Early 2023. An English lesson. We were discussing Taylor Swift songs (our teacher was forced to do it at gunpoint), and English lessons being what they are, we got off on a ramble about music. Eventually one of my classmates asked, "How can you have music without words? Can you even call that music?"
At that moment, I grinned so hard my face split in two, because until recently I had had the exact opposite opinion — that music without lyrics is more "pure" than song. Now I see that these two perspectives are equally dumb — but it's interesting to think about why we held them. And it all had to do with a concept that was hammered into our heads by our wonderful English teacher — purpose.
(By the way, if you're wondering about the title — it alludes to what nouns we use to call pieces of music: "songs", "tracks", "pieces", "numbers", "pieces of music"... I believe "tracks" to be the most inclusive in English, but in other languages, such as Polish, it just doesn't sound right... "piosenki" is probably better than "scieżki", although being a direct translation of "songs", it does suggest the presence of lyrics... it's a tough nut to crack.)
First, let's talk about me, because I'm narcissistic. Flashback to when I was 12 or 13 years old: whenever I'd make another Ballance texture pack or Minecraft custom map, I'd occasionally put on some video game soundtrack on YouTube, be it Machinarium, Flower, or Bloo Kid 2. This was the beginning of my "specifically, consciously choosing to listen to music" — which I hadn't really done before.
Coming from such a background, you can start to see why I used to kinda just dislike songs in favor of lyricless music, especially as me and my brother had gone to music schools. My subconscious view of the "universal purpose of music" (which doesn't exist, by the way) was that of "absolute music" — music that doesn't represent anything human, music abstracted from human emotion and context, music for the sake of the music (which I now believe not to be possible). Plus, I don't have good multitasking skills: unlike one of my friends, who can miraculously play The Sims while watching Netflix, if I try typing something while listening to a song, it just doesn't work. Since early on I listened to music while doing other things, it makes sense that I would prefer lyricless music in the long run.
At some point not too long before my conversion, I had begun to pay closer attention to the world around me, especially the little details — I don't remember what it was that catalyzed this shift of mindset. In any case, it was here that I started to dislike the idea of "background music" and so I tried my best to catch every note, instrument and sound in each music track I listened to. It pains me to see people put on music just to have something in their ears, or even just out of habit. Every track you listen to is a miracle that deserves to be appreciated.
This linked with my previous preference for lyricless music — I now believed that the most important part of music was the specific way it sounded, in other words, one might say the waveform of the audio file itself. I appreciated every tiny detail of specific recordings of music — this included, for example, missed notes and mistakes in live recordings. (Looking back, this may have been linked with my introduction to electronic music production by the lovely Mr Paci — he explained to me that the audio effects and the sound of the instruments play an equally important, if not more important role in electronic music than the actual melodies and chords played by them.)
A perfect album to practice this sort of detailed listening is the Machinarium soundtrack (by Tomáš Dvořák aka Floex), as it has very little repetition and stability. In particular the track Mr. Handagote sounds mechanical and very realistic, as opposed to electronic — for instance, the bike/cash-register/camera sounds that start at 0:18. This not only creates an audial texture that is incredibly engaging and interesting to listen to, but also perfectly matches the theme of the game — not a clean, gliding and perfect utopia, but a ratcheting, clicky, scraping, rusty, hodge-podge world of robots.
My approach to listening to all the little details wasn't limited to just realistic or interesting electronic sounds, however. I also enjoyed paying close attention to melodies — even just "traditionally good-sounding" ones that appealed to the general public (I can feel Mr Lloyd writhing) — 12-tone equal temperament, Dorian or hexatonic minor scale, 4/4 time signature, all that stuff. As much as the music elitist in me wants to criticize using such, let's say, unoriginal elements of music, the music enjoyer in me simply enjoys it.
As an extreme example of "listening for the melody" in addition to, or even instead of, "listening for the specific sound", I'll present misotanni's Genesis of the Pianoforte, a collection of 84 preludes for solo organ, each in a different diatonic mode. (This album is not available to the public at the moment, but I'll share the first prelude for the sake of example.)
You'll notice that the sound of the organ is nothing spectacular — in fact, it's just the default organ soundfont from MuseScore, played back with MIDI — if you don't know your music synthesis lingo, it's basically the simplest and easiest way to turn sheet music into an audio file. And yet, I'm somehow enthralled by the melodies of some of the preludes, especially the dorian ones (obviously), just as much as I'm enthralled by the ratchety sound of Machinarium.
Below is another, slightly less extreme example — while the instrument choice in Duct Work (by Robert Ellis) does play a significant role in it sounding cool, the instruments don't change at all over the course of the track; it's basically just MIDI. And yet, this is still one of my favorite soundtracks.
I've noticed that most people discussing art (well, it's actually just two people aside from myself, but whatever) have their handful of examples that they often like to present, even bending the point of their argument to squeeze them in. For me, that's Funny Death and their music. Because here's the thing — for some of their tracks, they use neither interesting melodies nor interesting sounds, and yet it still comes out sounding truly "ear-gasmic", at least for me. Which proves how incredibly complex and uncharted the Area of Knowledge of Art is (and how much Shared and Personal Knowledge the Community of Knowers and Experts can squeeze out of their Values and Culture. ToK link, anyone?)
Allow me to provide a specific example: Sentai from Gone. No questions about it being in my top 25 of all time, if not top 10. (I'll need to make that list at some point...) And yet, the melody is laughably simple and almost insultingly cliché to someone experimenting (or at least trying to experiment) with dissonances, different scales and even different tunings. To clarify what I had written before about the uninteresting sound, what I meant was that it doesn't change much over the course of the track (as with Duct Work), not that the synths aren't well-made, because they're absolutely superb. (The synth from 0:39 in Sentai... I'll never forget the first time I heard that.) Point is, "unoriginal" and "static" melodies and synths still made an unbelievably good track to listen to.
(...I'm starting to realize that maybe there may be something more to music than just the way is sounds: things like emotion, personal associations and... *shudder* context...)
I started appreciating proper songs (ones with lyrics) before I changed my perspective on the "purpose of music". One song that I remember becoming an earworm of mine for some time was The Perfect Girl by Mareux (where did I find out about it? From memes, obviously.) Its repetition and heavy reverb brought to my mind feelings of hypnosis and trance — and what I particularly enjoyed about it was how the sound of the vocals, the instruments, and the actual word content of the lyrics all worked together to create those feelings.
Allow me to explain. There are exactly 9 unique lines of lyrics in this song (not very much), with "You're such a strange girl" repeated almost every second line like a mantra. Not only that, but it's all spoken/sung almost monotonally, which enforces the idea that the singer is intoxicated in some way (presumably by the presence of the girl). The thumpy bass playing from the very beginning introduces an ominous and dangerous-sounding atmosphere, like of a well-behaved schoolboy joining a gang and taking drugs, and an air of mystery is added by the strange chord progression and melody.
After the introduction, when the main melody is introduced, no instrument settles on the tonic (the base note of the scale the song is in; in this case, A) until that climactic verse "You're such a strange girl / The way you live like you do", when the singer finally falls from the suspenseful fifth down to the tonic at the end of the verse. From what I can tell, the chord progression of the main melody is Em-F#11-C-Em, with the bass playing C-G-E-B (but my chord-listening skills are garbage so correct me if I'm wrong); there's no resolution until that aforementioned verse. There's a bunch of dissonances here (a B/C minor second in the first bar and a B/F tritone in the second). Finally, the mixing on the vocals (I have no idea what that audio effect is, some filter perhaps?) makes it really sound "from another world", like the singer is far away.
Sorry, I kinda lloyded there. Point is, the vocals and lyrics are just another element of the music, alongside the instruments, mixing and structure, that fuel a central idea and feeling for the song.
It was around the summer of 2023 that my mindset finally shifted and I noticed that not everyone thought of music as having the same purpose as me; or rather, I realized that my purpose is not necessarily the "best" one. (Yeah, I know, art is subjective and all that, yadda yadda.) What made me realize this is songs and pieces of music that have been written and saved as sheet music rather than audio files, and this goes all the way back to the earliest music in human history. Obviously microphones weren't around in the stone age, so back then, music rarely had a defined shape. In fact, over the years, music started getting more and more precisely defined, first with the introduction of music notation (way back in ancient Greece), then adding more precise markings after the Baroque era (before that, there were no markings for dynamics, expression, etc. in sheet music because the performers knew instinctively where to change dynamics in what way), and culminating in digitally stored music that has a single defined shape or waveform (with slight variation in the form of compression).
Thus, one could make the case that the actual, original "purpose of music" is to be flexible, to create a general feeling rather than sound in a particular, exact way with every "misstep" and small variation included. Or one could make the opposite case, that with the development of civilization we have gotten closer to the true purpose of music. Or one could realize, as I have, that art is subjective. Big shocker, I know.
As I mentioned, a perfect example of such "interpretable" pieces in the modern age is classical music, as well as "traditional" songs. As a violinist, I have had a special relationship with the former, and I especially like that interpretability of it, that freedom which allows every single performance to be different and completely unique. I still apply the same philosophy of listening for every little detail when listening to a concert or recording of classical music, but what really attacks my previous "waveform" concept of the purpose of music is the fact that the original author of the music created only the sheet music; no "canon" way to play it exists. (No "Pachelbel canon in D" way to play it exists... get it?)
I take advantage of this when playing classical music. One example that I had used in one of my ToK exhibitions is from Bach's violin sonatas — specifically, Sonata for Violin Solo No. 2 in A Minor, BWV 1003 - IV. Allegro. Here is a recording of me playing it. Notice how at 2:50 I'm playing forte (loudly), despite a clear indication in my sheet music that it "should" be played piano (quietly). This is because, after finishing 1st level music school, I enjoyed rebelling against these markings in favor of what I felt sounded right. (In addition, as this is Baroque music, the original would not have included this marking and it was added later by someone else, as far as I know.) Interestingly, all the professional players that I listened to played that part piano and only then did a crescendo to the finale. Maybe I'm just an amateur, and maybe the Perspectives of amateur Knowers are equally Valid and True as those of Experts in this Area of Knowledge. (ToK link, anyone?)
Anyhow, this example shows how music can be considered as either a set of guidelines or as a specific waveform; although, if we go a bit metaphorical, both of these contain performers (people and speakers) performing according to a set of instructions (sheet music and digital data). One just leaves more room for interpretability than the other (although there can be a ton of variation in the playback of digital music, too; you don't know it until you buy some really good headphones or speakers hooked up to a proper DAC rather than just your laptop or phone).
As for "traditional" songs, they are equally just a list of words (often with slight variations between performances, as with the case of Старый клён, e.g. with "стекло" replaced by "окно") with a melody (usually not even a specific tonation) and, sometimes, chords. Again, much freedom is left to the performers — the same song can be sung by a single voice, a voice and guitar, or a full choir and orchestra, and we could easily say they're all the same song.
This (and classical music) creates an interesting spin on the many times aforementioned "purpose of music". Since the role of performers is necessary and inseparable from this kind of music, and its interpretability is its strength (as the originals are often composed in scenarios where a professional orchestra or band is unavailable and voices are usually the only instrument, e.g. war songs), you can't really focus on the way it sounds, because barring professional performances, it's really not that mind-blowing. What matters is the experience of singing it with friends, family or camarades. They're a part of culture rather than just data in Spotify's massive data banks. It's definitely not the way I instinctively think about music, but it seems to be the way everyone else thinks about it.
I was reminded of this recently when singing Polish "zakazane piosenki" (forbidden songs) with my grandma on the 1st of August, an anniversary of the beginning of a rebellion in Warsaw during World War II, and it's what pushed me to write this essay.
(Don't ask me why they have a sign language person there when there are literal subtitles, though. Polish people, amirite.)
So what's the conclusion of all this philosophizing? It's to keep in mind purpose when appreciating and creating music (and all other artforms, for that matter). Is it electronic music whose exact waveform has been polished for many hours to create a single, perfect sound, akin to a marble statue? Is it a rough idea, made to be memorable and easily reproducible, like a cultural element? Is it some basic sheet music that gives the performer space to put their own emotion into your work? Or is it a melody that'll sound just as good on a completely different instrument?
Think about it.
Thank you for reading this essay. If you have any criticism to my conclusions or want to add something, I'd be very happy to hear it in the comments.
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