song without words

[jazzfish]

One of the main goals I had when I started learning the viola was to be able to, oh, let's be honest, play in a music circle with PNH and Steve Brust and eBear. Or, more reasonably, Klagor and other Rainforest folks. (I have, in my head, most of an instrumental setting for Lorde's "Royals". Haven't tried it out yet; not even sure it's possible, the viola may not be deep enough.)

Tegen's remarkably accommodating of this desire. Starting last spring she's been trying to teach me some basic music theory, chords and intervals and all.

This is really hard for me. I can hear different intervals but I can't necessarily identify them, a fourth from a fifth (why is this hard? fifths are what my strings are tuned in, i've been listening to fifths for three decades) or a sixth from a third. And it's worse with chords, everything just muddles together and I can't hear what I'm even supposed to be listening for.

A couple of weeks ago she finally said "look, don't worry about hearing it, just /feel/ it. I is the root, V pulls back to I, IV ... doesn't, and vi is the only one of these that's a minor. We'll work with those." That helps. The minute I try to name the chord I lose it, it takes me several seconds to put a name to it and I'm wrong half the time, but I can feel where it is.

We've been doing some improv as well, "here are some chords, work out what notes are in them, then noodle around while i play the chord sequence on the piano." Results are variable, but it's fun.

On Tuesday night the improv /clicked/. I could know my own notes and feel the piano chords. By the end I could consciously try to make the one line up with the other while not, I don't know, degenerating into rote mechanics.

We got to the end and Tegen said "That was great! Do you have any questions?"

I needed three tries before I could say "Music makes me unable to word." It took another minute or so before I could explain more coherently that whatever I had been doing right then had turned off my access to words. Not just speech but words as a whole: I normally process the notes I'm playing in words, and in retrospect that ... wasn't what I was doing this time.

This is interesting. It's not "I have something important to say and I can't quite bear to get it out," it is literally I have no words. It's like the Ansel Adams exhibit years ago, only instead of passively experiencing I'm an active participant in the overwhelm.

I have no idea what it means but I suspect it's important.

Comments

[okrablossom]

This is fascinating!

[jazzfish]

It's pretty fascinating from this side too! :)

[thanate]

Yay for getting it!

I was reading some things about people writing stories with music a while back and realized that I don't process them with the same bits of my brain. Years of singing mean that I can do melodies to go with words, or doggerel to a tune, but I don't write about music much and if I have songs that go with stories (mine or other people's) it's because of the words, not the tune. They're just kept in different bits of my brain.

This is useful for some kinds of focus-- if I'm trying to distract parts of my brain so the others can stay on task, sometimes music helps out (vocal for physical activities-- rock climbing, for instance-- & instrumental only for writing)

Good luck sorting out your patterns & hooking them up with the rest of your brain. :)

[jazzfish]

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." --Frank Zappa

I have no idea how to relate music to words. I can sort of do it by way of emotions (but I also have no idea how to relate strong emotions to words), or probably by getting deeply technical.

Music is either background and barely noticed, or the overriding concern, there's not really any inbetween. (Music with lyrics tends towards 'overriding concern,' which is difficult.) I don't listen to music while writing, most of the time, and rarely while reading. It just doesn't work for me.

And, thanks. :)

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

More of an emotion, a feeling, rather than words?

[jazzfish]

... not even, just ... a state where there was conscious thought but no way to verbally express or communicate it.

[reedrover]

That's fascinating. It sounds like your verbal processing center shut down in favor of your base-sound center. In effect, you were music rather than were processing the math of music.

Have you ever read D'Shai? You may have found your kazuh.

[jazzfish]

That sounds plausible, to the extent that I am words most of the time. Which ... is accurate.

:) I had not thought of it as such! (D'Shai is such a great book. When I'm running I hold the line "Balance is the way of the runner" [and "A lie: speed is the way of the runner"] in my mind. Shame that the sequel wasn't as good, doubly so because Rosenberg never wrote any more afterwards.)

[reedrover]

Indeed. I am words more often than not, to the extent of narrating my life to myself while doing mundane tasks.

Kazuh is a fantastic concept. And I appreciate even more, now, the fact that Rosenberg included a farmer and a cook in his descriptions of kazuh talents. Kazuh wasn't just for warriors and acrobats, it was for runners and musicians too.

I recommend that you meditate in the sun or go for a walk and then try some improvisation on your own. See if you can find your balance again.