I love you.” Interesting that the same musical phrase might say any of those things!! How on earth might that work?

We almost certainly need to learn how to express our emotions THROUGH music. I first started thinking about this when I was studying classical guitar, where the music is set, but somehow people express their own personality as they play music someone else wrote. When you watch two masters play the same piece of music, it’s different, and some versions will connect more than others. I felt that learning to channel my feelings through the instrument when I played was the thing that mattered most.

When a player has complete freedom of note choice and choice of tone, the available palette of expression becomes HUGE. There are so many choices to make! The note, the context, the dynamics, the sound, so many nuances, and how you feel when you MAKE THOSE CHOICES. It’s your personality that will guide these things. You can’t help it.

Musicians who find a way to connect their feelings to music will always connect with others. We can somehow FEEL that person when they play in a way that we won’t feel when a performer has not made that expression connection yet.

What About Technique?

For sure, there is a kind of ‘technical ability to control the instrument’ that comes into play here; being able to control the sound of the notes and the dynamics, understanding the sound they are making, and how to control it. If you’re playing a ballad, but the notes are all buzzy, your bends are out of tune, and you’re using an inappropriate tone, it probably won’t touch anyone’s soul!

Get Sad :)

For some unknown reason, it seems that learning to express sad feelings is easier to start off with than it is to express happy feelings. I often encourage people to sit on their own and dwell on the saddest moment of their life and then try and play how it feels - to channel that sadness out of the instrument. It can be very powerful and unleash all kinds of emotions. Try it! What does it feel like?

Even when strumming a simple song, you should connect to a feeling that will come through. To me, Jack Johnson has one of the happiest vibes of any songwriter. Putting on his music makes life seem better, a little sunshine no matter how dark the skies. Can you tap into that feeling when you listen to his music? Can you then try to capture that feeling and express the same when you play a song?

Who Do You Bond With?

I’ve spent many hours wondering why we all connect with different music and with different musicians. And it’s a very strong connection for many people; they find themselves with a very strong bond to a particular artist, me too!

My best guess is that we somehow connect to the performer's personality (or the producer's!) and feel a connection to some character trait. Either they possess something in their personality that we wish we had (confidence, individuality, courage?), or we feel they are some kind of kindred spirit that ‘feels the same as we do.’

Thinking about this really helped me connect with music and my own musicianship. Knowing what music people like can speak a lot about their personality, and I suspect it also relates to the ‘tribe’ feeling that many of us get with people who like the same music.

I would encourage you to explore the artists you deeply connect with and see if you can find your own answers to how or why you relate to their music. I found it helped me understand myself on a philosophical level too.

Some personal examples… I most likely love Elliott Smith because I feel he was his own man, a deep artist, and perhaps I care too much what others think of me and my music. I feel a deep connection with Neil Young, and I suspect it’s for his rebellious nature, confidence in his art, and more. Lately, I’ve been listening to Taylor Swift, likely I’m longing for the youthful freedom and wide-eyed wonder that now seems so long ago…

Give it some thought - it’ll likely take you to some interesting places and make you a better guitarist!

Following my free beginner course? Coming soon, we'll learn all about Reverb! Let's go. :)