Music is extraneous to what you think and depends solely on what you feel - many believe this. However, this might be just a distortion of truth.
Afterall, what are feelings? I believe it is a specific kind of thought that has more impact on our mind. Something which, in a sense, is an intensified version of a certain thought. And what is based on what we sense.
So, is thinking necessary in music? Because, if you think, and by thinking I am attributing to "rationalism", then you won't be able to feel, which I am attributing to "emotions generated due to chemical reactions that occur due to a certain thought".
We all will agree that music lies in feeling, because that is when each note makes your heart thump with a certain emotion. If you just rationalise, you won't get music, because music isn't something like Mathematics (no offence to Maths, in face I really like math but all I mean to say here is that music and math are two different things).
However, music might lie in thinking as well. Say suppose you're learning to play an instrument, guitar (the most common one). You don't really feel each and every note when you are learning. Instead, you try to analyse how to move the finger, how to make your right and left hand go in sync, how to alternate upstrokes and downstrokes, and many more. This all requires rational thinking. And especially when you're dealing with sheet music, that also with varied time signatures, you're doomed if you are not paying attention to the counts and the notes.
So the conclusion might seem evident now. Music is also, like any other art, dichotomously divided into its "feeling" side and it's "technical" side. There must, therefore be an optimum combination of these two contrasting forces for your music to be in equilibrium (Oh, how I love economics).
Recently my English teacher was teaching us about two artificial divisions of speech - form and content. I didn't really get what he was trying to say, but the basic thing was that content has what you're trying to say and form shows how. In music, we could analogise this form and content with the technical and the feeling side. Our feeling, the main reason why we're making a certain song (I'm talking from the viewpoint of composers) is the "content", while the techniques that we use for making that particular song, so that people can hear (sense) and feel it (like I said before, feeling arises out of a sense), is the " form". Both are distinct, yet both are required. And most importantly, both must be in balance.
Almost everyone, at the first levels of their composing, focus more on the technical side, to make their song more difficult. This invariably leads to an increased technique oriented but a very little flow oriented song. Because the song is expressing far too much than what you intended, if you had any intention at all.
However, after a certain level, we all tend to realise an important lesson, penned down most spectacularly by Leonardo da Vinci as "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication". True, when a song is simple, it becomes very easy to connect to. And it furthermore adds to what you're trying to say, or in other words the "content" becomes very much evident.
But what about the techniques then, that we've worked so hard to learn? True, a simple song is better, but simplicity should not reach an extreme level that it is in total excess of complexity. Like I said before, the forces must be in equilibrium. Combination of a good flow with simplistic articulations along with a few technical and complex hinges can make a song really soulful and interesting at the same time.
The ultimate conclusion is that, not only in music, but in every facet of life, the best results are achieved when two contrasting forces are in balance. So let us all lead our lives in the best possible ways we can, by balancing our cconrasting sides. And most of all, let's listen and make music having these totally different forces in balance.
Afterall, what are feelings? I believe it is a specific kind of thought that has more impact on our mind. Something which, in a sense, is an intensified version of a certain thought. And what is based on what we sense.
So, is thinking necessary in music? Because, if you think, and by thinking I am attributing to "rationalism", then you won't be able to feel, which I am attributing to "emotions generated due to chemical reactions that occur due to a certain thought".
We all will agree that music lies in feeling, because that is when each note makes your heart thump with a certain emotion. If you just rationalise, you won't get music, because music isn't something like Mathematics (no offence to Maths, in face I really like math but all I mean to say here is that music and math are two different things).
However, music might lie in thinking as well. Say suppose you're learning to play an instrument, guitar (the most common one). You don't really feel each and every note when you are learning. Instead, you try to analyse how to move the finger, how to make your right and left hand go in sync, how to alternate upstrokes and downstrokes, and many more. This all requires rational thinking. And especially when you're dealing with sheet music, that also with varied time signatures, you're doomed if you are not paying attention to the counts and the notes.
So the conclusion might seem evident now. Music is also, like any other art, dichotomously divided into its "feeling" side and it's "technical" side. There must, therefore be an optimum combination of these two contrasting forces for your music to be in equilibrium (Oh, how I love economics).
Recently my English teacher was teaching us about two artificial divisions of speech - form and content. I didn't really get what he was trying to say, but the basic thing was that content has what you're trying to say and form shows how. In music, we could analogise this form and content with the technical and the feeling side. Our feeling, the main reason why we're making a certain song (I'm talking from the viewpoint of composers) is the "content", while the techniques that we use for making that particular song, so that people can hear (sense) and feel it (like I said before, feeling arises out of a sense), is the " form". Both are distinct, yet both are required. And most importantly, both must be in balance.
Almost everyone, at the first levels of their composing, focus more on the technical side, to make their song more difficult. This invariably leads to an increased technique oriented but a very little flow oriented song. Because the song is expressing far too much than what you intended, if you had any intention at all.
However, after a certain level, we all tend to realise an important lesson, penned down most spectacularly by Leonardo da Vinci as "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication". True, when a song is simple, it becomes very easy to connect to. And it furthermore adds to what you're trying to say, or in other words the "content" becomes very much evident.
But what about the techniques then, that we've worked so hard to learn? True, a simple song is better, but simplicity should not reach an extreme level that it is in total excess of complexity. Like I said before, the forces must be in equilibrium. Combination of a good flow with simplistic articulations along with a few technical and complex hinges can make a song really soulful and interesting at the same time.
The ultimate conclusion is that, not only in music, but in every facet of life, the best results are achieved when two contrasting forces are in balance. So let us all lead our lives in the best possible ways we can, by balancing our cconrasting sides. And most of all, let's listen and make music having these totally different forces in balance.
So music can mean different things to different people.It depends on the mood and the feelings of the person while listening to the music. So when the composer writes the song, he wishes to convey a particular feeling but listeners interpret it depending on their state of mind?
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. It is also not necessary that the listener has to feel what the composer intended. Everyone can interpret music in their own way and create their own imagination out of it. That's why it is an art. :-)
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