What is music? No, don’t go to a dictionary and look up some lame definition. In your own words, define music. Can you do it so that another person will clearly understand what you mean and be able to duplicate music given your definition and their ability to create?
Okay, I’m going to give you my definition and then we’re going to discuss it.
Music definition: Pitched sounds strung together in some kind of rhythmic sequence which may or may not also contain spoken or sung words.
There you go. That’s my definition of music and I’m willing to defend it to the death.
Okay, you’re probably wondering why I brought this up and where I’m going with it. In order to explain, I need to provide you with a little background information.
I woke up this morning, turned on the computer and went to a music forum for a course I’m taking on songwriting and somebody made a comment that this wasn’t music.
So I went to the video and listened to it. I don’t know about you, but not only is that music by the “accepted” definition but it’s not even the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life. In fact, I kind of got into it. It has a good beat, some interesting melodic phrases and it’s certainly different.
Musical taste is a funny thing. One person’s piece of crap is another person’s work of art. And I can understand somebody saying that they don’t like a particular piece of music. There’s music that I don’t particularly care for. As much as I’m trying to get into dubstep, there are some real hard core tunes that just have way too many drops and wubs for me to get into. After a while it all just becomes a little overwhelming, especially when you’re listening to a 90 minute mix.
But I digress.
Point is, even though some dubstep is too hardcore for me, I will never go as far as to say it’s not “music.”
When we start classifying things as music or not music because of our personal tastes, we diminish art in general.
I don’t know how old you are. I’m getting there. I’ll be 57 this November. When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, my mom would always make comments about rock and roll not being music. Do you know that just before she passed away in 2009, she was actually playing stuff on the piano by Kansas and ELO?
Our tastes change as we grow. But music doesn’t change as far as definition.
So, having said that, how can we now expand ourselves as composers? If we take away the limitations that we’ve imposed on each other and ourselves, what can we possibly come up with?
Now let me make something clear. I’m not talking about going out of your way to hit a kitchen counter top with a spatula, run the sink and blow into a bottle to make “music” although that would be one interesting experiment. I’m talking about letting your mind run free to come up with things that you might not have come up with otherwise.
Let’s try something. I’m going to assume or at least hope that you have some kind of DAW and some synths that you can use to make sound. If not, try to imagine what I’m about to describe and see if you can one day duplicate it on your own setup.
First, I’m going to start with a drum beat. I’m not going to use the whole drum kit. I’m just going to use the kick drum. I’ll set the tempo to 250. That’s some blistering fast stuff. I’ll sequence the kick to play 32nd notes. This should pretty much sound close to a machine gun.
Next thing I’m going to do is bring up a bass sound. I’m going to make it a wobble bass since I am getting into dubstep these days. Now right there, we have a mismatch. Dubstep is usually between 138 and 142 BPM. We’re past jungle tempo now so a wobble bass will certainly sound out of place.
We’re going to take that wobble bass and sequence a pattern of 8th notes. Now we have an interesting contrast. We have the kick drum going at 250 BPM playing 32nd notes while the wobble bass is playing much slower at 8th notes. I can only imagine what that sounds like.
But we’re not done.
Next I’m going to bring up a good lead synth plugin Something like NI’s Massive. That should do the trick. I’m going to program a simple square wave lead with a slightly slow attack so it’s not so immediate. I’m also going to program lots of reverb into it so that it sounds like it’s mile away. Also, in relation to the kick and bass, I’m going to turn the volume way down low so that it’s barely audible. I’m going to play a single drone throughout the whole song. I’m going to make sure that the drone is in a completely different key than the wobble bass is playing in.
Finally, I’m going to bring up a sampler with lots of prerecorded sound effects and search for a police siren. I’m going to run that over the synth drone.
I’ll let the piece run for about 2 minutes.
How long before it drives most people mad? It might even have me running from the room as well. I can only imagine what that sounds like.
But guess what?
I will NEVER call it not music.
And you know what? Somewhere, somebody must have done something like this. I think it’s called experimental music. Have you listened to experimental music lately? I admit that I haven’t. But there was a time when I did (many years ago) and admit to thinking to myself “this isn’t music.” But that was a long time ago. I’ve learned a lot since then. There is beauty and worth in everything musical.
You just have to open up your mind enough to find it.
What is music?
It’s whatever YOU want it to be.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim