The Language of Music

I've decided it's pretty necessary to take a break from the videogames posts and attempt to write about something which is very dear to me: music. This could be a long and meandering post, but if you try to bear with me, I'd like to attempt to explain my relationship to music to all who are willing to listen. Also, as a musician myself, my relationship with music changes when interacting with a musical instrument, but that's part of the way I think about music and will be spoken of as well. I'll put the name of songs, artists, albums, or whatnot in parenthesis for ease of reading.

I have a decidedly unusual love for music. I have always known this, but I began to realize it more when taking a car ride with my girlfriend. She had noticed this and decided to ask me about it because I think certain songs speak to me in ways that they don't speak to anyone else. I gave her a somewhat slapdash answer because I'd never thought it through, but there's a lot of truth to what I said then, and I'll think through it and relate it to you, with the use of songs (just as reference, I don't expect anybody to have heard or have these songs on hand at any given time.)

The start of my answer to her was about the role of instruments in a song. I recognize every musical component of a song as an instrument - this is something that many people don't acknowledge simply on the basis that vocals are commonly thought to be something different than an instrument. A good exercise for anyone seeking to try to understand what it feels like should try the following: take a good hip-hop song, not some Top 40 song that's bass heavy or pointless, but something that's a carefully thought through piece of art constructed out of an artist's love for the genre, say (The Roots - Act Too... The Love Of My Life.) The theory behind hip-hop or rap is that the vocals are used as a purely rhythmic instrument or component of the song. Granted, I always preference the sound of vocals more than the message, which is almost impossible for some to even conceptualize, but I've always thought if the voice is an instrument, it should be such, not purely an outlet for a message. This is not to say that there's not a time and place for pure messages, or beat poetry, or whatnot, but if you're trying to do music, please, treat the voice as an instrument. Anyways, back to hip-hop, the way that Black Thought and Common use their words is as another instrument - and there is an equality among instruments.

This is something else that I look for in music, the interplay between instruments is something I heavily preference. It may seem like something that's never overlooked in music, but how often have you heard a song where the focus is on the vocals,a catchy guitar riff, or beat and the rest of the song relies upon that to get it through. An examples - think anything that's been pop-rock and popular for the past at least 5 years - a simple chord structure with someone doing their best Eddie Vedder impression over it, or Scott Stapp, or whatever. The focus of the song is on the vocals, any guitar solo or fancy drum work that occurs is just to trick people into thinking this isn't the case, but it is. This isn't to say popular music is always bad and incapable of interplay - think (My Chemical Romance - Welcome to the Black Parade;) it's the kind of thing you'd see on an attempt to recreate (The Beatles - Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band) in the modern era: a bit of theatrics, a bit of desperation, a bit of anxiety, it's all done very well and put together equally. There are two songs I like to cite when thinking about interplay between instruments as I don't think it could get any better: (Sufjan Stevens - All Good Naysayers...) and (Radiohead - Idioteque). I know the second is an odd choice due to the use of synths and sequencers or whatever, but, much as an earlier song on (Kid A) suggests, (Everything's In It's Right Place.) As I'll explain, I also become very emotionally involved with music - every individual component speaks to me in some way in well-constructed music. (Idioteque) to me suggests urgency while

Music speaks to me in emotions. That may make no sense, so I'll explain in terms of making music, then expand to listening to music. I think of chords, licks, solos, etc. as having a context or a connotation: for example, I will play one line, and if I'm really into it and can feel it, it can bring me close to tears. A good example, if I was had been involved in writing (Genesis - The Cinema Show,) they'd probably have to invest in several boxes of kleenex for the section between (2:46 and 4:35.) It's almost pure beauty - like several tiers of icicles dripping musical drops on an icy cave floor, and the woodwind instrument that comes in sounds like the natural call of some animal. It's a perfectly written section of music; nothing could be more contextually perfect. Two more examples: the first, (Everything But The Girl - Mirrorball [Dj Jazzy Jeff Sole Full Remix]) This song manages to establish the perfect emotions of sadness, melancholy, and hopelessness, but package it in a user-friendly shell. The piano line that is reiterated in the background sounds to me like tears (or raindrops, suggested by my girlfriend but equally somber and sad - she might have a better suggestion due to the frequency of the notes and it's role.) It reckons to memory someone who's trying to keep composed and appear like they have it all together, but are severely hurting on the inside - it's another song I believe is contextually perfect. The second song (Coheed and Cambria - The Willing Well II: Fear Through...) has a section that manages to be accomplish something that I really struggle to define. The first section like this appears at (:44 to :51.) The song gets into this groove that they manage to achieve a perfect balance of instruments and it just makes you move, it's weird but awesome. The bass line cradles the bottom while the guitar adds thread to the loom, and the layering of Claudio's voice adds a perfect counterbalance. Oh yeah, not to mention his background vocals are just haunting.

When making music, I operate almost exclusively on this attachment of emotions to music. Granted, I'm not so spectacular at writing music, but the few songs I've written have maintained a certain feeling throughout the entire song according to how I feel emotions and they flow through music. My "channeling" of emotions leaves much to be desired in terms of song-writing, but I feel more satisfied with my work when I follow this because it feels "congruent" or perhaps "coherent." It's kinda sad, it makes writing music appear on paper to sound as if writing an assignment for class, but it's far from it in interest.

I'm sure this is incomplete, but I look forward to adding new posts that would be semi-reviews or additions to this post in different ways, maybe explaining how certain songs speak to me more or whatnot.

-B$ out