Music is an Art, Part 3

Two weeks ago, I talked about the ways in which music is an art. A week before that, I discussed why it mattered.

Today, I’d like to look at three separate ways that music has an impact on our lives, and why we should be aware of it and enjoy it.

Brace for Impact: Our Social Lives

One of the main ways that music affects our lives is in the realm of others. Look at the kinds of music you like, and look at the people who enjoy your existence or at least tolerate it. For me, at least, I find that many of the people I know and appreciate have similar tastes in music.

Of course, there are always exceptions and they may even be important exceptions, but there’s almost always some kind of overlap between the kinds of music you listen to and the kinds of music people you enjoy listen to.

What does this mean? Well, it could mean nothing. Correlation – after all – does not equal causation. However, I like to think that music influences who we are to an extent that it influences the people who are like us and therefore who like us.

Perhaps I’m going out on a limb here. It’s not a huge correlation, because I myself have dozens of friends who don’t like the kind of music I do. Even some of my closest friends disagree on music taste (interesting car rides ensuing). But there’s always overlap. No matter which friend group or friend circle, there’s always a running undercurrent: one group likes indie and folk, one likes rock and alternative rap, and that other weird one likes spoken word and jazz.

There’s more to it, I think, than just “birds of a feather flock together”. Look at the music industry today. It’s a behemoth. Our society is consumed with the idea of music. We place musical artists on the plane with movie stars, they determine our next favorite song, our next favorite movie, our next favorite fashion sense, our next favorite piece of gossip.

They hold sway over hundreds of thousands of people.

Why?

Sometimes, it’s just because they can make us tap our feet and bop our heads. Other times, it’s because their music moves us to tears and saves our lives and makes us think and ponder on deep things, hard questions.

(Note: I’m not saying that the former is useless; I believe both are important… but we do need both.)

That’s a powerful force in our lives that we can simply ignore. We need to be aware of it, to know when to take back control and say “hey… I’m good, thanks”.

Brace for Impact: Our Personal Lives

Music doesn’t just reveal its strength and artistic subtly in the lives we surround our own with; it permeates our own lives and manifests itself in a variety of ways. One very obvious manifestation is in our brains and ears. Every single one of us (I can say this with certainty because if you have the technological advancement to read this, you’ve certainly been able to experience the phenomenon) has had an earworm before. Not an actual worm, but a song stuck in your head that you subconsciously or consciously hum, sing, or think about repeatedly.

These snippets of audial thought can annoy us or enamor us.

Other manifestations find their way into our lives. We’re constantly surrounded by music.

How does music affect you individually? This is one that I can’t really speak to for you, so I’ll speak to it for me.

Music has, in the last few years, done the following for me: inspired me, hurt me, healed me, created empathy in me, created joy and created sadness. It’s attached itself to memories and created memories all their own.

Music has powerful to shape who we are and to create powerful emotion. What does this sound like?

It sounds like a story.

Speaking of which….

Brace for Impact: Our Stories

Music has the ability to inspire our stories to greater heights. Far, far greater heights. I listen to a lot of music when I write (in addition to… all other times). For instance, I’m currently listening to “Collar Full” by Panic! At the Disco, and up next in the shuffled list is “Rustle of Stars” by A Silent Film. If I’m doing something that doesn’t involve other humans, then I’m definitely listening to music while doing it. It provides inspiration and motivation.

Maybe you can’t write while listening to music.

That’s okay.

At the same time, however, I always suggest listening to music when you can. If nothing else, just lay down and absorb it. Listening to something creative can re-ignite creativity inside of you. Burned out? Have “writer’s block”? Out of inspiration? Out of motivation? Listen to music.

Music is an art. It’s a wonderful, beautiful art full of complexities and stories. Stories worth listening to.

Music is an Art – Part 2

Last week, I introduced this trilogy of posts about music and the art therein, and today I’d like to continue that trilogy. It’s going to be a short post, because studying for finals is important and so forth.

Meanwhile:

Last week, my post talked about the art found in music, and I mentioned how all genres of music are art. Well, today I’d like to talk about a few ways in which those genres can create poor art and strong art. Again, I’m going to avoid bashing or praising certain genres (although I’m certain to be praising some for some things, and others for other things), since some portions of music taste are, in fact, relative.

The Two Parts of Music

While music can be incredibly complex (to the point where I would be completely lost because I’m not a musician myself and more of a mixer/producer), it can be boiled down to two basic part: lyrics and instrumentals. Obviously, classical and neo-classical music tends to lack the former part [with some exceptions of course], so we’ll turn our attention to music that contains both.

Music must be creative. This is why you might be able to consider songs with different lyrics and the same instrumental parts as art (such as parodies… at least the serious ones that mean something rather than simply creating nonsense… anyway). Music has to create something new and insightful in at least one of the two parts that make it up.

That’s harder than you think. Most instruments can only hit a certain number and combination of notes, and those notes can only be arranged in so many unique ways that also sound pleasing to human ears. We’re surprisingly picky (which is why so many genres exist… for instance, my dad can’t stand Country/Bluegrass [nothing against those genres, he just doesn’t like the twang/drawl in music] and I can’t stand most screamo/heavy metal).

What makes the instrumental part of music creative and unique and… artistic? While I’m not the genius in this area of the art of music, I’d like to offer what I’ve realized when conversing with all of my musically inclined friends: creative instrumental music involves either taking a risk or invoking emotion, often both. There are certain parts of music (notes, progressions, riffs, etc.) that aren’t usually used, because they can be risky. I can’t tell you what exactly those are, because I’m not the expert in this area, but I can tell you they exist. When an artist takes that risk and it works, they create something new and exciting and worthwhile. Art.

Sometimes, however, that risk isn’t worth it. It won’t fit the song. Instead, the music has to evoke emotion. Whether that means making the listener tap their foot to the beat or stop and smile or close their eyes or exhale loudly. Maybe it means flailing arms or graceful steps. It’s creation of emotion.

Lyrics: Flash Fiction

If I told you to write a story in 200-500 words, you’d tell me I was crazy. Or you’d set about writing what fiction writers call “flash fiction”. This sort of fiction is always under 500 words (sometimes under 100 words if you’re that type of person) and tends to rely completely on the emotion of complex words and succinct descriptions. Lots of action and meaning packed into every word.

As it turns out, the average wordcount of a song is 200-400 words. Or less.

That’s not very many words. So what does that mean for the songwriter? Packing as much emotion and meaning into as few words as possible. It means succinct and powerful word choices. You don’t have a novel to make people think about your theme. Four hundred words. Four. Hundred. Words.

That, I think, is where the power of music lies. It takes three minutes for a song to tell a story, to create emotion, to invoke thought. It takes a novel hours.

Now. Not every song has to tell a literal story. For instance, “Centuries” by Fall Out Boy doesn’t tell very much of a story. Instead, it creates the concepts that allow for a story to weave its way through the listener’s head as they come up with one in their imagination. “Gun Song” by the Lumineers, on the other hand, tells a very short and concise and powerful story steeped in allegory. Both are excellent songs, and both are very different genres.

Now, “Gun Song” tells a very specific story and is an allegory for very specific things. But not all songs need tell a story that specifically. Instead, they can create a vague and general story that people can then apply to their own selves. Good examples include “Screen” by Twenty One Pilots, “I will Wait” by Mumford and Sons, and “This is Gospel” by Panic! At the Disco.

Now, from those two paragraphs, you probably picked up on my general taste in music: alternative; rock; folk. While those are my taste, I also enjoy absorbing other mediums of music and you can apply these same ideas to other genres.

Where do many songs go wrong when it comes to lyrics? They tell the same story over and over and over. Listen to the radio sometime. Really LISTEN. Ponder the story the lyrics are telling. Not just how catchy the tune is or how “clever” the rhyme scheme is. What is the song saying?

You’ll find a lot of popular songs nowadays are telling the same story over and over.

Does that make them bad?

Not necessarily. They have every right to tell that story, because it’s still a story. One might argue that they’re still art, even when they’re unoriginal.

Good art, however, quality music, needs more. It needs to tell a story that makes you stop and appreciate it, wonder at it, ponder over it. Not all of those at once, necessarily, but at least once. That’s when music becomes powerful. How so? I’ll share that in two weeks, because I’ve already spent too long on this and not enough time studying.

Music is an Art, Part 1

There’s more to life than writing. There’s more to writing than art. There’s more to art than writing.

In fact, there’s so much more to art than writing that writing is one of the oft-brushed over arts. It hangs in the background, pulling subtle strings in all of the other forms of art. These other forms include almost everything you can think of: painting, dance, theatre, pottery, life, and on and on the list goes.

One that we always admit is an art but rarely hold it up to the same standards we require from others is music. I’m a lover of music, a lover of the story found in music. I know a lot about music, even though I don’t play an instrument. I’ve mixed live music for five years, and learned from guys who have played and mixed music for decades of their lives and so much of my appreciation from music comes from what they taught me.

Today, and for a few other posts in the future, I want to talk about the art of music, and the art of appreciating and listening to it.

A Word of Caution

I’m not going to pick on specific genres here. Each genre, I believe, has its place. Each genre has good songs and poor songs, fantastic artists and mediocre artists. Much like other forms of art, it’s easy to find the flaws in certain genres while praising others, but we’re not here to do the easy thing.

Every genre has its place.

Every. Genre.

Those repetitive, mindless songs every dances to? Dance songs? They have a place.

What that place is, however, can be quite specific because the art behind those songs comes not from the song itself, but what people do with it.

So don’t expect to come in here and help me bash certain genres, nor to have to defend your favorite genre to my scathing remarks. In fact, I’ll do my best to avoid using specific examples when I talk about poorly crafted music. I may use specific examples when explaining good music, but it won’t be in a “this is the only good kind of music and the rest is trash” way.

Now that that’s over, let’s really look at music. Today, I want to look at the way music is truly an art, and a little bit about creating that art. Later I’ll talk about ways music can be made well and made poorly, and then even later I’ll spend some time talking about the influence of that art on our lives.

The Art in Music

It may seem obvious that music is an art, but why? What makes music an art, and why do we automatically accept that? It’s not that we’re ever really trained that music is an art. By the time our education suggests such a thing, we already believe it. Music is art.

Let’s consider the definition I like to use for art: art has a story to tell. All art has a story to tell. Even art that tells that story poorly has a story. Now, I realize this definition is rather constraining, but follow me for a moment: what story does music tell?

You can find dozens of examples of songs that tell stories blatantly, but it’s easier to find songs that don’t. Consider the music that most people immediately think of when they hear the words “fine art”: classical or neo-classical, am I right? We think of orchestras performing things like concertos or symphonies or some other fancy word for music notes arranged in a certain order for a certain amount of time for certain instruments to play at a certain, arbitrary beat.

How do those tell a story? Most of them have no lyrics, they’re just pleasant compilations of notes.

Consider, however, what stories do for us: they create emotion. And consider what classical music does for us: when we listen intently, we find our emotions stirring. Those patterns of air vibrations create emotion in us. There’s an implicit story in lyric-less music, when you’re looking for it. One fantastic example is found in the soundtracks of movies. The way the music ebbs and flows, buildings and cuts off, sways and jabs, these things create emotion in us. Music can build dread, and the lack thereof can create a tense punch of reality. If you listen carefully to the soundtrack of a movie you know well, you’ll find that you know exactly what’s happening in the story at any time, based simply on the music.

That’s powerful.

Now, not all music is performed on stage by fifteen-ninety people. Some music is composed and performed by one person alone in their basement. Music contained lyrics, words that can be completely senseless and void of substance (at which point, is it truly art or just noise?) or deep and powerful and thought-provoking.

There are times and places for deep, hard songs; there are times and places for light-hearted, simple creations. The story, however, is much more obvious in these songs. For instance, “Gun Song” by the Lumineers has a very clear story told within it, and provokes fantastic emotions when you really pay attention. “Trees” by Twenty One Pilots also has a story deep within the lyrics, but it takes more time and effort and concentration to understand and truly see it.

Why Music Matters

We find music everywhere in our lives: it’s an art we can never get away from. It fills us with emotions and flits away in a moment, leaving us without giving us the tools to handle those emotions.

Music can be used to sway. The subtle way it creates emotion and stimulates a response allows it to have extraordinary control over us. What should our reaction to this be? Fear?

No. Fear is a rather useless emotion in many situations.

Rather, we should be aware of music and the power it has. Then, we can use it as it’s truly meant to be used: as an art, to be observed and appreciated and needed.