Words are inadequate

Music, or indeed any innate [or nurtured] crafting ability, is not easy to explain to those who don't immediately understand it.

Jen, the roommate of 4 years, has always had trouble shaping phrases out of saxophone music [her instrument]. She always attacks it from the rhythms and then the notes, then dynamics, but building and decaying mostly escapes her without input from an external source.

I've learned with vocal pieces that one cannot create music until the notes and words are memorized, committed to muscle- and mental memory, so that you no longer have to concentrate on what comes next; you only focus on connecting the words and musical arches to emotion and shape. ;] This is why student recitals are terrifying, as you never have enough time to have all your rep freely committed to memory -- I perform petrified, desperately not forgetting words, while throwing meaning into them. It's gotten easier/better over time.

It takes a deep understanding to turn music into more than just notes and rhythms. Sometimes it takes years of aural inundation; how would you ever know the right way to shape a phrase in a cello concerto if you've never spent time listening to classical cello? Feeling how a line builds tension into its release is one thing to technically understand. It's another thing entirely to feel it.