air

[blissblogger]

air guitar, air drumming, air bass, air keys - who here is irresistibly provoked to a mimetic physical response by music? confess it!

and what are the kinds of music that provoke it? for me it's certain kinds of rock (not indie), certain kinds of jazz (fusion, jazz-rock).

has this impulse died out as music has become more digital - less about physically played instruments and more about click-and-drag, shunting information about on a screen?

there's no such thing as an "air" response to hip hop right (the mimetic response would be rapping along, which you'll see-hear in the street when someone is listening to rap or grime on headphones). i suppose i could imagine a mimetic impulse to trap drum patterns but somehow the body knows that it's not a human hitting those drums

got thinking about this when playing some jungle and feeling the urge to mime out drum patterns (obviously a ridiculous parody of actual drumming based on things I've seen on TV - wrist-flexing, hi-hat flutters ) and wondering if jungle is unique among the digital-era musics in that it still does that, tug at your flesh?

i can't imagine the mimetic impulse when listening to techno or anything with a 909 running it

but jungle etc being based on samples of breaks, of hand-played drum patterns, retains a hyper-musicality and hyper-humanity that still pulls at you in this way.

(separate but related thought - this is just a guy thing isn't it? I've never seen a woman do air guitar)

 

[Leo]

air guitar or drums are taken to the next level when accompanied by the right facial expressions.

 

[blissblogger]

air guitar or drums are taken to the next level when accompanied by the right facial expressions.

oh yeah you got to do the faces as well

 

[WashYourHands]

air humping to Sade

 

[WashYourHands]

Protestants feel uncomfortable around duende

 

[craner]

air humping to Sade

Have you ever air dogged?

 

[WashYourHands]

Nah, it’s more ritualistic out of body adrenaline trance state, like embracing big breasts from Bermondsey for you perhaps

 

[WashYourHands]

Tea‘s avatar

 

[Leo]

as a teenager, I put on headphones, cranked up some rock album (probably old Aerosmith) and rocked out on air guitar, only to have my mother burst in my room a few minutes later. turns out when I plugged in the headphones, I forgot to switch off the stereo loudspeakers and it was blasting out the whole house.

teenage shame, scared for life.

 

[blissblogger]

as a teenager, I put on headphones, cranked up some rock album (probably old Aerosmith) really out and rocked out on air guitar, only to have my mother burst in my room a few minutes later. turns out when I plugged in the headphones, I'd forgotten to switch off the stereo loudspeakers and it was blasting out whole house.

teenage shame, scared for life.

a similar yet different story: I had got really into soul music and I'm listening one night, after everyone else has gone to bed, on my headphones to Aretha or Gwen Macrae or somebody like that. So swept up am I in their vocal throes of nonverbal passion that I start singing along. My mum bursts into the room - not because she can hear the music (it's only in my cans) but because I've woken her up with top-volume agonised groans and she think I've got appendicitis or something.