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Music as a language
Just for fun here is a real fascinating TED talk video about music by Victor Wooten, an accomplished bassist and music teacher, for all the musicians here, as well as the rest of us who just love music. He makes the point that to be a musician, it’s not about learning the instrument first, it’s about what you have to say. Put another way, it’s being musical first, and then putting your music through an instrument. Music is a language.
As I try to grasp the piano, this is quite a radical concept for me, and for some of us who never got into playing an instrument, or contemplating it, encouraging. 🙂 What do other musicians here think of this message?
Be sure to listen to the last few minutes of the video where he makes some really inspiring points about music in general and it’s purpose in the world today.
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93 Replies
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I agree with this, like in poetry, you write first what it is that compels , inspires you to write , wish to convey,and then once that’s established it flows musically out of mind onto paper, tablet, in a song, etc to be interpreted as it is and/or how the person reading or hearing ,wishes to interpret it for themselves to have better meaning for them . Music is indeed a language of it’s own that has power in which that is universal and bestows harmony and purpose, emotions, etc. , healing, comfort, and yes, sometimes negative effects, but more so works for the good intentions….???
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Jacki, it seems that gets right to the essence of art. Whether it is Music, poetry, paintings etc you are an artist first expressing inspiration and emotions through these different mediums.
A big question is where does that inspiration come from? Bob Dylan referred to it as that “well spring of creativity”
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There was another interesting talk I came across where they explain why music expresses emotions better than words can.
It has to do with basic chord triads and how major chords express happy emotions and minor chords tend to express sad emotions. The difference between happy and sad are just different placement of 3 notes relative to each other, mixing of specific frequencies. These simple chords have enormous subtle potential of representing human emotions. Harmony stack up pitches to form chords, capable of representing incredible varieties of emotions.
As music developed over the centuries, harmony grew more complex to reflect it was capable of expressing emotions beyond the ability of words.
As I learn to play chords on piano, this topic is just fascinating to me!
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It has always amazed me that something as complex as human emotions can be triggered by a simple combination of three sound frequencies, and that the emotion can be completely flipped with just a slight change in one of the frequencies. I wonder if cognitive scientists have any theories on why this is the case. Are the associations of happiness with major chords, and sadness with minor chords, shared by all cultures? If so, does this phenomenon extend to other primates as well?
Since I started playing the ukulele a year ago I have been introduced to the world of seventh chords, if that’s the correct general term for A7, Am7, etc. Is there any particular emotion typically associated with them? To me they are like commas, leaving me waiting for the upcoming major chord to complete the musical thought.
Another aspect of music and language that intrigues me is the process of composing songs in so-called tonal languages, where a word is identified not just by a particular combination of phonetic sounds but also by whether the tone is rising, falling, high, low, etc. I wonder if there are situations where a composer thinks, “I really want to use this word here, but it’s a high-tone word and a low note, so I have to come up with something else.”
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Some really intriguing points you bring up David. I don’t think anyone is tone deaf, but quite the contrary we all have an amazing ear for music, everyone of us.
I’ll go out a little on a limb here, but I think there is an innate connection between human spirit/emotions and musical notes (frequencies) and harmony/chords (stacking of multiple frequencies) and musical structure, intervals and silence. After all, our thoughts when the brain is hooked up to an electronic scope, are portrayed as wave patterns which is what musical notes and chords effectively are, multiple frequencies or compressed air wave patterns transported from the instrument to our ear drums.
And if we bring Bach into the picture, there is mathematics lurking in the music too. If brain wave patterns can be expressed in terms of mathematical formulas, then can emotions be expressed mathematically? Intriguing indeed! But as you point out, how exactly certain combinations of notes appear as sad emotion or happy emotion to us is a mystery. I’ve seen some videos that try to explain this mystery. Will have to check those out.
For those interested, here is another interesting TED talk by famed guitarist Tommy Emmanuel whom MLT are a big fan of. It is impressive how he can play two or more voices plus the rhythm/drum section on his single guitar (one man band). Wow, I never thought this was possible on a guitar. Another inspiring TED talk by a brilliant musician.
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This guy is incredible, Jung!
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Interesting topic Jung. It is amazing what an affect music can have on us. I’d go out further on that limb and suggest that music also has an effect on the emotions of animals and am also quite ready to believe that music can be beneficial to plants. I don’t think prince Charles is alone there!
Tommy Emmanuel is definitely a ‘One Man Band’ and I can understand why Mona and Lisa are fans. They even purchased Tommy’s preferred brand of guitar, Maton, while they were in Australia.
I’ll let Tommy Emmanuel have the last word: “And just remember folks, that life is not a rehearsal. So you better get on with it.“
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Thanks Howard! Yes I definitely believe that about music having an affect on animals and plants too. I remember years ago in some science program they showed how a school of fish reacted to music. I can’t remember how exactly they got music playing underwater but the swimming pattern of the school of fish started to change as the music was played correlating to the pattern/rhythm of the music.
That Maton guitar Tommy Emmanuel was playing looked very well used as you can see the finish worn right down to the wood grain in certain places. It must be perfectly tuned and naturally adapted to his playing. That guitar is going to be worth something one day if it survives.
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Here is an interesting video about Bach’s inspiration in modern music today. I’m not posting this to push classical music, and hope no one takes it that way, but rather to illustrate how musical inspiration was passed down over the centuries by one legend to another. In the first example Paul Simon’s Bridge Over Troubled Water has some melodic parts inspired by Bach, but in fact upon further research, Bach was inspired by a series of composers that predate him by a few centuries. Not unlike how Elvis had an influence on the Beatles. Artistic greatness perpetuates more greatness. Perhaps inspiration is a combination of that mysterious “well spring of creativity” Dylan talked about as well as inspiration passed down over the ages, that artistic creativity that perpetuate from one great artist to the next as creative inspiration builds on the inspiration of others over time, always evolving. Bridge over Trouble Waters is certainly a masterpiece in it’s own right, does not sound at all like repetition of something Bach did, but contains inspiration evolved over the centuries by many great artistic minds, to create something wonderfully new and inspired.
There is Bach’s Organ Toccata and Fugue in D minor mentioned in the video that influenced a number of rock artists as illustrated in the video, some even unintentionally, like I personally think in AC/DCs Thunderstruck. Malcolm Young’s rhythm’s guitar riff is reminiscent of some of Bach’s organ riffs in my opinion.
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If you thought what Tommy Emmanuel could do with a guitar was amazing, check out what is possible with the Cello too! This is Angus and Malcolm Young does 17th century Vienna. I think they would have fit in!
…and Bach would have approved!!!
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That’s another interesting video about Bach Jung. Thanks for sharing. And the two cellos video is incredible. I’m sure Bach would have been impressed, but not so sure about the audience in the video. They look quite shocked, much like the audience in the “Back to the Future” movie where the hero plays modern Rock ‘n Roll.
We have discussed the inspirations in contemporary music with classical music in other posts and I’m sure we will again. It is a rich vein to be mined.
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Lol…funny that you mention the movie ” Back to the Furure” and that particular scene from it, I own the BTTF trilogy movie set on VHS tape that I got for Xmas one year as the trilogy series is one of my fave all time movie series, and that particular part in the BTTF1 is one of my fave scenes from it…..yes, the audience’s reaction to what was yet to come….priceless…but at least Chuck Berry’s cousin in the movie was quite impressed by it, enough to call up Chuck….lol
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I never quite understood how Bach incorporated math into music, or how some musical theorists see math in music. In this interesting little video, they try to explain how in both math and music there is a common pattern of symmetry that yield beautiful results, and Bach was a master at this. They show how there is symmetry in the harmony. The theme harmonizes with a slowed down version of itself. The melody repeats many times in different forms throughout the music. I never fully grasped that, but this video illustrates it visually in an amazing way. If we dissect a Beatles song, or any of the great rock/pop songs, I wonder if the same kind of repeating symmetry can be seen. My intuition says yes. What do you think?
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Once again, truly fascinating, Jung!
It seems to me that writing a song this way requires deliberate planning, and having different tempos for the same pattern of notes removes the basic structure of verse and chorus that pretty much defines classic rock and roll. I imagine the Beatles and other groups were more concerned with the second-by-second construction of chords and individual lines of music, rather than this lovely but relatively unpunctuated type of composition.
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You make a good point David, creating recurring symmetric harmonic patterns like in that Bach example would involve very deliberate planning. In some of the analysis of Beatles music I’ve seen, Paul McCartney and John Lennon are credited for having an uncanny ability to create some very complex and inspired musical structure from classical music in their own music just because it sounded right to them, most likely unknowingly because neither had any formal music training. It was intuitive to them, and that is probably their gift.
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