Music in My Life - Essay Example

When I was young, music was just something that accompanied television credits or something my parents would sing along with in the car during trips. As I became more familiar with music through the years (and various road trips), I was soon able to sing along with the music myself. At some point, the music grew in dimensions, becoming both a soundtrack to the present and a sort of auditory photo album associated with certain events and experiences in the past. The Beatles were my mother driving, lost but not caring at the moment.

Southern Rock meant lazy afternoons at the swimming pool. Punk music signaled the first days of having a driver's license. Perhaps because of these elements music began to evolve to a new stage, beyond nostalgia or the excitement of a new band. At some point, it became possible to actually select a mood. The music itself could transform my mental state, lift me from whatever ruminations the day held, and lift me into a place beyond words, even if the music itself contained words. Music is like any other passion: when one truly begins to learn about it, it is humbling to realize just how little one knows in the face of how much more there is to learn.

Music is amazing in its complexity, astounding in its interconnectedness. A musician can even take someone else's song and make it their own. There are vast differences between Hendrix's and Dylan's versions of All Along the Watchtower. The gut-wrenching blues of Leadbelly's Black Betty was turned inside out by Ram Jam. Shggie Otis revealed an internal family revolution from the influence of his father Johnny Otis. Bands such as Widespread Panic or the Alman Brothers still show their hillbilly-folk roots.

The politics of folk music redeveloped through the punk music of the Dead Kennedys, or even more recently, through System of a Down. Classical music has been co-opted and turned into such rock-operas as The Who's Tommy or Queensrche's two album Operation Mindcrime. Once I really began paying attention to music, I came to appreciate music outside of genres I had listened to in the past. There is as much skill in Django Rheinhardt's swing guitar as in Steve Vai's wailing. I began to see the connections between Les Claypool to Bootsy Collins to Charles Mingus, etc, etc.

And the more I developed a discerning ear for music that I liked, the more I came to resent the mass production of mediocrity that gets played over the radio as "popular" music. Not that it can't have its moments, but far too often it becomes generic. Naturally, as I grew more interested in music, I began to try and learn instruments myself. The process of learning to play sharpens the ear even further, and I began to be able to analyze and dissect individual elements of the music. My goal now is simply to try and become more proficient.

The three routes to becoming better are 1) to practice as much as possible, 2) to play with other musician, as many different ones as possible and as often as possible, and 3) listen to as much music as possible (what I do anyway) to both learn from the masters and to get ideas from listening to them. My goal in studying music is therefore simply to improve. How I will apply this can go in an infinite number of directions: playing in a band or studio, scoring music or commercials, join an orchestra, or any number of other possibilities.

The main point will always be to both make music in any way possible, and make it in a way that I (and hopefully others) enjoy it enough to keep doing it. Where I once was able to choose a mood through the music I selected, I can now express my own moods through the process of making music. There are simply times when words won't suffice.