“For me music is a thing that affects the way we
live, sound is made up of vibrations in the air and air is something we cannot
live without. So music, quite literally, is carried by a source of life. Music
in my opinion vibes off of life and is affected by it and affects it all the
same.”--- Brandon Gray, 2012
My views, thoughts,
and ideas about what music is, why we use it, and what it does for us as a
human race is ever changing. So when I recently heard this statement by one of
the greatest modern thinkers of our time, I couldn’t help but to continue in
the way I think about music, but I also evolved a little further. I have always
known and felt that music was a huge part of my life and a big part in other people’s
life whether they realize it or not, music affects us in many ways and it also sustains
our life in a sense. We are constantly listening to music, it is playing over
the speakers at the stores we shop in, the elevators we wait in, and it comes
standard in the vehicles we drive. Music is projected to a crowd at sporting
events, concert halls, and also sang and played in our churches. We listen to
it seamlessly from our phones, digital music players, tablets, compact disc
players, and computers. We have a hard time finding a place where there is not
music playing. Harder still is finding somewhere to escape to that sound is completely
non-existent, if our tympanic membranes are
working correctly, silence literally cannot be found.
John Cage wrote
about this after visiting a silent chamber: “It
was at Harvard not quite forty years ago that I went into an anechoic [totally
silent] chamber not expecting in that silent room to hear two sounds: one high,
my nervous system in operation, one low, my blood in circulation. The reason I did not expect to hear
those two sounds was that they were set into vibration without any intention on
my part. That experience gave my life direction, the exploration of no
intention…..”---John Cage, 1990.
Cage showed, not only
is there no such thing as silence, but this non silence is realized in concert
halls by coughs, sniffles, movements of the crowd, the entertainers and even the
building itself, see 4'33". It can also be noticed in the hum of our computers
while listening to music digitally, or the noises around us as we drive through
the city with music playing and the windows down. But do these extra sounds
hinder or add to our musical listening experience? Would it feel weird if we
heard absolutely nothing but the sound we wanted to listen to? If you listen to Indeterminacy, a spoken word piece by John Cage and David Tudor, Cage talks
about a women coming up to Tudor and asking him to play his piano piece again
with the windows in the room closed so the traffic would not interrupt the
music, he responded that he would replay the piece, but having the window
closed would have no different effect on the music then when they were open. So
it seems that the music we make as humans is wholly inspired by extra or
unexpected sound.
We all have our
preferences on what we like to hear while listening to music, some like the Pop
genre, some Hip-hop, some Jazz, while others Rock n Roll, some still prefer
Classical, Country-Western, Noise, or Electronic, some like myself enjoy a
great variety of all of these genres, plus many more genres, sub-genres and a variety
of other sounds. All music genres feed off one another, and all of them
essentially start with random sound, but to make random sound classifiable it has
to be collected and manipulated until it reaches tones, timbres, pitches,
volume levels, and or rhythms that are pleasing and understandable (this will
sound different to different people). So could we say that someone who
experiments with found sound is experimenting with the roots of classifiable music? Yes,
but that would not then in turn make these experiments not music because they
still pose some form of tone, timbre, pitch, volume, and or rhythm. Just
because sound cannot be classified does not make it non-music. To say someone
embarking on an improvised (not written down or unable to write down) sound
journey is not playing music is absurd, yet many people have this interpretation.
If you are beating on a drum, or beating on an old keg you are making music. If
you are pulling at the strings of a harp or on professional wrestling gym ropes,
the sound is still music. Furthermore if you are chanting quietly or screaming
loudly, you are making sound and in turn making music. There is no way to
separate sounds and say this is music and this is not. Therefore if one type of
sound is music say the blowing of a trumpet, then all sounds must be music,
such as the infamous piece of Yoko Ono, flushing a toilet "Toilet Piece".
Music is how we
interact with others, it can change our mood, evolve our ideas, and even help us
become closer to God; Saint Augustine says “For he who sings praise, does not only praise, but also praises
joyfully; he who sings praise, not only sings, but also loves Him whom he is
singing about/to/for. There is a praise-filled public proclamation in the
praise of someone who is confessing/acknowledging (God), in the song of the
lover (there is) love.” Music is our life, it sustains us in everything we do, whether
we like it or not. Without music, we in some ways, many ways, are lost. So as
the old African proverb goes “If you can talk then you can sing, if you can walk
then you can dance.” So sing and stomp your feet, both of which are making
music. Whether you are good at playing an instrument or singing, does not
pertain to if you are making music or not, so even if your music will not go
platinum in record sales, play it. Making sound intentionally or
unintentionally is our life, it is how we communicate. It is the after effect
of us breathing, our movements, and our ideas put into action, classifiable or
otherwise.
