Urban Hat€monger ?

I think your taking reference to 'the message' literally. I don't just mean the lyrics. I mean everything. The lyrics , the album covers , the style of songwriting. In other words the reason why the band exists in the first place.

__________________

bsmix

Wow this is really tough. Passion is loving the music. Bands that don't love their music lack passion. Like what is not passionate music? People here could almost completely agree on the ashley simpsons, avril lavignes (i think?) ...the artists who don't control their own music. They have not chosen to make music, they have chosen to be pop stars and do what they have to do. Another example of this is like when bands have to play their 'big' songs over and over, they start to not love them (not always) and thus the songs lose passion.
Now what shows they love the music they are playing?? This is unanswerable for me, maybe impossible to define for anyone, and takes years to identify.

__________________
a music nazi....is still a nazi

Dr_Rez

Idk about that. Many artists can't stand some of the music they have made, but it sure as hell sounds passionate.

Even some of what i have made, i can;t stand now, but it was still passionate.

__________________
*Best chance of losing virginity is in prison crew*
*Always Checks Credentials Crew*
*nba > nfl crew*
*Shave one of my legs to pretend its a girl in my bed crew*

bsmix

hmm true. But you liked those songs at the time right? You have to love doing it when you are making the song. You know, I don't see how anyone could be creating something with passion, while thinking 'this sucks'... you just do your best, but you surely enjoyed the process of creating right? After, you could hate it all you want. But I don't really see how passion can be expressed if the artist is not liking the song they are making. Maybe if they are conjuring up horrible feelings to create a passionately sad song. But what are some songs that have alot of passion, but weren't liked by the artist making them at the time? (not a couple years later, 'that sounded like crap'.) I might be getting a bit carried away, do you still think I'm off?

__________________
a music nazi....is still a nazi

boo boo

I lot of musicians who seem to really enjoy what they do are still accused of having no passion.

Thats way I think of it as little more than just a very pretentious way of trying to discredit music you don't like.

__________________
It's only knock n' knowall, but I like it

http://www.last.fm/user/kingboobs

Charlie_Eleanor

The way you are preceiving 'passion' is something band produces one way or the other. The truth is passion is not only something the band produces, it is a relationship between the musical product the band produces and the listener. If the band appeals to a large audience it may seem that they are passionate, but it is guaranteed that there are people out there who do not think the band is passionate.

I know it is not an exact answer, but it is the truth.

boo boo

So what you're saying is that it's all about the connection between the music and the listener, and a song that could reduce one person to tears could just be boring wank to another person.

So theres no truly objective way of telling if music has passion or not? Well that's been the point I was trying to make forever.

__________________
It's only knock n' knowall, but I like it

http://www.last.fm/user/kingboobs

WaspStar

...and that's what I said in one of my first posts. You can't point out passion. It's subjective, and that's what makes music so great. To some people, Born To Run is overproduced and has no passion, while to others, it's a classic fire and brimstone record, and neither party is "right" or "wrong."

But that doesn't mean that saying a record is gutless is just a fancy way of saying you don't like the record. It's like saying you don't like the way the vocalist sounds or you simply don't like their material; there's no way to objectively quantify statements like those, but they nevertheless are important factors.

Son of JayJamJah

This has become a semantical argument as it seemed destined to from the start.

I think the general consensus is most people use the word "passion" to express that music is significant and relatable to them on more then just an audible level.

I think passion is most often akin to authenticity in peoples minds. If you find someones music to be "real" it's typical that you'll find a connection to the artist or song.

TheBig3

Well I’d wager its not.

Authenticity to me (and if we’re creating our own artificial distinctions, we’ll say “it is”) is more of the peripheral. It would suggest they are creating music for the right reasons.

But passion suggests a reading between the lines almost. As if the music was written, and practiced and the lyrics were set and agreed upon, but when they get to the mic or their playing it live, their in the moment, and they know what’s right for the song. A band here, a held note there. Even in the studio it tends to be at least to be something where the artist has no history of playing or doing something in a particular fashion, but they know the music to be its own living character, it has its own personality and that you can dress it up as something else, but it just doesn’t work.

I remember reading this musical theory book from a Russian Pianist (I’ll edit in his name, I’m at work right now) and he was saying on any given rest, there is a potential 4 rests that could be there. It basically relied on the theory that you would have it be played as the entire rest was functional, the front half, the back half or nothing at all was factored in. And I thought this was brilliant because even in classical music where the notes are the most adhered to in all of music, people still could understand that there was a need to know the music, not just play it off the page like some instrumental karaoke.

But some lines have to be drawn; all change is not good change. There has been many an artist who has stood on stage and went from an emotionally strenuous studio track to thinking the apathy of talking through a piece of a song was doing it justice. Let us not confuse change with passion. Jagger covering “like a rolling stone” is not passion, its awful.

I think passion also comes from knowing what a song needs in the context of an album, or when we’re considering live shows, a play list. I remember seeing Metallica at a shed show in the summer of ’99 and they played Master of Puppets better than I’ve ever heard it. All the “obey your master” lines held the E int her “er” of master and behind it they the constant rattle of a double-kick on the bass drum and it did the song justice a thousand times over. They knew that on that night at that moment, the studio version would have to wait, and the crowd, entering into an old classic being given its greater due responded as they should have.

I’ve seen cake, at every show they do, take a track in the studio that had all the harmonics built in, extend it further, and do it more fully when the crowd would sing parts traditionally taken up my other vocalists, freeing another band member to sing something else. And McCrea like the brilliant leader he was, conducting the madness as it needed that evening.

Passion is how a note is played, a word is sung, and an arrangement changes to meet the needs of the moment. Its got nothing to do with what the intentions were behind creating it, its got to do with knowing a song as a living breathing thing. To rehearse a song to the Nth degree because you’re never satisfied, to change the feel of a song from night to night as Dylan does because you’re always searching for something more. When you become enveloped by the music and the other musicians are in tune with each other and everyone can turn on a dime because their not going on a planned pattern of attack their going on the sound at that moment. That’s passion, and I can’t explain it much better. You froth at the mouth, you bleed from the eyes, and you are ten pounds lighted from the amount you’ve sweat. Even if you’re playing lounge jazz.

__________________
I've moved to a new address