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Music is more than a casual leisure, an art or the new way to increase the benefits of a company. It is all of that and even more. The music industry is a rich ecosystem in which everyone and everything has a specific place. From the composer to the listener, from psychology to spirituality, from art to science, get insights on each field of music, learning about craft or history, about human behavior or consciousness. A place is also given to ethical questions.
MUSICAL CULTURE IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS
MUSIC AND CONSCIOUSNESS, BETWEEN MIND AND BODY
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Music listening, emotions and spirituality
For decades, researchers in the field of music psychology have tried to determine if human beings value music for itself or for the emotions that music evokes. They have also debated the source of emotional answers to music, some researchers saying that music listeners only mimic the emotions they perceive in music, other ones saying that listeners truly engage in emotions transmitted through music. What do you think? That the truth is probably somewhere in between? It depends probably on listeners and on types of music.
The researchers also want to determine if music and spirituality are inherently related. Strange subject? Non-demonstrable? Anyhow, for millenia, music has been played during religious ceremonies. Hence it is naturally linked to the main events of human life: marriage, death, birth, relationship to the universe, etc. And these events generally involve a succession of emotions. So, what is it possible to conclude, without going too far? Recently, Michael Lowis, a music psychologist, simply said that the more people feel them as spiritual, the more they perceive music to have spiritual or religious qualities. And, of course, everyone knows that musicians attracted by spirituality and religion compose music so that people sharing their beliefs get the benefits of it. Examples are numerous, from Gregorian chant to New Age Music. Perhaps this is a little brief and does not say so much about how individuals may experience music listening as an individual act.
Einstein, genius and music listening
Everyone knows Einstein for his theory of general relativity, which is a geometric theory of gravitation published in 1915 for which he gained a Nobel Prize in physics. Rabindranath Tagore, less known in the West, was a Bengali polymath and also a musician, a political activist, a painter, a poet and a novelist who also won a Nobel Prize, in Literature. In 1930, both met at Einstein’s home in Berlin to talk about all sorts of cultural subjects. It was the occasion for Einstein to claim how he saw music listening as a very intimate act.
During that dialog, Tagore established a parallelism between music and the human personality, which was for him like a general melodic arrangement in which each individual could improvise. It means that he saw the human character as a sort of composer while the individual was a performer. Also, he compared melody and harmony to lines and colours in images, one enhancing the other.
For his part, Einstein said that it would have been interesting to know the effects of European music on an Oriental that had never heard it in youth. However, Einstein was convinced that music could not be analyzed, saying that, like everything essential in the human experience, music listening belonged to a very intimate reality.
Knowing that Einstein contributed greatly to define the concept of ‘genius’ through his work, it is very interesting: his remarks may suggest the idea that music listening, like anything else, may be an attribute of genius. Genius may be defined as an extraordinary intellectual ability or an exceptional creativity. It may also define a person with tremendous skills in a particular area.
Does music listening have its own genius?
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The sound of rock and roll and the human psyche
The invention of the electric guitar
The very first trials to create a string instrument louder than the existing ones date back to the 1920s: in 1925, John Dopyera created a guitar with three aluminium resonators, which produced a sound much more metallic and louder than the sound produced by the traditional acoustic guitar. And just after the creation of the first electric Hawaiian guitar by Adolph Rickenbacher in 1939, the first electric guitar as known from the beginning of rock and roll was built by a jazz musician known as Les Paul in 1940.
Electric guitars are solid-body guitars: in a solid-body guitar, the usual sound box found in an acoustic guitar, which contains an open chamber helping to create natural resonance, disappears. Instead of relying on such a chamber, the solid-body guitar depends on an electric system that sends vibrations to the strings of a guitar. Today, some electric guitars even have electronic preamplifiers that help performers to equalize the frequencies of the sounds, amplifiers allowing them to increase the volume of the sound. Solid-body electric guitars typically have six strings (for some models, it is seven or eight).
What are the effects of the rock sounds on individuals?
But what are the origins of these sounds so typical to rock? There are various sources. For instance, in the 1910s, blues musicians like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee were already playing some of them. During the 1940s, in brass ensembles, the withdrawn sound of the guitar is hardly heard, despite the presence of guitarists like Charlie Christian. Faced with the saxophonist, the role of the guitarist is reduced. During the 1950s, these ensembles toured a lot and made recordings in studios. The number of musicians being reduced, guitarists like Carl Hogan became successful, however the guitar stayed in the background.
Today, the situation is radically different. From the 1960s, rock concerts have been in a sense similar to religious ceremonies, so much so that some guitarists like Eric Clapton are sometimes called ‘God’ and there are ‘Guitar Gods’, a list established by the Rolling Stones, who recently included their first woman, Kaki King. Why? It seems that, using the guitar, charismatic music performers can excite passions amongst a high number of individuals.
For musicians as well as for listeners, it seems that the sound of the solid-body guitar has the power to turn an introverted individual into an extrovert. It is no coincidence as its manufacturing has been refined over decades, at the frontiers of science and musical art: the electric guitar is powered by electromagnetic induction, during which a changing magnetic field generates electricity. When the metallic strings of the solid-body guitar are picked up by microphones, it creates an electric current and the produced sounds are sent to an amplifier.
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Choosing to open the ears
Is music about showing off, dancing and finding a mate? Yes, a lot of people and even well-known musicians say. Music is a way to make a to communicate with a specific objective. Music conveys powerful meanings, even if it is not easy for people to decipher them. Why? Music is made of sounds and sounds hit the chest, plug directly into the nervous system, as well as reaching the ear. That direct effect music has on the body may be pleasant or not. Whatever advertisers say, people do not always want to hear loud sounds when they enter in a shop to buy a shirt. They may feel them as unwanted, unpleasant events.
Music is pleasant when people choose to open their ears and listen to music. In that situation, music composers, performers and listeners may literally absorb music. Also, they are curious and want to communicate with music. When listeners love a piece of music from start to finish, it really brings something into their life and they may be grateful for that. Furthermore, they can remember the moment when they discovered that piece of music, they want to hear it again, share it, and thank composers and performers for their work.
Listening to music as it is made by musicians
When people really love the musical production of an artist, they accept that the artist may present something new or unfinished, even before well-known songs. That is part of the fun for musicians when they are touring. Listeners can be pleased too, especially as, in the field of music, they are now accustomed to online massive listening and quick browsing. These improvisations may be fruitful and sometimes it may happen that big hits just arise like an afterthought of a rough recording, before becoming a standard.
Music listeners may feel how a piece of music written by a musician they appreciate is rhythmically and melodically different from pieces written by other artists or by the same artist during a different musical period. Even when they are not trained musically, they feel that when the production has a weakness, it does not matter, and on the contrary the weakness may put the emphasis on other qualities. For example, when pop rock stars leave a musical group because they are said to be bad at drumming, if they begin a solo career, their songs may be highly appreciated for manifesting a great sense of rhythm. It means that music listeners, once convinced, accept musicians for what they are: composers and performers with their strengths and weaknesses. It is especially true in the field of popular music, where listeners are not expecting virtuosos. True music listeners are believers, and that does not mean they do not practice critical thinking: they believe in what they hear and feel while listening. So music listening is first about listening!
Is music listening about opening the ears?
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What is musical talent?
Talent is somehow linked to a person’s purpose in life, thus to passion. Considered in that manner, talent may be an element helping a person to progress faster. More precisely, people that have a particular talent and nurture it with love and excitement may expand themselves more. In that context, the role of family, friends and acquaintances may be essential, however not necessarily. Interest and tenacity reside in the very existence of the individual, whatever the main center of interest a person has: music or education, for instance.
Thus why do some people say ‘I am not musical’? What does it mean? One meaning may be that people who say that do not want to become professional musicians, but the reasons to make such a statement may be numerous. To know if they want to develop musical abilities, be it at the professional level or not, people must just ask themsleves whether they want to invest time in music, and if the answer is yes, work a lot in order to reach their target.
What does foster musicality?
Music expresses itself through composers and performers, who choose to dedicate their professional life to it. So the first element nurturing musicality is, besides musical practice and knowledge, desire itself. The joy of composing or playing is of course central to sustain musical activities, however it is not only about satisfaction. Persistence and determination matter too. And physical endurance is not to be neglected, especially for performers.
Therefore, far away from the idea of a ‘musical genius’, musical talent is linked to the acquisition of specific aptitudes, some being strictly musical. Music is not monolithic, it includes various aspects like rhythm, pitch or timbre. Some musicians may be good when it comes to composing rhythms, but it will be less easy for them to develop a sense of timbre or pitch. Therefore, having a musical talent is not only or not always about competing to be the best, it may mean identifying areas of weakness and reducing them.
Musical listeners
Musical talent is of course acquired to be shared. There is probably no passionate musician that wants to play forever in the secrecy of a private room. And after composers and performers, listeners too must develop musical abilities in order to enjoy sounds and structures of music.
Even if there are a lot of methods and people that claim to describe the ideal music listener, none of them is objective. Ear training is objective: in fact, some people who take the time to develop their perception faculties will in fact have a more accurate ear than those who do not. Musical culture, if it is partially relative, is in some ways impartial too: some musical works are recognized by a lot of people as making a more important contribution to the musical art than other ones, and some conductors or performers deploy more virtuosity than others. However, music listening tastes are, in the end, very personal, because they are related to the life story of an individual and that life story is partly, by nature, private.
To be musical, what does it mean?
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A musical consciousness to increase love of life?
What is consciousness and how does it relate to music?
Consciousness is the state in which human beings are aware of their environment. It is a fundamental experience giving rise to thoughts and feelings. Experiencing it is possible through the five senses and it helps to discover the existence of the self, others and the world. Whether it arises in it or comes from another source, it happens in the brain. It may change the dynamics and the make-up of what humans experience themselves to be and who they project themselves to be to others; that is to say, basically, how they understand the universe as a whole.
How does consciousness relate to music? Sounds may affect our consciousness in multiple ways. The relationship between consciousness and music being individual, the types of thoughts and feelings that will emerge from it are legion. And not only during music listening activities, but also in the framework of general culture. For instance, a real-estate owner may develop an awareness of the power of music by reading the writer Goethe, who called architecture frozen music. Then, being aware, he thinks about that, and he decides to develop personal thoughts around the fact that building one house, building one head and building one heart may be part of a whole process that gives a meaning to existence. Then he shares these thoughts. That is one example out of millions! And it is based on a true story.
Appeals to consciousness in musical works
For musicians of course, there are more direct ways to express their consciousness of various realities through music: music composition and performance. In the field of popular music, stars like Madonna or, more recently, Tina Turner, experienced the benefits of meditation and oriental culture in their life and wanted to integrate elements of that culture in their musical work. That is how, during the 2010s, Turner sang a peace mantra accompanied by a chorus of children.
The attraction for oriental music amongst pop rock stars is long-standing and by 1966, a member of The Beatles, George Harrison, had met Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar in London and became his student. The result was that the sound of the sitar was introduced into songs written by the Beatles, and it inspired the creation of a new music genre named raga rock. During the 1970s, after the separation of The Beatles, Harrison worked again with Shankar.
When such musicians decide to use music in order to increase their level of consciousness, they invite their listeners to act in the same way. What listeners listen to may partly condition who they are, as they are tuning themselves to the sounds they perceive. And when listeners truly listen to music, when they give their attention to what is coming into their ears, they are in a better position to associate meaning to music and relate it to their life. They let music pump them up for something.
A musical consciousness to increase love of life?