Speak Music

There was a fascinating article in the Seattle Times this week: "Medical: Music gets tuned to our moods" by Lee Bowman, Seattle Times (Wednesday October 13). The article is about research being conducted by music psychologists and audio engineers at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. The objective of this research is to understand how music communicates emotion. And by the terminology "understand", I mean understand to the point of being able to prescribe certain music to alleviate symptoms of ailments ranging from depression to Alzheimer's. The research seeks to understand music's ability to communicate emotion to the point of "developing a mathematical model that a computer program could use to identify musical pieces designed to influence individual moods and alleviate particular problems."

Wow! Science is amazing!

I was interested in this article from several aspects, but primarily as a musician. This article describes research into music's impact on the listener. But what does it mean for those of us who are musicians? If these scientists are proving definitively how music communicates emotion, what are the implications for those of us who create music? This topic begs us to look at music as a language, a formal method of communication.

Written language is good for communicating facts. Music, as this research is proving, is better at communicating emotion. As a real world example of this, consider love scenes in movies. In love scenes, there's typically a song playing, instead of a sports-like play-by-play verbal language description of what's happening on screen. It's also why there are thousands, if not millions, of songs about love but not many songs about, say, recipes. Recipes don't include much emotion. A recipe for meatloaf contains a lot of facts, and some information and instructions. But little emotion. That's why there aren't many songs about meatloaf recipes. Written word is good for communicating facts, but music is the language of emotion.

To communicate in the language of music, we use notes and chords like letters and words are used in the English language. In written language, individual words aren't as important as the meaning conveyed by a phrase of words. And looking at music from this perspective, I suggest that as musicians, we should focus more on the emotion communicated, as opposed to the specific notes that are part of that communication. Your mental activity as you play, should be like your mental activity when you are having a conversation. When you talk, you are usually not focused on individual words, as much as the ideas in your head that you are trying to communicate. When you play or perform, you should concentrate more on the communication of the mood or emotion, than on the individual notes. Pay more attention to the groove, and the feel, than anything else. Locked into the groove, missed notes are hardly noticed. But if you play by focusing on the notes, and you happen to miss one, it can throw off your timing, and the groove is lost, and potentially the next few notes as well as you try to get back on track.

I have applied this perspective on music to my live performances, with amazing results. When I used to perform live, I'd concentrate on the notes of the guitar lines, or vocal lines, or the chords I was playing. The important concept here is that I was focusing on notes and chords (that are made up of notes). But now, I focus more on the aspects of my performance related to the communication of emotion. I concentrate on the feel, the groove. Notes are one only one small fraction of that. But there are so many other aspects of the communication: dynamics, tone, rhythm, crisp distinctions between staccato and legato phrases. It's attention to the detail of all these other aspects of the sounds I'm using to communicate that dominates my on-stage attention. And my playing and my performances have improved dramatically because of this re-directed focus.

This new focus is an easy thing to incorporate into your playing, no matter what your current level of ability, because we all have this in-born ability. To illustrate, think about communicating an emotion with your voice, but with no words. All of you could do this, with a cry, a laugh, a scream, a moan, a sigh, a cough, etc. In other words, with nothing but non-verbal sounds, you can easily communicate emotion. Making sounds to communicate with an instrument is not much different than making sounds with your voice in this respect. As a human, you instinctively feel the emotion associated with certain aspects of sound. A sudden loud noise will evoke an emotion of fright in most mammals. Communicating with sound is natural and in-born. Connect with that aspect of your humanity as you play and perform.

No matter what your level of technical ability as a musician, from seasoned pro, to someone just thinking about starting to take lessons, my advice for you to elevate your playing, is to focus more on communicating emotion with sound, rather than focusing on simply playing the notes. Concentrate on the feel and the groove, and how it communicates. Again, music is the language for communicating emotion. So treat it like a language. Learn to "speak music".

Copyright ©2010 W.A. Blevins