In Performance: Part 2 (ish) - Music's Multitudinous Marvels

Well, this will in some ways continue the previous blog I wrote with near the same title, and in some ways it'll relate to my research paper. Why do we perform music? To express ourselves. At least, that's what it is for most of us. So why does music have so much power to express?

In simple terms, music feels like we feel. It relates to us. "You had a bad day... You sing a sad song just to turn it around..." Right? In my paper I researched the negative effects of destructive music on teens and found some pretty interesting trends connecting violence, immorality, and rebellion with rap and heavy metal.

On Friday, Dr. Ray Smith came to MV and did a small clinic with the jazz band. (For those of you unacquainted with him or his credentials, do either of the following. 1. Ask Brayden, or 2. know that he's just about the best saxophone player in the state). He is very well renowned and knows his stuff (hence, the Doctorate). He was talking about the melodic approach we were taking with a ballad, and said there needed to be more contrast. "Make the loud parts screaming loud, and the soft parts barely discernible." He then proceeded to give me a straight forward answer why music is so capable of transferring emotions.

In all songs, you constantly have swells and releases. Correct terms for this is arsis and thesis. Or rising action, climax, and falling action. Tension and release. Inhale and exhale... and he tied it to our lives. Our whole life is filled with these tensions and releases. Constantly! And each small sequence like breathing, when put together, constitutes a greater sequence just the same. Instead of just one breath, you might look at the breathing of someone as they watch a scary movie. Or during a marathon. Or during their life. Everything can be seen as tension building up, and then release of that tension. The same thing happens in music. You can look at 2 chords or music and assign them a role of building or releasing tension. Or 2 measures. Or 2 lines. Or 2 sections. Or 2 movements. And then you look at the whole piece.

If one were to graph his or her life like you would a sound wave (the higher the wave the more stress, the lower the wave the more relaxation), the similarities would be striking. Or just go look at any popular song you hear on the radio. They start small-ish, maybe a guiltar or piano for a few choruses. It's not too busy yet. The guitar climaxes, comes down, and the vocal comes in. They sing the verse, and the chorus comes. Enter, drum set! Groove well established, the song proceeds into the second verse. At the second or third chorus, there's often a climax, followed by a bridge, and then another verse and chorus as the song starts to wind down. At the end, you're left with the same instrumentation you started with. A lone guitar and one final chord. A a perfect example is 100 Years by Five for Fighting. Just like one hour, one day, one week, one month, one year, one decade of our lives. I won't go through and analyze how it all shows tension and release, but it does. Just look at it!

And then you take what the music is saying into account. If the cycle of the music matches your life, then what the music is saying or suggesting could have great impact. But most of us don't listen to the lyrics anyways. Even scarier! Then we don't even know what we're being told to do while 'under the influence' of music. All because music has tremendous powers of expressing emotion. Because music literally uses sound waves to imitate the emotions that we feel. Crazy, eh?