Where is music? Its in the mind!

When trying to write a song how often do you slip into something you already know? But sometimes you slip into something that hasn't been done yet. That is an extraordinary experience. It is like walking into a familiar place that you and no one else has ever been. Think Paul McCartney famously experiences this and many people say his songs have a nostalgia to them as though they were long forgotten songs rediscovered. But you write a new song and end up asking people whether they know it cos it sounds familiar in a way and yet you are the first to hear it.

Likewise with highly engineered pop music you hear on the radio. It becomes the sound track to your life and it seeps into your brain without you ever really paying attention. You never really know the words, you never really know the song. It is just familiar. Then year later your consciousness kicks in and you find the lyrics on the web or you hear it played live or in another style and you realise that you know nothing about this song. What you know is some impression that is in your head. How many times are you shocked that a cherished song has the most rubbish lyrics. Or you hear it played live and that magic of mix is stripped away and you can see the quite ordinary parts that are layered by to create that memorable sound. Had that recently due to the sad death of Christine McVie. I've never liked Fleetwood Mac. They are famous for the lightest piece of pop trash as far as I was concerned. But that famous album got so much air play that it seeped into your bones. Hearing a recording of it played live on TV last week and seeking out the parts you could see the skill with which the songs were constructed and how that delicious pop sound was actually created from the simplest components.

This is Buddha. The sum of the parts is very different from the parts. And we are left there with the slightly unsettling realisation that that thing we like has no real substance. It comes about somehow from the magically fusing if parts that by themselves seem ordinary.

And so it is with writing a new song. Somehow a very ordinary arrangement of notes and chords, possibly not even that unique gets a soul ignited in it that makes it quite unlike anything else. Feeling that soul emerge is a quite spiritual experience. And it happens in a flash. Suddenly we are writing and it just flows through us. After months of trying suddenly something comes together and it is there, ready made. Well that is one way it happens. The other is that we try and build a fire, but it doesn't catch. So we try again. And gradually through continual editing we get the fire right, and when we light the spark it catches. Perhaps they are the same. Its not like sparks of musical genius happen by themselves, they are always in the middle of a mess of hard work that hasn't managed to catch. We fill the room with so much tinder that the next time we sit to write it just catches and we have a song.

Now the point of this whole blog is to highlight something I just realised. The art of the musician, indeed and artist in general, is actually the art of an illusionist. The artist takes some tool and tricks the senses and the mind into seeing something brand new. In the case of a musician this is often a melody. A melody does not exist in the instrument or even in the sound waves, it is triggered in the mind of the listener. The listener is tricked into hearing the melody that isn't really there. But obviously music is much more complex than just melody. Chords, sound textures, rhythms are all mixed in there. Its amazing how a melody sounds rubbish in one mix, but in the hands of someone else takes on a whole new meaning. Once ignited though we can often go back to the origin al and appreciate it in a whole new way.

One example for me was Chvrches "Clearest Blue." I had heard this and thought nothing of it. But then Gryffin did this incredibly profound and moving much more ambient version that really captured the desperation of the singer. A beautiful version

But now I got the song. Got what it meant. Then I was able to return to the original and get what Chvrches was about in general.

Now the original is singing about the same thing. But its filled with positivity and the epicness is affirming. That punch-the-air affirmation is all Chvrches even while singing possible sad lyrics.

So music I realise is all in the mind. And while becoming a virtuosic musician or DJ is important the skill lies in using these soulless tools to create an illusion in the mind of the listener(s). I say listeners cos music is not an individual experience. The reason I probably gravitated to Gryffin first is because of my experience in clubbing music. he was the gateway drug to get to Chvrches which is quite different from the community I'm usually exposed to.

So those moments of musical virtuosity where musicians show off their technical skill are part or it, but often we are left looking at the sheer "physicality" of the music and there is no illusion. It is there like a solid thing. But then the musician returns to musicality and an aura starts to shine again as the illusion warms up and we get "music" again.

So the art of music is the art of manipulating these illusions.

That said I remember a music producer saying of demo tapes that what he was looking for was people trying to push stuff through their equipment. There is that type of music where you get bogged down in the technology. An orchestra is a hugely complex piece of technology but luckily you only get to to write for orchestra after you have cut your teeth on smaller simpler technologies like solos or duets. But these days with computers it is possible to explore orchestra without much experience. You might say film music was suffering from this and the orchestra has become a very stripped back entity not really developing or evolving and audiences get used to either sweeping strings or punchy brass and not much else. The days of oboe innovation with Stravinsky for example are kind of gone.

So you can say that musical ideas transcend their technology in another way too. Not just that the DJs and mixers and arrangers are able to mould sound to create particular illusion, but that the song writers are able to express ideas through the limitations that is physical instruments.

That is kind of saying the same thing in different ways. Music is in the mind. But the means to create that illusion are either in spite of the technology as with Dylan with just his beat up guitar which is a vehicle to transmit an idea mind to mind, or through the technology where it becomes instrumental in creating that illusion. In both cases music only works once an illusion is created in the mind of the listener.

But that is complex. Continual exposure to music reprograms the brain to become receptive to certain ideas. The music industry understands this and has led to our overwhelming exposure to "samey" music. Why challenge audiences where you can reinforce their musical prejudices and just switch on the same only illusions they like and want to hear again.

Obviously avant garde still exists by it doesn't make money. Why would a music company back a musician who has to build new roads when they can just back musicians who agree to send traffic down the existing ones.

Digital music and internet has virtually removed the costs of music production and distribution. But then you still have the problem of "new roads." In a world where you click and listen for 10 secs before clicking on something else the time taken to build new roads in your brain has been reduced and we risk listening to the same stuff endlessly.

So our very behaviour and environment is linked to the types of musical and artistic illusions we are able to create. And the types of illusions artists will be able to create in us.

Finally I've always suspected the avant garde artists are the ones who are not very good. If you are not Mozart and able to dominate the existing music world then go off and make your own.

Absolutely incredible musicians technically but what does this cause in the mind? I've listened a bit to see if I can "access" it but to no avail. Obviously to those radicals who want to smash up the establishment and head off out into the desert it will appeal ideologically. But for the illusions of music what is going on. Big discussion, not taking sides. But this shows how rational ideologies cross over into music ideas and experiences too.

Certainly much avant garde is just bad musicians who lack ideas trying to fill space. But some are genuinely ground breaking and pushing new ideas into the musical landscape. Just cos it sounds unfamiliar at first does not mean with some perseverance we do not start to experience new illusions.

So in conclusion music is all in the mind, and the musician is not a master of technology to make sounds, but the skilful users of technology and sounds to create illusions in the mind and make the audience hear something that is not actually there.