Music - The Heart of a Composer
"Music Is All Around Us. All You Have to Do Is Listen."
During this first month (June 2021) of my 4 Topics Plus newsletters, I’m laying some introductory groundwork here. Until July, it’s mostly all about ME, ME, ME, ME,1 as I share my background and qualifications for discussing one of four main topics - Writing, Art, Music, and Faith. And so, today we’ve arrived at the topic of Music. On that note …
As if having the mind of a writer AND the soul of an artist wasn’t complex enough, I was also born with the heart of a music composer.
My talent for writing words can take a real beating. It can be greatly overtasked, dumbed down, and commercialized before suffering any ill effects. My art talents, as discussed on my previous post, need to be treated more gingerly. They can’t be forced, popularized, or sold for a few bucks - otherwise, the inspiration behind them dries up and withers away. And for me to compose music? Well, that’s a world of hypersensitivity all its own.
Music is sacred.
You don’t set the monarchy’s crown jewels on a dingy alleyway dumpster while you go grab a beer, and expect them to still be sitting there ten minutes later. Some things are just delicate and precious by nature. They need to be watched over. They need love and tender care for them to survive, and breathe, and reach their full living potential. For me, music composition is one of those delicate, precious things.
When I was five years old, I accidentally discovered a beautiful chord and was so thrilled that I leaned over and kissed the piano keys.
Composer, Lex de Azevedo
As a child, I heard music everywhere. It could be heard in the wind rushing past the open windows of our family’s car. It could be heard in the rumbling of a clothes dryer. It could be heard as a train’s wheels rolled down the track. The film, August Rush, perfectly captures this phenomenon in the life of a young boy. (Check out the first two minutes of the movie trailer below!)
Writers turn thoughts into books. Artists turn visions into paintings. Composers turn sounds heard between the ears into symphonies.
At the age of seven, I felt my musical job was to somehow translate those sounds and tunes into a readable format that instrument-playing musicians could recognize and perform. As a fledgling composer, I started out by simply whistling the formation of melodies while in bed at night, getting louder and louder with increased enthusiasm until I was finally told to “be quiet and go to sleep!”
Next, I tried jotting down dots and lines that somewhat resembled notes on a staff. Understandably, these scribblings seemed incomprehensible to my mother who could read real musical notation well enough. My attempts at music composition were going nowhere! What I needed was an education in music theory, but at that tender age I didn’t have the necessary assertiveness or vocabulary to clearly say so. Without that vocabulary, my musical life started going sideways, like an eighteen-wheeler sliding down an icy roadway.
When all of us were around age nine, our school’s entire fourth grade was presented with a musical aptitude test. From that group of a hundred or so, only four students were selected to participate in a special school music program, and I was one of them.
I think that listening to music or creating music is a spiritual undertaking, so the process of creating music involves listening. It involves sensitivity, it involves humility.
Composer/singer, Matisyahu
At first, I was enthused - encouraged by the prospect of finally learning music composition. And, in fact, we did learn a bit of music theory. But the program’s focus was to provide music lessons so we could perform in the District 50 Elementary Honor Orchestra. Grandma donated her old violin and, before I could say Treble Clef, I found myself trapped in musical Hades for the next three years. I felt boxed into the most stifling, confining, old-school package of strictly classical music - mixed with thirty minutes of mandatory violin practice each day.2 This wasn’t what I wanted! It was the exact opposite of the heavenly world I was looking for, where wild, innovative music could be freely composed and enjoyed. My internal, inspirational fire for music composition had been drenched and quenched.
When I finally managed to break free, I apologized to Music for all the shameful abuse and neglect and disrespect I had heaped upon it. I made the most solemn of vows that I would never offend the spirit of Music like that again. I said goodbye to composition, closed and locked the door, and pounded the only key into a useless mass with a ball peen hammer.
Music is sacred.
The sheer naughtiness of it all added extra thrill to the first time I skipped school, at age fifteen. I distinctly remember that glorious, liberating moment when I spontaneously turned right at one sidewalk’s corner instead of continuing straight ahead to my summer school algebra class.
I tapped on the bedroom window of my buddy, Ken, rousing him from his sleep. He let me in the front door, made us both some waffles, and we sat on the floor of his room for a couple hours, listening to newly-acquired albums by Rush and the Tubes.
There were stereo speakers mounted in each of the room’s four corners, all custom rigged to closely imitate the effects of quadrophonic sound, which was peaking in popularity back then. As music swirled around and around the room, Ken (a talented young drummer), taught me how to really listen to and understand rock music.
Learning to clearly hear and know the differences between bass, rhythm, and lead guitars, was a turning point in my life. Being a music composer was no longer an option, but since that school-skipping day, I decided it was okay to become a music appreciator instead - maybe even a connoisseur! That decision was made hundreds of concerts and album purchases ago. My musical tastes have since branched out to include jazz, blues, bossa nova, techno, world music, and even a little classical stuff now and then.
While I may not be inclined to capture the notes for others to perform, if I listen closely, I can still hear music everywhere and in everything around me. Deep inside, I still have the heart of a composer.
This could be a good segue into some bad musical humor, and so, why not? Click on this >LINK< if you’re into that sort of thing.
This torment might have had a positive violin-playing outcome, if only I had heard the music of Allen Sloan (Dixie Dregs) and Robby Steinhardt (Kansas) about five years sooner than I first did. But it was not to be ….