Speaking Through Art: Part III - Sound of Music

I spent a desperately needed long weekend at my best friends cottage and finally got the chance to clear my head and think of a few things. A cottage is always a perfect and quiet place to do these kind of things, and i really got myself thinking about SOUND. 

I woke up on the Sunday morning at 7:30 am and the weirdest thing happened. 

Most of the time i have BAD cases of writers block but when i don't, my brain can spill out more stuff than niagara falls. When these moments do occur i HAVE to get everything out as soon as possible because i'm afraid my brain will close up again. So...

on my blackberry after 5 minutes of waking up, i wrote a 800 word write up about sound in complete silence. 

Ironic isn't it?

WHAT IS SOUND?

If you really think about it with a primitive or philisophical point of view, I reckon that it will really blow your mind. What IS it?

Sometimes I scare myself when I think of the world in certain ways...
Like - when I believe that all we are on this planet are a bunch of chemical reactions and all that supernatural stuff and the idea that we possess souls and emotions aren't really something seperate from the human body and its organ cohorts.
Have you ever listened to a song when there is complete silence around you? (In bed during early morning or late night is the best time and place to do this). If you can do this, you will ultimately experience and understand everything SOUND has to offer, but in a rhythmical way. 

I haven't met one person out there that is completely opposed to music and it makes me think back to our primitive days.

How was music first created? And most importantly why? I think the first human/animal that did it realized that if they beat something in a rhythm, it gave them a feeling.

It gave them something nature didn't in a whole new way.

Anyways, what I'm trying to get at here is that when we listen to any genre of music, it creates some sort of chemical reaction in your body that makes you feel something. 

How does your brain register sound? 

And why does music make us feel good?

I think that's what really sets us apart from animals. We can listen to something so vague, for instance a few notes in a song, and it has the ability to relate itself to a tangible memory we have in our brains.

We can communicate through song. 

Music is another great way to communicate because its the best way possible to sugarcoat words. 

One of my favourite past times is to close my eyes, block out distractions and listen to a song. But why do I have to close my eyes to listen and HEAR a song better. Sound is a great thing for us fortunate beings that get to enjoy it. However, do you believe that blind people hear the same way as un-blind people do? It's impossible.

The lack of one sense only makes another stronger.

It's interesting to me that different types of music or song give us different feelings. So if you were to listen to one genre of music, ur brain will only be used to being coated in a same type of sound and only give you 1/100000 of the real experience of music. 


I believe that a real musician listens to all types of music
and takes every song for what different element it offers to them
and add it to the music library in their brain...
so that when it comes to writing music...they have the best creations because they have a collection of different types of sounds to work with...
a whole world of sound in different sequences of notes.

Is it possible for songs to run out one day? Will all the notes be arranged in all their possible combinations in the year 10,000. That's impossible because people are constantly coming up with new sounds. That's the beauty of sound. It's the only sense that we are able to experience that has a life of its own that at the same time we can control and manipulate into anything we want it to. 

Life is a song, so beat your own drum and listen to how others do it too. 

What kind of rhythm do u walk? Put sound to your muscle memory.

You can pair music with other things or other art to compliment it even more and communicate it even more strongly. Music + Lyrics, Music + Speech, Music + Dance, Painting to music. 

I love to use music to enhance experience. It garnishes life with a fresh blanket of life inside of your soul.

Omar, in about 30 seconds, says perfectly what I'm trying to say:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5tmxb64Ics

*** 

So I challenge you to close your eyes in a quiet space and listen to a song. Your brain will be coated with this amazing wave of air and I promise that you'll feel something.

And when you do, for the sake of the experience, don't just listen to the vocalist and the most apparent sound, like the lead guitar. I used to be ignorant and only notice the surface sound. I promise if you take a deeper listen you will notice as if there is a whole other song that you only unconsciously noticed by listening to the song as a whole. 

There's always a good surprise waiting for you in music.