What is noodling and why is it bad?
 

Before I tell people to shut up about talking **** about the solos in Dopesmoker and the breakdown in "Master of Puppets," it occurred to me I should first identify what this "noodling" is. The dictionary gives me the definition: ... but why is this bad? And how in the absolute hell is improvising bad? I'm not too knowledgable about free jazz, but I'm told it relies heavily on improvisation, but how come free jazz groups aren't labeled as noodlers? Am I the only one that thinks that a band of 3+ members improvising as a unit is far more impressive than playing something they've arranged beforehand?
Hell, **** instruments, how come people don't deride Jay Z as a noodler for not making the lyrics to his songs before he actually records them? Isn't that de facto improvising?

Secondly, and though this commment may mar this thread as a troll thread, I have to say I've most often heard the word "noodling" used by people who actually play the instrument used by the person they are labeling as a noodler, and almost never by people who do not play the instrument. It kind of makes you sound like elitist *******s, who are unwilling to say they simply dislike the playing and drum up this whole charade of "yeah he/she is just a bad player," or some stupid ****.

^ My honest thoughts.

Us free jazz players are often called noodlers.

I'd say that noodling is when it's playing, sometimes in rhythm, but it's lifeless and uninteresting. Like Malmsteen.

A vast majority of music comes from aimless improvisation. It is literally how music is born. Experimental music, by definition, is ultimately an unintentional affair. Only the foolish would state that improv is bad.

Improvising self-referentially and/or with some discernible form takes a massive amount of skill. Improvising without is what a lot of people call noodling, because the best improvisers are able to do so without sounding like they're improvising.

With free jazz, calling it noodling is redundant, I guess, since that's pretty much the whole point of the style. If you enjoy it, you know what you're in for, and if you don't, you probably would characterize all free jazz as mindless noodling and simply avoid it as such. (Which is maybe premature to say, since there's often some level of broad coordination.)

Improvisation or noodling gets a bad rep because it defies tradtional textbook music theory, and comes from a bout of pure and unadulterated expression. Music traditionally even in so called improvisational music like hard-bop can be very practiced and methodical. Whereas so called noodling dosen't come from practice but more from a inner voice that dosent rely on the tricks of the trade and comes straight from what the artist is feeling at that moment creating his purest form of art. Music purists always have a formula and of course those who bend formula are shunned and not taken seriously, until the next generation of music purists praise the once frowned upon art form, and the cycle repeats itself.

tl;dr

Pure expression isn't accepted as a norm even yet, for the better or worse who knows.

I think that noodling and improvisation are really the same thing. There's good improvisation and there's bad improvisation, noodling follows under the latter umbrella. Then there's structured noodling that we see in all of those overproduced prog bands where the music is nowhere interesting but it's fast and complex and blah blah blah. I call Mr. Malmsteen to the stand again.

It's all about wankery

I have no idea who this Malmsteen is but upon listening to a few seconds of one of his songs I got a dragonforce vibe from it and now I regret playing it at all.

I understand what you're getting at though. Chaotic free jazz is awesome, but chaotic music based on a few arpeggios doesn't afford enough creativity and just sounds bad.

All about Orthrelm



nah... it's not

It's a little bit about them. Anything with Massimo Pupillo kills them though.

What I considered noodling (with guitar playing) is doing technical things with no direction for an extended period of time. It's aimlessly going up and down the diatonic/pentatonic scales or bending strings over and over (till it makes you sick), stretching out solos etc -- doing those things but not making sense out it. IMO Noodling isn't how good or bad one plays on a technical level, it's about having no direction just meandering about the place like a long wiggly pasta noodle on a plate. Eric Clapton & Trey Anastasio noodles, Steve Hackett don't.

Trey Anastasio could open a ****ing ramen restaurant.

lol

Trey's Oodles of Noodling Restaurant http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/p/o/...yidea25.gif?14

Orthrelm could stop the hunger in China with all their noodle.

I refer to noodling strictly as an onstage, between songs/during sound check generalized fcking around on an instrument. Basically just needless noise that may be interpreted as unprofessional in the context of a performance.

Noodling is how I come up with most of my ideas. Putting fingers in places on the board I wouldn't usually. You get some pretty unusual melodies if you veer of course from a standard affair, it's primarily why I don't like using DAWs, I need to **** about on instruments with my giant spider hands.

To me, noodling isn't just improvising (that would make the term redundant), but it's a kind of aimless improv that may be probing some creative directions but doesn't really go into one or develop any of them. If it did go anywhere, you'd just call it improv or a solo or a melody or something.

A good example of what I think of as noodling can be found in King Crimson's Moonchild. Most of that song is just vague nibbles of random playing not really developing much structure or doing anything interesting. It seems like a giant waste of vinyl to me and I wish they'd filled it with something more interesting, but many disagree.

Another example which I could find on youtube can be heard at the beginning of this Return to Forever recording of La Fiesta. Before La Fiesta gets moving, we get about 7:15 minutes of noodles that, while they probe certain melodic ideas and so on, don't really develop any of them until the opening theme of La Fiesta finally comes together.



Generally, I don't think musician should put recordings of themselves noodling (by my definition) on records. The track above f.ex would be better if it just started with La Fiesta, same as Moonchild would be better with the noodles cut out.

Aren't plenty of written songs partially improves too? I mean, I can come up with a bunch of melodies in my head at any moment. Ofcourse some will just be ones I've heard and forgotten about, but to prevent that you can just edit them and mix them with others.

Even though I can't play for ****, I sometimes also do this (but more out of boredom than actually making something). It makes for some interesting melodies.
Speaking of which, do people ever use off key notes or really bad tunings on purpose?

This pretty much sums it up.

What does this even mean? Are you saying experimental can't be composed with intention in mind?

I mean this isn't really true. We already have enough food to feed the world and the issue is distribution. Until you show me evidence that all of said noodle would actually go to starving people in the developing world instead of just being sold to rich Westerners, it doesn't matter how much noodle Orthrelm can produce.

**** starving people.

All hail.

FF to 1:50 if you have no patience.

how do those headless guitars work

No thanks.

:clap:

Ugh that's so boring tbh



I think we can all conclude that Omar is the ultimate noodler.

I guess you tune them at the bottom end.