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What is music to you?
Hi Mona and Lisa
Could I ask you a “meaning of life kind of question” for the weekend.
What is music to you? If you were to explain what music is to a child, how would you explain it? When you write new music, how does it come to you? Both being so musically gifted and having devoted your life to it, would love to hear your thoughts on this deep question. No pressure. 🙂
Just for fun, I found this very short scene clip from the movie Immortal Beloved about Beethoven, where they try to explain what music is in the movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7LmeLfg5t0
What do you think about what they said?
Thanks
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14 Replies
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Wow Jung! That is a very deep question. The Twins are going to have to pull out their PhD thesis for that one! But like you, I’d also like to hear their thoughts on it, and Jacki’s as well – no pressure!
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What an endlessly fascinating subject. Reading everyone else’s answers here I think is the best proof of how we all experience what music does to us in a slightly different way. I’d say the majority of people would agree that it is something so essential to the human experience that it almost takes on a mystical and philosophical element that is hard to put into concrete words. Like what is love or what does it mean to experience.
I never tried to formulate my thoughts around that subject but this is how I would currently do it, (though I’m sure people much cleverer than I have dug a lot deeper and worded it a lot more eloquently ;-)) :
In its most basic form I would say I consider art to be some kind of a short-cut way of communication. But in a terribly profound way. There is no setup needed, no explanation, often no words or even the need to understand the language. Some of the music that has moved me the deepest was long before I knew English well enough to understand the song’s lyrical meaning.
It transports feelings, thoughts, a state of mind, sometimes lyrics and ideas, memories, even physical sensations through nothing than some soundwaves hitting your eardrums. If you think about that for a while it becomes so mind-boggling that you can’t help but think music is some sort of weird unexplainable witch craft :-).
But next to watching a really captivating movie (which without music would still be dull as hell 😉 ) it’s probably the closest thing we have to travelling in time or space without physically moving.
I think people also enjoy and want music in their lives so much because, even in its most primitive forms, it always speaks to the part in us that looks for the comfort of harmony and patterns, of things coming together to form something coherent. Instruments, a beat, melody etc. turning into one.For creatures who very much dislike chaos and disarray I guess music is the easiest way of finding something that speaks to our need of having things play together in harmony. Again, in its most basic form. I believe that the most exciting and meaningful music then takes this concept and pushes the boundaries, shakes it up a little, leaves you with just the right amount of ease and unease to keep your attention.
Then there is a whole cultural aspect, the poetry/storytelling aspect, the way people use music as a way to identify and to belong, etc. The different purposes of music. To motivate, to regulate emotions, to relax or to heighten one’s alertness, get out anger etc. I mean, what music can do to one’s brain is simply insane. We tie memories and times of our lives so strongly to music. The kind of music we grow up with gets engraved pretty involuntarily into who and what we become in the future.
And then there is the whole aspect of creating music yourself. Learning and mastering an instrument, the repetitive and disciplinary aspect of that. The physical aspect of getting your body to produce what your mind wants to hear.
And then when it gets to the actual songwriting: Where does inspiration actually come from? What exactly is an idea and how can one influence one’s own ideas? How does one really produce ideas? What can someone do to build a foundation that’s going to allow good or even great ideas to be born? It’s all those weird, slightly abstract questions that once you start thinking about turns into such a huge subject that it hurts my head 😉
I’m sure people have written books about subjects like that, and I understand why – because a forum post is not going to cut it even in the slightest. Music, or art in general, is such a universally accepted concept and phenomenon taken for granted, but once you start looking into it more it becomes this unfathomably complex thing that so much of our reality is built upon.
To be able to partake in an artform this wonderful and strangely mysterious with the potential of bringing joy to a large number of people is amazing ♥
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Hi Lisa
Thank you so very, very much for your incredible answer to “What music is to you”; I’m just blown away. Really appreciate your going out of your way to provide such a thoughtful and eloquent response. Just coming back to reality from a week vacation on a cruise ship where there was no internet or mobile phone (unless you pay an arm and a leg for satellite internet access), and what a wonderful reading that you wrote to come back to.
I’m moved by your insight into your perspective of what music and art is, and coming from someone who has devoted their entire life to it with so much talent with every aspect of it, it’s like getting a sneak peek into the divine, because as you say there is something “profound” about music. I am going to print and frame what you wrote here about music and art.
When you describe how music is the closest thing to travelling in time and space and how it transports feelings, thoughts, a state of mind, memories, physical sensations through mere physical vibrations to the ear drum, you answered a mystery for me. For me some songs, like the Zombies “Time of the Season” for example gives me incredible reminiscent feelings of the 60’s peace and love and the hippie movement emotions transporting me to that time, but I was only 6 years old by the time the 60’s was over. I always wondered what it was I was feeling because I don’t have any direct experience from that time, and yet when I hear these songs I feel a kind of Déjà vu like emotion of that time. Science explains music as being a trigger for remembering experiences and feelings one associates to a particular song they use to listen to when they had those experiences in life in the past , and while that is true, it does not explain that Déjà vu kind of experience these songs give me now.
Now I see it can only be as you explained, the song writers state of mind the music transports to the listener in a profound way.
Here are some quotes I found about music by great composers I’d like to share with you, Mona and all the fans here:
“What I have in my heart and soul – must find a way out. That’s the reason for music.” Ludwig Van Beethoven
“The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man’s soul.” Ludwig Van Beethoven
“The guitar is a miniature orchestra in itself.” Ludwig Van Beethoven.
“Music can change the world.” Ludwig Van Beethoven
“If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.” John Lennon
“One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen.” Paul McCartney
“I think people who create and write, it actually does flow – just flows from into their head, into their hands, and they write it down. It’s simple.” Paul McCartney
“You can judge a man’s true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.” Paul McCartney. Not about music, but I just like this quote. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm9InzcF_ui/
“I’m always trying to do better music. I don’t know if I’ve written my best song yet. That’s the big question. It doesn’t stop you trying.” Paul McCartney
“I approach my music-making as an art-form–something pure from the spirit to which I can add dynamics and marketable reality. Music is genuine and healthy and the stimulation I get from molding it and adding dynamics is like nothing else on earth.” Brian Wilson
“In its most basic form I would say I consider art to be some kind of a short-cut way of communication. But in a terribly profound way. There is no setup needed, no explanation, often no words or even the need to understand the language. Some of the music that has moved me the deepest was long before I knew English well enough to understand the song’s lyrical meaning.” Lisa Wagner – my favorite quote of them all
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Ahhhhh…well then….let me reply in the best way I know how :
” What Music Means To You !? ”
It is moving poetry
A path of artistic creative sorts
It takes on a chameleon of ports
It ‘s resonation of definition
Differs to whom all it reaches
But most importantly indeed
Are the emotions and messages
It conveys upon and teaches
It inspires
Perhaps causes dancing and singing
Air instrumentation fun
Karaoke – ing
It moves
It flows
It shows
The InnerBeing Thing
How it ‘s reminiscent of a kaleidoscope
The awe in that it does bring
Far outweighs the vanity and wardrobe going
Intergenerational
Music S’mores
Kind of like in sports
It plays
It hits you
Scores
Anytime
Anywhere
Time and places
Transcendent
All faces
Potent Wings
Soar freely
Gifted and Unique
Blessed are we
The existence of The MonaLisa Twins
Quite true
For me this concludes
My reply to
‘What Does Music Mean To You !? ‘…
©JackiHopper2018
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Wow! Just stunning. You guys haven’t left much for the MonaLisa Twins here!
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Thanks Jacki. For me some of the most moving and beautful feelings I ever experienced have been through music. In grade 5 music class we use to sing our music teachers fave song, One Tin Soldier, and it was so incredibly moving for this 10 years old.
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To paraphrase from Tales of Mystery and Imagination by the Alan Parsons Project
Without music, color becomes pallor, man becomes [emotionless], home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless.
It’s rather haunting but I can’t imagine a world without music. It covers the full spectrum of human emotions and for a brief moment allows us to forget our troubles and become one with the music. This is why I’m such a fan of MLT and The Beatles. Their music lifts me up, brightens my mood, gets my toes tapping or my eyes watering. It can be thought provoking but it always touches my inner feelings. The absence of music is akin to the silence of the grave. I hope I can somehow take music with me when I depart for the next plateau.
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I just read Lisa’s response and all I can say is her command of English is amazing, her ability to communicate is astounding and my sense that she and her phenomenal sister are 1 in ten million has been solidified once again!!!
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Lisa, what an impressive, well thought out response and if I didn’t know any better I would never guess that English is your second language.
Two points you elude to that fascinate the hell out of me are time travel and where the ideas come from.
I’m a wanna be author and I’ve written stories with and element of time in them without traversing back in some machine like H.G. Wells’ time traveler did but rather through the mind and through dreams.
Music takes me back to another time as I remember when I first heard a particular song and what I was doing and for a brief 2 to 3 minute period I’m back in my stomping grounds I call the 60’s. To me music is an escape to another time where things made sense and life, to me, was simpler.
As a writer, I find it interesting where my ideas come from. I remember lying on a raft in my pool last summer looking at my surroundings and thinking how everything, green grass, trees, rabbits, birds, clouds looked the same as it did when I was a kid and could almost put myself back in the 60’s. As I watched a jet fly across the sky and through a cloud the idea came to me for the story.
Musically, in my younger days I wrote a lot of songs whose ideas came to me in dreams or just staring at an object that placed a single line of lyric in my head and off it went or maybe just some phrase I heard that intrigued me. Of course as I look back at those songs many written in long hand that I still have, most of them, to quote John Lennon, are pure rubbish and I even wonder what in the world I was thinking when I wrote them. But they do represent a part of what I am.
But I love reading about the songs of other artists and where their ideas came from and I just find it all so interesting. I read a lot of Stephen King and enjoy reading his postscripts where he talks about how the story idea was born and I include one at the end of each of my stories as well. It’s all just so fascinating. So yeah, music taking me back to a moment in time and always curious about where the ideas/inspiration comes from is so intriguing to me.
And as I’ve said so many times before, I can’t imagine my world without music. I guess that was one of my reasons for taking guitar lessons when I was 15 (that and wanting to be in a band). I have an inherent need to not only listen to music but to make my own music as well. Like Wild Thing, it moves me.
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Not to worry guys, my sister tells me I have a great sense of humor. But me tell lies? Well not in the pool. The creature that lives at the bottom doesn’t like liars.
So let me share a story with you regarding words meaning different things. Shortly after I arrived in England in 1972 some guys and I went to a pub in Scarborough. Now back in the 70’s the shag cut (ala Jane Fonda) was quite popular. So one of the local girls we were sitting with had a shag cut so I mentioned how I liked her shag not knowing that in England shag meant something altogether different as I’m sure you know that other meaning. The girls all laughed and I’m like, what did I say? It was explained and I never made that comment again. Probably said something harmless like, I like your hair.
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Wow Lisa.. .I absolutely loved your thoughts… Well put… Now I got inspired poetically again… Thankyou…
Music Matters… It reaches to depths in people in unique ways that is meaningful for to whom it was heard by and what it does…. ????????????????????????????❤️☮️????????????????????
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“How you doing?” is the most unanswered question there is. I’ve always been tempted to say to someone that says that to me “OMG, let me tell you about the day I had today.” Then start going on about anything and nothing. Kind of like my other threat of bringing a covered disk to a family gathering; just that, a dish with a cover and nothing inside (of course that gag would be followed with an edible treat of some kind waiting in my car to be retrieved.).
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At different times during the day or week music can be different things.
1) Music can recall a memory from many years ago: a friend, a special one, family, etc. So, in this way music is a reminder of a feeling I had with someone who meant a lot to me.
2) Music can remind me of situations that I faced over the years. Sometimes it recalls going through the “tough stuff” of life, sometimes it reminds me that often we can get through those tough things, sometimes it reminds me of accomplishments. So, some songs are theme songs of overcoming and sometimes songs are theme songs for the hard things of life.
3) Music in a technical sense is an orderly arrangement of sound. It can be in 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, or some other time beats. The “timing” can change during a song which can at times add to or take away from the song. The orderliness is also found in the verse, chorus, bridge, etc. structure.
4) Music is also an example of different instruments and harmonies working together to give a complete and pleasant sound. If each instrument or vocal part is listened to by itself, then this individual sound may not be pleasant. But, when you layer together the instruments and the vocal harmonies, the “whole” is a pleasant sound. So, in a way it is teamwork.
5) Music is also an expression of something that is within a person. Sometimes feelings about things are so deep that the only way to express it is through a melody or a lyric. Sometimes when I am feeling something so deeply the only way to “get it out” is through a series of chords or notes which turns into a song……sometimes.
6) Finally music will have as many different and unique definitions as there are people.
Mike
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Thanks Michael and Steve for your insight into music. One thing that I see mentioned by many here is how music brings order from chaos. Harmony.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics state when a system, like the expanding universe, is left alone, things tend to fall into disorder and chaos (entropy or disorder tends to increase in the natural universe). Music is the opposite as it brings order and harmony out of chaos, just like life. It is profoundly special and mysterious like life itself.
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