Here's my take on the classic “I-don’t-know-anything-about-music-but-I-like-it” Syndrome...
I get this all the time. On
hearing that I compose music, people often look slightly uneasy and hasten to comment “I don’t know anything about music, but I do
enjoy it”. Upon hearing some of my
compositions, these people tend to comment “That’s
interesting” (Read: I don’t like it
much... bit weird for me”).
I
don’t mind in the least. It’s just fine.
I think I have some insight into the dynamics at play here, so I'll claim right
now that everyone (repeat: everyone)
within western culture “understands” music.
Perhaps not the printed version or formal music theory, but I insist that
people’s ears intuit much more than they give themselves credit for. Much more.
From
the day we’re born – and some would argue from before birth – we are relentlessly bombarded with musics. Many types. Wander through any shopping mall
or dental surgery to confirm this. As we grow through our toddler years our ears are saturated in
music every day. We become so desensitized that sometimes we no longer even focus on the fact that
music is there.
In
this environment, it should come as no surprise that some of it sticks, despite
our lazy inattention. In fact, a large amount sticks. Just as children
accumulate a largely untutored understanding of the conventions of spoken language, we all similarly absorb
the conventions of musical language. We
can’t help it. The human brain works that way, seeking as it does to find order and consistency in the world around us.
Music
is indeed a form of language, defined as a system of sounds which have their own
meanings and interactions. Music has its own complex grammar and syntax which
conceptually parallel those of spoken language.
Musical nouns, verbs, sentences. If
it didn’t have these things, music theory courses couldn’t exist. Those of us
who became musicians all diligently learned the ‘rules’ of music (handed down on Stone Tablets from Bach) during endless
tutorial exercises.
And,
paralleling spoken language, music has similarly developed its own written notation. Interestingly, we are all carefully taught
how to write words and to spell them correctly – indeed it is a priority in
schools – but precious little importance is attached to how to write music or
spell chords and scales. It's no wonder people can't do it - and therefore develop a morbid fear of it.
Despite this, toddlers
from an early age unconsciously detect this grammar and syntax which make up the fabric
of most conventional music. However, just like spoken language, musical language is inconsistent
and subject to variation in dialect. So the commonly used term ‘the rules of
music’ might be better replaced by ‘the norms of music’.
Very
young children can be observed to respond to the simpler elements of beat and
rhythm in the same way that their first spoken words are likely to be concrete
nouns... mama, puppy, car. They can
be seen to attempt to clap in time to a beat even if their motor skills don’t
yet permit accuracy. But behind the scenes, the child’s amazing brain is busy
sucking up wordless information about other elements of music as well. Chords, harmonic structure, scales,
counterpoint, chromaticism, tonality. Yes, you too already have all these concepts
stored between your ears, even if you have no idea at all what the words mean.
As
with language acquisition, this certainly doesn’t happen in any organized or
set sequential way. As the child acquires more and more experiences of music,
she is increasingly able to distill what is statistically ‘normal’, even though
unable to verbalize it. Each new piece of music heard is subconsciously
compared to the child’s memory bank of musical experiences, and assessed as
familiar or new – or somewhere in-between. A chord of C during a nursery rhyme is
highly likely to be followed by a chord of F or G7... and children quickly learn
to hear it as ‘normal’ (ie ‘good’). If that chord of C were to be followed by
F#minor, the child’s ear might register slight alarm/discomfort to the extent
that the chord sequence didn’t match any previous experiences (ie, 'bad').
Statistical
predictability such as this certainly applies at an early age to simple
elements like rhythm and beat. For example, most of our music is grouped in 2
or 4 beats, sometimes 3 or 6, but rarely 5 or 7. However, children in Africa grow up accepting
5 beat patterns as entirely normal. Dave Brubeck’s piece ‘Take Five’ (1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5) is an example from our end
of the planet, but it is a relatively rare beast. There is a mere handful of
English folksongs in 5 beats, but the list virtually stops there. Children grow into adults not ‘understanding’
(= not liking) such music simply because it doesn’t conform to their unconsciously
acquired norms. If a child could verbalize her feelings, she might say: ‘This song feels a bit
strange... I don’t seem to be able to clap along to it like I can in other
songs’. However, it would come far more
easily to an African child. And to me as a western composer it offers a wonderful
and refreshingly asymmetric rhythmic option, in conscious contradiction of the
norms I absorbed as a child.
Our
informal musical 'education' can be regarded as lifelong indoctrination or
passive brain-washing. By constantly
drip-feeding conventional music into our ears, the boundaries of what music
‘should’ be are slowly and effectively laid down in stone. Musical tastes are established and solidified
from a surprisingly tender age. Proof? Japanese children imbibe the subtleties of the
bent notes of Japanese koto music. Indian children absorb ragas and microtones into
their very essence. And all of us in the West can tell immediately when someone
has played a ‘wrong note’ in their piano piece.*
So, by adulthood, we have all
developed a pretty keen sense of what is ‘normal’ in music, what is ‘right’ or
‘wrong’, appropriate or inappropriate, and therefore (by extension) what we
evaluate as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Unsurprisingly – and unfortunately – radio programs of new music are
mostly scheduled in late night time-slots, well away from prime time when innocent
vulnerable children might get to benefit from them.
Most
conventional music we hear has a high degree of predictability from moment to
moment. Press the ‘stop’ button at any random point during a piece of music,
and ask the average adult ‘non-musician’ to try to imagine what will happen
next. Most times, after you play through the passage again, they will indicate “Yep,
that’s pretty much what I thought might happen”. They are invoking their subconsciously
acquired understandings of the rules/norms of expectation. As Winston Churchill
quipped: ‘Commonsense is the collection
of prejudices acquired by age eighteen’.
So
when a visitor trots out the usual ‘I-don’t-know-anything-about-music’ comment, I
smile inside and assure them that the only real difference between them and me is
the fact that I have learned the skill of writing down the sounds which both of
us already understand.
This
principle applies equally well to composers and musicians. Ned Rorem wrote: Composition
is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before
[...] Masterpieces are marvellous
misquotations. And Howard Dietz quipped: Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their
plagiarism. These apparently
frivolous comments in fact reflect the basis upon which a lot of my own music
is predicated. Yep, where there's smoke, there's fire. I like to inhabit that
dangerous, murky and ambiguous zone between the Conventional and the Different,
between the Expected and the Unexpected.
When chewing my pencil and staring at a scarily blank page of music manuscript, my compositional starting point is the
culturally-acquired musical expectations all my listeners have. Like all of us, I too have
learned what is ‘normal’ in music. Then, like a cat plays with a mouse, I lull my
unsuspecting listener into subconsciously predicting what might come next, then
mischievously swerve sideways into something quite different. After all, why bother
writing something if someone else has already written it? Yadda yadda...
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*
Ultimately, it can be argued that there is no such thing as a ‘wrong note’ – it
actually depends on intention and on what happens immediately following the
‘wrong’ note in order to 'resolve' it. Context is everything. As Alhaji
Ibrahim Abdulai said, half-jokingly, ‘Every
mistake is a new style’.
-------------------------------------------------
So, be very careful when approaching my music. It's dangerous. It can suddenly turn on you when you least expect it :)
In particular, I have a fondness for taking irreconcilable opposites and watching what happens when they're mixed together...
"Imbecile!! Vous devriez mieux continuer le style de Beethoven, alors!"
