My Music - student choice

    I have been playing and writing music for about 3-4 years now. I approach music very differently than many of my friends, and sadly this makes it difficult for us to write music together, but I think my approach to music has some similarities with the cultures we have studied this semester. I write music by ear. The very first time I picked up an instrument, I tried to learn a song, became bored, and then began writing a song. At that point, I had no knowledge of the names of notes or even what playing in key meant. I was writing based upon only my feelings. I have never tried to articulate this before, so please bear with me. When I write music, certain sounds or notes or patterns become characters in my mind. They have personalities and desires. They are alive. They are not a “C minor 7th chord” to me. They are more likely to be a young boy, purposefully lost in the woods behind his house. The chords and sounds that I build around this boy push his story forward. The “bridge section” of the song is better described as “the part when the young boy hears his mom calling his name and moves deeper into the woods, because he is not ready to return to his house.” As my musical knowledge grows, I have to continuously trick myself into not understanding music again because my best songs come out of pure feeling. I routinely tune my guitar to new tunings where I cannot play the chords that I sometimes default to, and I am forced to play my guitar not knowing what I am playing on an academic level. 

I am a huge nerd and I am deeply steeped in Western tradition, having come from a classical, Christian school. Music is an outlet for me that does not fit in my comfort zone. It is far more similar to Tribal culture than anything else in my life. Learning about the role of dancing in Oral traditions was eye opening to me and my relationship with writing music. In class we talked about how dancing is at odds with knowing. I loved that statement. For me, writing music is at odds with knowing, and it has to be, otherwise I would not be able to gain an emotional release from it. 


April 20, 2022

 

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