British guitarist analyses Stevie Ray Vaughan's mental state live in 1989!

hello phil here from wings of pegasus and welcome to another analysis video if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up and subscribe on the agenda tonight we're going back to 1989 we're gonna be taking a look at Stevie Ray Vaughan and he's gonna be performing may I have a talk with you so let's get Stevie and Double Trouble up on screen and see how they get on [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] and it's going to jump in here because already there is so much to talk about and this video the link to it is going to be in the description below if you guys want to watch it the whole way through without me interrupting it but the things that I want to bring up in this video are things that I might not have mentioned in the other videos that I have done on 'stevie before and I have spoken about the technique the hammer ons the pull offs the alternate picking the way that Steve you could throw together really fast passages but then break that up with bends and slides and all of the technique elements but the thing that interests me as well is the mental approach and the psychology of playing because Stevie liked all of the top players just seemed to channel their expression through the guitar and it doesn't seem like it's a subconscious thing it's a consciousness that is flowing the whole time so I'm gonna be exploring that Avenue with this particular video but just to also relate it to everyone else who does play because I've heard it a million times that some people will be playing a particular song or a particular solo and they'll say to me and I've had students like this who have said that they've mastered this solo in their room and they can play it at home a hundred times in a row without fault but then as soon as they get in front of people they start messing it up and they don't understand why that is and it's always the same reasons as to why that happens more often than not there is a thought process going on in the person's head there isn't present while they are playing at home and they might be watching TV and just doing it all subconsciously and they're not thinking about it as soon as you're playing in front of people you might now be analyzing your own playing almost from a third-person perspective so now you're trying to imagine what people are thinking of you're playing whilst you're playing and that is always going to end in failure if you're worrying about what other people are thinking about you're playing Stevie is such a great example of someone who approaches playing mentally from the point of view of putting across his artistic expression and there will be people watching this that we huge fans of Stevie's playing and love his sound his tone the way that he used those heavy gauge strings so it sounded like he was wrestling with them he had that aggression in there and also detuning to e-flat these all are elements that make Stevie's playing unique from a tone and sound perspective but his fingers are the things that really did the trick when it came to sounding like Stevie Ray Vaughn so having that in the equation the playing is the thing that will make you sound like yourself TV's another great example of this when the people who are fans watch him play and they'll say how can anyone not be a fan of this and believe it or not there are people who do not like Stevie's playing they'll say that he plays too much from the Blues it's too technical and this is the thing about all of the top players and the top artists understand that you can never please everybody you've just got to play your own way and play the way that you enjoy playing yourself and that way people will that chanter and they'll enjoy your artistic expression because it is your own artistic expression you're not trying to be another player another thing is that players will often think the audience is comparing their playing to somebody else another guitarist and more often than not this is the guitarist that the player has in their head and they're assuming that everyone in the audience knows this guitarist that they're thinking of and then the guitarist thinks oh well they're comparing me to this other guy who I think is really good and a guitarist will always think about their own playing compared to their Idol and this is the thing that you've got to try and get out of your head because if you do have an idol and you want to sound like them don't copy them you can take them as an influence and work on their techniques and get them down on the fretboard but then turn those techniques into your own expression because otherwise you'll just be called a copycat and people will say oh he's great technically but he just sounds like that other guy whereas you want to do what Stevie did take on all of those influences and just put your own stamp on it the ultimate goal of every guitarist is to be able to express themselves artistically through the instrument and every guitarist around the world is constantly working at techniques and working at they're playing with that goal in mind so this is all Stevie Ray Vaughan did he's working at these techniques so that he gets to a point where he can express himself and he doesn't have to think about a technique he just has to think about the expression and that's something that I'm going to expand on in a minute with that said focusing the spotlight back on Stevie and Double Trouble by the way Tommy Shannon on bass listen out for some of those lines that he's laying down with Chris Layton on drums a super-tight rhythm section if you've got a sub turner up to 11 just to appreciate some of this bass going on but talking about Stevie and his mental approach to playing because he's now we understand got that ability to express through his instrument because he's got the technical ability required in order to do that but he's practiced all of the techniques that I mentioned and all the other videos that I analyze here on the channel but especially with the previous ones I've done of Stevie so now that all of those techniques are subconscious for Stevie to play it means that now he's thinking about the lines he wants to play and instantaneously playing that on the fretboard it is like singing and Stevie again another fantastic example of a player who had a fantastic voice and his voice and his guitar were one because when he did sing he had almost that rasp and overdrive at will on his vocal cords so that he could get the same vocal sound to his guitar was getting so we had the same voice the other thing is that once Stevie was playing and had the technical ability to play whatever he wanted he can now sing through his guitar a giveaway for this is to watch Stevie's mouth when he is playing he makes different shapes with his mouth when he's playing especially in slower sections and when he's playing one particular note over and over again he won't make different shapes with his mouth he'll keep the same expression with his mouth like he's saying the same word over and over again of course with music there on any words so they shaped that the mouth takes on is totally random and this is why you might watch some players who are even more animated than Stevie and when they go off into a solo their mouth and their faces all over the place because they're speaking that language of expression but there aren't any words they don't know what those words are they just make faces to try and express whatever they're feeling as they're playing their guitar you might have also noticed this with other top players when they start playing with a wah-wah pedal they start saying while while with their mouths they don't say it into the microphone but they might be playing a solo and they are mirroring what they're doing with the wah-wah pedal with their mouth and it is connected to the part of the brain that is to do with conversation it is talking and that is just the way that they're playing you can see it with so many players look out for that now if you don't play guitar the amount of players that go wah-wah with their mouths when they're using a wah-wah pedal but you can still look at Stevie here and the way that he's performing and going into a solo the way that his mouth moves because he is saying things through the guitar it just so happens there aren't any words for what he's saying they are feelings another thing that backs up the theory about being able to sing through the guitar is how consistent Stevie was live how many videos have you seen where Stevie goes to play a solo and he messes up and forgets what he's doing it never happened because Stevie would never mess up singing he wouldn't suddenly sing wrong notes outside of a scale so why would he mess up playing the notes on the guitar if he is singing them through the instrument and that goes for a lot of top players you'll find that they make a lot of funny faces but their mouths move when they play and they never mess up or do something wrong live and go down a totally incorrect Avenue because when you're singing you know what sounds good and what doesn't sound good and you naturally know all of the notes that fit over the top of the chord that you're playing a lot of the top players have that ability to play melodically as if they were singing which is probably what is going on mentally with their approach to playing they're just singing through the guitar but other players who have sat down and rehearsed other people's lines and other people's licks especially technically advanced guitarists who have sat down and worked at a particular run over and over and over and over again can we as humans speaking the language of music tell the difference between someone who is playing pre rehearsed lines and somebody who is actually singing through their instrument and that for me is a massive thing that determines the popularity and the connection a guitarist gets with an audience whether they're playing something they've pre rehearsed and they're not thinking about or they are playing something that they are consciously thinking of at that split second and they are then communicating that to the audience just to quickly throw in a real-world example of that from a communication point of view you might be watching a video on YouTube where somebody is reading from a screen off to the side of the camera what the video might be about or the subject matter of that video and you don't have a connection to that person because they're reading it off the screen they're not telling it like a story because they know it it's just being relayed to you almost like a machine where is when somebody's telling you a story and they were actually there it is so much more engaging because they are expressing what they saw they lived it they were part of the story they're not doing it from a third-person perspective and giving you the information from another source they are the source I sort of can feel like sometimes when somebody's playing particular lines on the guitar that somebody else came up with it's like they're reading it from a screen to you and somebody that is producing these lines consciously in that moment you're hearing the story straight from them and that's why it connects because this is their artistry right in front of your eyes there's no fakery here but let's get back into the performance and now you're probably going to be watching Stevie's mouth you can rewind the video back to the beginning and just look and the way that he changes his expressions facially for what he's playing on the guitar but we'll watch it till the end [Music] [Applause] [Music] No [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] and there we have it the thing is about Stevie's playing I'm obviously a fan of Stevie and the technique that is in there it does fly under the radar especially if you don't play guitar because he throws it all together so well and you hear the expression because all of that technique is subconscious but the amount of technique that he has made subconscious is so impressive a lot of people will say that during Stevie solos there were sections of pre rehearsed subconscious muscle memory and of course that is true every top player has that in order to make a journey out of a guitar solo to keep it interesting you'll have it in classical music all the time where the string section will start playing a really fast arpeggio to increase the excitement to elicit that reaction from the audience it's exactly the same with a top instrumentalist when they're playing a solo they have these techniques that they will just dot into their solos to keep it interesting but more often than not the top players and the most successful and appealing players played consciously more than subconsciously all you have to do is look at the top 100 guitarists of all time list or even a list of the 10 most popular guitar players to see that number 1 is not always the same guy because he was the fastest that playing and nobody can play faster so he's number 1 those subconscious styles and subconscious ways of playing that are just muscle memory do not appeal to the masses and they will never be number one on those lists it's not as if every single player is trying to do one particular technique and because they've mastered that technique they are number one they're the best and as soon as somebody else masters that technique they are joint first with the other guy who's mastered it and this can be often the mental approach that people have to their plane they think that they're not good unless they can do that technique that they are focusing on and they can't do yet and so they put themselves down because they can't do that particular technique but again another newsflash the person watching you in the audience doesn't even know what that technique is all they want to do is hear your expression through the guitar as I've already said this videos probably got on for ages but when you're watching a plan like Stevie he makes you think about all of these things because there is so much going on that once you scratch beneath the surface of the technical ability you know that there's something more going on than just learning a line and playing it and when I mentioned about singing through the guitar you might say what about those players who don't have the ability to sing what are they doing how are they connecting to an audience and I will address everybody watching this video sing your favorite song in your head or think about it and when I say sing I don't mean literally sing it I mean play it back in your head if you're sat in a sign of room and you think about your favorite song listen to it in your mind and I'm hoping that I'm not the only person that can do this because whenever I'm thinking of one of my favorite songs I'm listening to the actual track I can hear all of the instruments I can hear the vocalists I can hear his expression and his vocal tone exactly as it is on the recording but I'm not singing the song myself I'm just hearing it in my head so it means that if your brain can do that if you get your technical ability up to a level where you don't have to think about it you can start applying all of these ideas that allow you to think of your favorite songs and play them back faultlessly in your head you've now got the ability to do that through the instrument and that is how the top guitar plays you can't sing access all of the musical ideas they've got in their head they can't get their vocal chords to do it but they can get this guitar to do it because they have mastered the technical ability needed on the instrument to then translate what they're thinking up here through the instrument to the audience just to find a word on Steve and his playing because the other thing that strongly suggests to me that when he was playing it was just a flow of consciousness through the guitar of his expression mentally all the things that he was thinking of in that split second were then translated through the guitar and we then heard the result of that the thing that strongly suggests that that was the case was when he does collaborations all of the videos that you watch with him playing with other guitarists and the way that Stevie changed the way he played he changed the speed of his playing and the expression of his playing it would have been impossible for Stevie to go away and learn all of the other lines that another guitarist might play and then replicate those while he played live with that other guitarist and it just would have sounded like the same guitar as playing twice if he did that having the amount of technique Stevie did stored subconsciously is so impressive just in herself but then to turn all of that subconscious ability into a conscious expression is what makes him such an engaging player and a standalone player because it just was Stevie's voice through that guitar but thank you guys so much for suggesting this video for me to take a look at and keep those suggestions coming in the comments below let me know what you guys think and if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up and subscribe and I'll see you guys at the next one

Channel: Wings of Pegasus

Views: 95,640

Keywords: stevie ray vaughan live, stevie ray vaughan reaction, stevie ray vaughan, may i have a talk with you stevie ray vaughan, may i have a talk with you, may i have a talk with you srv, may i have a talk with you stevie ray vaughan live, stevie ray vaughan live solo, wings of pegasus, wingsofpegasus, british guitarist reacts, british guitarist analysis, british guitarist analyses, srv live, stevie ray vaughan double trouble, stevie ray vaughan double trouble live

Id: cXKXC3CSDI0

Length: 21min 25sec (1285 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 19 2020