Why should you learn music? That is a good question with a lot of possible answers. It’s so embedded in our society, that we all understand it to some level. I think that music is an incredible language. It enables us to communicate in a very unique way. It is also one of the best way to express ourselves. Although learning music is hard, the journey is worth the effort.
Music as a language
Music is the most amazing language in the world. It is spoken in so many different ways. People that don’t speak the same mother tongue can talk to each other through music without uttering a word. I believe it is the first language created. Think about prehistoric man hitting rocks or clapping their hands together to create some kind of rhythm. Drums or percussion and singing were probably the first instruments every played. Music was the first way for humans to communicate with each other.
Music has transcended every era of our existence as a specie. It also outlasted every other language. At first, it was probably used to communicate basic emotions and needs. Then, it was used to instill a sense of community through hymns and war cries. Once melodic instruments were created, it was used to express a bigger range of emotions and used as a form of entertainment. Then, it was integrated to other art forms like theater, which became opera and musicals. With evolution and the beginning of writing came music sheets. It was the first and only way for musicians to get their songs heard by a larger audience other than live performances. It was probably the only way to reach other parts of the world for the longest time, as the first gramophone was created in the late 1800’. Now, it is used to communicate every type of emotions that exist in every type of media.
It is the best way to communicate emotions with someone that doesn’t speak your mother tongue. It has happened to me to play music with people that didn’t speak the same language as I, but we could still communicate and understand how to play music together. Recently, I had a funk band. Every member was from a different country. The drummer being from Japan and the guitar player from Chili, it was difficult to communicate clearly what we wanted with words. When we played songs together, it didn’t matter, we were great and understood each other through rhythm and notes. If we had to work on a part of a song, we’d communicate it with very basic words, but also sang the part the way it should be.
One time I was on a ferry, sitting in my car playing ukulele. A guy walks by my car playing guitar. He noticed me and signaled me to come join him at the front of the boat. So, I did. I walked over to him and started playing with him. We improvised a song, creating the lyrics and music as we went. As the ferry approached the terminal, we finally stopped playing and introduced ourselves. I thought it was great to be able to play with someone else and not even know who he was, we just understood each other through our music; we could feel where the other was going, even if we had never met. It’s happened to me several times in my life. I find it’s one of the beautiful things about music.
Music is Everywhere
Everybody listens to some form of music every day. It can be through a band, a record, a live performance, a movie, a tv show, a commercial, a ringtone, a call waiting song, on an elevator, at the grocery store, or doctor’s office, in public transit when the train is leaving or the bell at school. Even in nature, there is music; a birds singing, a river flowing, a gust of wind, the sound of footsteps, the cracking of branches. It is present in the beating of your heart and the sound of your breath. It is so important to life that it surrounds us; every animal creates some sort of sound.
Learning music has helped me be aware of this. It has helped me appreciate the little things that I take for granted. When I listen to a bird sing, I can appreciate it’s beauty and it’s complexity. When I watch a movie or tv show, I am more aware of the music. Can you imagine a movie without music? It would ruin every horror movie. Imagine a commercial on television without music. It wouldn’t sell as much. Music is what helps us create a connection between an event or a product and our emotions. When someone watches a movie in a different room than I do, I can tell what is happening in the movie without having to see the images, because the music tells me what kind of scene it is: action, romance, suspense, drama, etc.
I love when students come back to me after a few months of lessons and tell me that they understand music better and they notices it more. They start to hear the beat of a song or recognize a time signature. When they can hear the difference between a chord, a single note, a verse, chorus or a bridge. They begin to hear music differently, like someone learning a language they don’t speak and begin to recognize words and phrases when someone speaks it. It makes it all worth it for me.
An Emotional Connection
Music is so diverse, it can be melodic, dissonant, rhythmic, slow, fast, quiet, loud, scary, calming. It can evoke any type of emotion needed. I often associate certain memories with songs.
I started writing songs, because I wanted to keep more accurate memories of what happened in my life, like an autobiography in a soundtrack. What I mean is that photos can capture a look, videos can capture images and sounds. Songs can capture emotions and a state of mind. When I listen to songs that I wrote a long time ago, it brings me back to where I was when I wrote it in a way that photos and videos can’t. They can instantly remind me of a scene or a feeling that made me write a certain song. I can also sing them anywhere.
Songs are also very therapeutic in a lot of ways. When I feel happy, I can listen to music that helps me stay up beat. If I am sad, I can listen to something that will help me express my sadness in a way that I can’t with words. That is true for any emotion that I feel. As a composer and lyricist, I can go even further and express exactly what I want in a way that songs from other artists won’t be able to do. I can say with words what I want people to hear, but put into the music what I really want to express. Sometimes, the lyrics and music will be complete opposites and at times, that’s exactly how I feel.
Often, when I don’t know how I feel, I pick up an instrument and music flows through me and I say what I need to say without a word being spoken. Words cannot always express what music can. As I got better as a musician, I started to have more tools to work with, so it didn’t have to only be happy or sad. When I started playing music, I only had minor and major chords to express myself with, but as I grew as a musician, I started to have chords and scales that aren’t as black and white. In this way, music represents life very well, it is not one way or the other, the possibilities are infinite.
I have written lots of songs to help me get through rough times in my life. When I learned of the death of people that were dear to me, I have written songs to help me grieve. During hard times in my life, I wrote songs to cheer me up, or to express my anger or sadness. I have written songs to express my love.
My wife often says that I am the soundtrack to her life, because I write a lot of songs. Some that I have recorded and others that I just composed on the spot. She, on the other hand, is the soundtrack to my life, as she always sings other people’s songs, even mine, to express how she feels. Recently, she wasn’t feeling well, so I started playing a blues for her. I improvised lyrics that related to our situation and she started singing with me and creating lyrics as well. It is something that we do sometimes, it helps alleviate the gravity of a situation. We might take someone else’s song and change the lyrics to suit the moment. Music helps me get through almost anything.
The Journey of Learning Music
Learning music is not easy, it is a very bumpy ride with a lot of good moments and a lot of hard times. It can be very discouraging when starting to learn. But, it is worth the effort. The better I got, the more fun it became. To be fair, for some reason that I still don’t understand, I fell in love with music the first time I played guitar. I didn’t know it at the time, but it changed my life for ever and in a very good way.
I started playing music when I was a teenager. It was the perfect moment, because high-school was not pleasant. I didn’t know how to express myself, I was shy, I didn’t have much confidence. I didn’t feel like I fit in. When I started playing guitar, it was something that stopped me from thinking about all my problems. When I was playing, it was so hard that all I could think about was what I was doing. It requires a lot of focus. I need to use both hands in a very precise manner, I have to use my memory to remember the parts and what is coming next, I’m tapping my foot, looking at where I am in the chart (if I am reading it). So, when I am doing all this at the same time, it’s very difficult for me to have time to think about my problems or the things that I need to do.
The better I got, the more I wanted to play. I started playing with some friends and created bands. I played concerts at my school, which helped me a lot with getting confidence. I have done some performances that weren’t very good. Those were the times when I learned the most. It taught me to be more prepared. It taught me to work as a team, because even if I know my parts, if someone in the group doesn’t, the whole band suffers. It also taught me to not care about what people think of me. I remember that I was prepared in case someone would make fun of me, I would say to them :”why don’t you go on the stage and do better”. Funny thing is that nobody has ever said anything mean to me about my performances, so I never had to use that line.
One thing that I didn’t realize I had gotten from music until years after I started teaching, it is that learning music has taught me to learn and to live. The difficulties that I have encountered learning music helped prepare me for the challenges I would encounter in my life. It showed me that the only way I can achieve something is through hard work and perseverance. It taught me that I have to get where I want one step at a time. Sometimes, I’ll do two steps forward and one step back. I learned to not give up, I might need to put something on pause and come back to it days, weeks even years later.
Over time, I learned to teach myself other things that had nothing to do with music, but using the same process as I used while learning music. It has helped me learn to be curious. I was probably always curious, but music is such a complex, intriguing language. I never stop learning. Now that I teach music, I learn even more. It pushes me outside of my comfort zone. It also has put me in situations where I met people that I would have never met if not for music. It gave me coordination and rhythm. Most things that I have learned through music have been transferable skills that I use in my every day life. Simple things like getting my car out of the snow. It seems simple for people that are used to snow, but people that don’t have any rhythm don’t know how to rock a car, it takes good rhythm. My pinky fingers are super strong, I can lift grocery bags with them. I can do several things at the same time. I have much better focus than I would have had without music. I can think ahead and anticipate difficulties. I learned to slow down and break things down into manageable steps.
I am extremely grateful for music and all the people in my life that have helped me learn it and get to where I am. All my teachers, all the people that have played with me, all the spectators at the concerts I have played and all my students for teaching me every day. In the end, despite the fact that music is everywhere and it is one of the most amazing language, only you will know if it worth the effort to learn music. All I can tell you is my experience with it and how it has changed my life in a positive way. If you do take a leap of faith and try learning to play music, don’t give up. Know that if you play and challenge yourself as often as you can, with a little bit of patience, you can go as far as you want. And who knows, maybe you’ll get more out of it than you ever imagined.