Music

Have you ever wondered what effect music actually has on us? I know I have. Often times, I sit around late into the night and think about why I am so connected to this random collaboration of sounds that make what I consider music. I know it isnt random, in fact, after starting music theory, it is quite logical and predictable (most of it, at least). But, think about this: Why would you put two sounds together and decide that it works and sounds good? Nonsensical, or at least, mostly nonsensical to a point. Ok so that isnt the goal of this post, I'm already getting off topic, and it is only 11:59pm. How much of an effect does music have on our lives? Here goes.

Think of your favorite musical piece, or song, whichever the case may be. Why is it your favorite? Is it beautiful? Is it strange? Mostlikely, it creates an emotion inside of you that is hard to mimic by any other source. Many people attempt to describe it using various adjectives and such, but there is just no way to do such a thing. That feeling is only known to the person who feels it. How many other things can only be known to one person? Any physical event can generally be known by the masses, or at least more than one person, but the emotion that is felt when listening, or even moreso when playing a piece of music is so indescribeable using our means of speach. I am sure every single one of you who reads this knows what I mean.

The second point I want to bring up about music's personal intimacy is the way you can express an emotion that is otherwise inexpressable (do you see a pattern?). This is basically the inverse of the last paragraph. Many emotions that we encounter in life are indescribeable using our language etc etc. Think of any emotion, and you can bet your life that there is a way to describe it using music, and that someone will understand your emtion through your music. This brings in a performance factor, but that can be discussed at a later date. Why do you think we have such great music from amazing composers? They have all had horrible emotions that us normal people will never experience bottled up inside of themselves with no way of venting them out.

The third, and what I think is most prominent, factor that influences the intimacy of music to a person is the memories it brings up. I know for a fact that I cannot hear pop goes the weasel without thinking of my grandma, and that I will never hear "Old Rugged Cross" and not think of my mom and various other situations. There are so many pieces that bring up memories and each of them is so closely tied to my soul/inner self that there is no way for me to ever stop the feelings they evoke, which brings us back to the first and second points. I can guarantee you all that there is at least one song/piece of music that sticks out in your mind as being something that relates strongly to an event in your life.

Edit:

It is only 7:33 now, but it definately feels like its the middle of the night. I have been thinking a lot about associations when it comes to music. I was thinking about how I had certain people I would look at on tour at certain places. During the Halverson, I would always look at my standpartner and the girl behind us at one point so that none of us came in wrong. I would also look over into the viola section at Mike and he would do the jaws thing at one point. I had numerous connections with Tim during the Rach. The list goes on and on and on for countless connections. When I listen to any of the program, I definately remember each and every connection that I made every night. I also think about certain songs that mean so much to me for other reasons. The feelings that they bring up are unparalleled by any other thing, purely by the event that it brings to mind. When I think of Ashokan Farewell, I think of my grandma and how I played it while she peacefully was lowered into the ground. That piece will forever hold a special place in my heart.

The only question I have is why the music reminds me of this so vividly. Why does the collaboration of notes bring back the exact emotion felt at the time? It all seems so random.

People here tend to associate me with Wieniawski becuase its what I played. There are definately people who sing it when I walk by them. Oh, I don't get it.

I hope you guys can add to this random post. Sorry it dragged on and was really confusing.

Silence

As promised late into the night lastnight, tonight I plan to talk about silence and its importance. The time is 12:55 and I have had a wonderful day. Mental health break from stuff, and it was beautiful today.

This idea of silence was brought to my attention unintentionally by Erik Radio. His ability to use silence in his speech without even knowing what he is doing is something we should all admire. Most of you who read this won't have any idea what I am talking about, but for those few who might just stumble upon this, feel free to back me up.

I will start the topic like this. Silence is one of the most wonderful aspects of music is it not? Think about the power it can take over an audience. After a large chord, a silence before the continuation of a piece can be effective in creating a sense of suspense and anticipation in the audience. When used in other pieces, it creates a calming sense of security and wholeness. I am sure this is going out on a limb, but i feel that in every sense that silence is used in music it enhances, and never decreases the musical integrity. Maybe one could argue that John Cage and his interesting piece that is nothing but silence has no musical integrity, but for the sake of keeping my argument consistant, I am going to say that it does. The point it is getting across is the importance of silence and its ability to create something out of nothing. The emotions that people feel (assuming they feel emotions from this awkward piece) are literally created out of nothing. This silence is almost more powerful in that sense than any sort of musical phrase. There is something that is creating the emotion when a phrase is used.

Anyway, moving on to the real point. Why do we consider silence a bad thing in our every day lives? Maybe we all dont, but in most situations, silences are considered to be awkward. Think about meeting someone for the first time, sitting in the same room, and not speaking. Why is this awkward and why can we not appreciate this time? We have an overwhelming urge to create some sort of noise to occupy the silence so that it is no longer awkward. In doing so, I feel that we create a somewhat more awkward situation by informing the other party that the situation was awkward to begin with. This was a lot more clear lastnight, so this next section might be slightly unclear. Not that any of my blurbs are clear anyway.

I am the queen of awkward silences. I despise silence in conversations and situations more than almost anyone can imagine. I have no idea why this is, and how to fix it, but I wish that I could more than almost anything else. I tend to make things more awkward by opening my mouth and saying something stupid, when the silence itself is not that bad. The intimidation that is felt (at least in my situation) during the silence is very strong. I wish there was a way for me to describe what I am thinking/feeling right now. I guess it is most simply put this way. I wish we could appreciate silence in life. Things are so full of motion and noise and frustration that sometimes the silence should be a welcome treat for our busy minds. Silence helps people think clearly, concentrate on their thoughts, and become connected to one another on a higher level than any other form of communication, at least in my opinion. You know you are truely connected with someone when you can sit in silence and enjoy every second of it. When there are no awkward feelings or situations where the silence prevails, you know things are working.

So, I challenge you all to observe silences with no awkward ideas and to live life appreciating everything, even the silences.

Tell me how it goes, and I will keep you informed if you would like. Lots changes when you start appreciating silence. Silence is one of the most natural forms of music. Imagine sitting under the stars, looking up into the vast darkness with little spots of light penetrating through and what do you hear? Nothing. Maybe the wind rustling through the trees or bushes, but mostly, there is nothing. Silence. Natures way of reassuring you that things are safe.

Oh silence, where would we be without you?

Truth

So, here I sit, at 2:07 am, pondering life and the likes of it all. I have just finished making a wonderful promotional sound clip with a bunch of the coolest people that I have ever met. But, alas, I am now here, full of thoughts and questions, unable to sleep. I have decided that ear-training is a pointless endevour because of my lack of preperation. I believe that I shall practice sight singing and piano during the time that we would normally have class. Pardon the horrible spelling and grammar, it is definately 2:09 am.

As for my thoughts tonight, I want to begin, and hoepfully end, with truth. Is there even a way to define this excessively ambiguous term? I dont think there is. Are you all familiar with the term post-modern? I do hope so because I wasnt until I began my religion class. It basically encompasses our entire thought process and ideas about, well, almost everything regarding truth. The pronoun our is refering to us nerd-squadders. Post-modern thinkers tend to "fragment" as one of our readings said, and deconstruct the truth so that there is no possibility for an absolute truth. This makes so much sense to me, but I definately have some problems with the way they state their ideals and such. Their logic works itself in circles to the point where they contradict themselves. One of their other ideologies (obviously I am making a statement that does not refer to every single post-modern thinker, but i am generalizing) is the inability for anything ot be completley uniform to somehting else. None of you are stupid, so you can determine what this means, but in essence they are saying that no two things can ever be exactly alike. This idea leads to a very vague conception of untiy. In fact, from what I know about post-modernity, please correct me if I'm wrong, a uniting force does not exist, or no uniting force is shown to exist. This must mean that, for some odd reason, people cannot unite for a common purpose. To me, this seems slightly obscure. One of the other main goals of the post-modern "movement" so to speak is the idea that by slowing progress and using what we already know in new ways we will revert back to the days where we could work as a whole. To me, this seems an aweful lot like uniting. That is one point of circular logic. If you believe there is no absolute truth, or even something small that could unite an entire species (human) then how do you expect the entire species to work together. I believe there is something that ties us all together that is not necessarily a truth or undersatnding. If there wasnt something there, would the world exist as it does? Everyone would be looking out for themselves and the welbeing of their loved ones. This does not sew the seeds of happiness and prosperity into people's minds. One way that might explain our desire to maintain relations and such with other humans is our innate desire to belong to a group or social setting. Humans are by nature social creatures, I mean, if you think about it, it takes two adults of our species to make one of us, and raising a human child is very complicated and almost impossible for a single member, especially by the male gender. This is one argument that social networks are so apparent in our species. This relates back to a unifying force by relating to our desire to fit in and be social. We change ourselves sleightly and do things for others in order to be considered part of the group. Not that I am advocating non-conformity, but it is human nature to be social and become happy. Happiness, we all know, is what we live to find.

This is getting off topic, but I will not recind any of the past argument. Sorry, it isnt very strong, but its about the best I can do at 2:20 am when I have to be up so gosh darn early in the morining.

As for truth, it can be almost anything you wish for it to be. We have had the discussions where truth is precicely that, if you believe that god exists, he exists and there is a god and he is the creator and he is all powerful. If you believe that there is no god, there is no god, he is not a creator and has no power. If you believe that my cats created the universe (which is bogus, but you see where I'm headed), then my cats were the creators and whatever else you believe. I would go one step further and say that god exists no matter what, if for nothing else, because somebody somewhere believes it. Well, I can easily counter this argument by saying that there is probably somebody somewhere who compeltely disagrees with this, and says that just because one person believes in god, it doesnt mean it is so. So what is to happen if I say that it is so, and this other person says that it isnt so. Who is right? Do we use it like multiple choice on a test? Which is MOST right? Cant there be one right thing and one wrong thing? No, this is most definately not possible. Just because I say the red violin had amazing music and makes me drool and blabber like a small baby doesnt mean that it is true in that respect for every person who hears it, though I have yet to meet someone who wasnt completley impressed with this soundtrack.

Beyond that, why do we continue to search for truth after we decide that there is no truth beyond what we know? Why do we look for this ambiguous (gosh i cant spell that word) existance of something that we have claimed does not exist. I also believe this can be related to human nature. When we dont undersatnd somehting, we investigate until we figure out what is going on and can take control of the situation. This is one situation that humans have yet to gain control of. Is it better this way? I believe so. We as humans are not meant to know every aspect of everythign. There are things that need to remain vague and questionable. Think about this. Life with no questions, everyting is straight forward and laid out for you. How horrible and boring would that be?!

Sleep has finally tapped on the door to my brain and has compeltely shut it off for the night. I shall be awake excessively early tomorrow (7am, which is only 4 hours and 26 minutes from now). I do believe that I will be skipping ear training for lack of ability to concentrate on anything, and will practice piano during the time that I would normally be in class. I believe I have stated this earlier in the entry, but I guess I felt that it needed to be said again.

Tomorrow: SILENCE!

Communication

Here it is, 1:09am and I am sitting in the Kildahl lounge attempting to write a paper about the similarities and differences between Socrates and Antigone. I have yet to start, but I have aimed at starting for many days now. This isnt a mandatory paper, in fact, we have 2 other options for papers later in the term. I think I will continue now, not on the paper, but on the blog.

One of the most important things in our lives is communication, wouldnt you agree? Communication is what keeps us together in times of crisis, what calms conflict, what expresses thoughts and ideas most clearly, and basically anything else you can imagine. So if communication is so essential to our every day life, why cant we, as humans, partake in communication truthfully and easily? It seems that everywhere I go, people are wandering around thinking things and never really expressing them to anyone, or even themselves. Dont get me wrong, thinking is one of the most amazing things that can be done, but when ideas are not expressed and thought about with other people, very dangerous things can happen, as we all know.

Mostly, my frustration comes with people's lack of ability to tell the truth to other people. Take musical performances for example. People play a piece, and even if they do a really half-assed job, people tell them they did well. People make statements that are drippingn with sugar and falacy such as "that was great," or "I barely noticed any mistakes at all." I know those things may be true in some cases, but who can tell me that they honestly havent said something like that to someone who has made a rather poor performance. I am not going into the musical aspect of this, I am going into communication, just to keep things less complicated.

Oh, communication and the lack of the human ability to use it sucessfully. If we could all communicate fluently in one way or another, most things in our lives would be a lot less complicated and frustrating. I hear complaints of people who want to tell people things, but are afraid of the reaction or lack thereof, and in the end, never do anything about it. I am guilty of this crime, I admit, but as hard as I try, many times I just can't force the words to come out of my mouth in the correct order. This is a common problem in our society today. Granted, if everyone was openly criticized or praised, egos would be so random and abstract that it would be difficult to accomplish any sort of organizational system. People's ideals and opinions clash so drastically that it would be impossible to come to any sort of conclusion about anything! That is something that makes us unique and special in our own ways, but differences in opinions are not always good for collaborative efforts.

this is getting long and arduous becuase I am so gosh darn tired.

Good night all, and try to live your lives partaking in good communication.

how do i get all of your guys' links to appear somewhere so I can easily access them? I really want to, cause I dont like finding jon's all the time, then searching from there... please let me know?

PS I plan to start blogging soon, i promise!!

i ahve a paper on truth and the bible that is really bad that I would like all of you guys to read!!

thanks,
Nicole

Woo Hoo! I have another one of these. This is Nerd Squad ONLY!!