Is all sound music?

“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.