Music Appreciation

Date:   12/26/2012 5:57:43 PM ( 12 y ago)

ART IS AN EXPERIENCE

I was trying to explain how I understand music, why I enjoy it, to someone who is NOT artistically inclined.

Some people really do have a hard time understanding "the arts", maybe this is for you then.

Perhaps you are someone who has talked with professional musicians and you heard them talking about "keeping the beat" and "having a great sense of pitch". Timing and tuning are, in fact, the hallmarks of professionalism in music... but that is not what we listen for, or to, really.

So then you go to listen to some guy playing in a bar; there is a piano, and he sings.

You carefully notice if he is right on the beat, and no, he hits it late at times.

You listen to his singing and you hear him slide up to a high note.

And you judge. Your verdict is..."timing and pitch are not 100%, amateur, no encore".

Meanwhile, people all around you have melted into a pool of joyfull tears and are hugging each other and BEGGING the musician to just play one more note because it seems that is all it will take to ascend to heaven.

You MISSED it. "What? What were they hearing that I didn't hear?" you ask yourself.

Sometimes it isn't the details that matter, in fact most of the best things in life involve something beyond the details, something almost indescribable, something we might just call "the feeling".

In music, holding back on the beat can make a good effect, as can swooping up to the pitch. It is about creating tension and then releasing it.

The whole piece of music, from start to finish and in sections in between, creates tension and then "resolves the tension".

Drama, visual art, and dance also use the "tension-release device" and in every case it is immeasurable - there is no right or wrong, it is about the way the creator of the art intended it, and then conveyed it to the audience, and the mood of the performance too.

Tension and Release is only one aspect, but a pretty major one and a good place to start if you are trying to get more out of art. {I should add that a lot of the rap and metal music just starts tense and stays tense and leaves you tense, but anything else, any other music at all, will give an example of tension and release.}

ART IS AN EXPERIENCE.



 

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