The transcendence of music
 

I know I'm new here and this is my first thread to create, so don't be too hard on me. I've been experiencing this lately and I'm going to try to express it in this post. Here goes.

Lately I've been consumed by music on a different level of feeling, almost sensing or perceiving it in a different manner. It's not something that has never happened to me but it's been a regular occurrence lately in my life. Allow me to attempt to explain, as I'm trying to improve my ability to translate thought into writing.

I've gone through periods where I was really consumed by the technical facets or elements of a musical piece. In this type of mindset I would dissect a song, structurally breaking it down, listening for technique and prowess - time signature, dynamics, harmony, chord usage and structure, modulation, use of modes and scales etc. There is no doubt all these technical components are crucial to music and they should be analyzed and appreciated.

However, as of late, I've found myself hearing music on a different level. Rather than analyzing and dissecting a song I will just listen to it, soak it in and hear it as it is in its complete form. Simply just feeling it more and thinking about it less. I have found great pleasure in this and music has been affecting me in a different way than usual. It's become more profound, more powerful, more moving. I've found much more enjoyment in simplicity and in the raw emotion and creative force of music. To hear it as it is, to bask in the sound and the emotion. I have found music to be truly transcendent, having the ability to take me out of time and space into a place that I can't quite explain. That is the true beauty of music, to me.

Interested to hear what you guys think.

Take it from one whio's done something similar what you've done. Your attempts at judging music has transcended into a more experienced form where you just have to listen to it to understand it and enjoy it. The same thing happened to me a couple years ago. I started out about 4 years ago as a simple aspiring critic. People often got annoyed by how I would analyze things. Well, it eventually evolved into a "second nature" and I never really had to do much thinking to critically rate it. Instead of picking it apart and taking my time, My brain would pick it apart immediately upon listening to the music and put every single little detail in short-term memory for me. Overall, I reached the point where I didn't have to disect something to understand it, and I almost immediately understand a greaty album now.

I think you're going through something similar. Basically, you have dissected so many frogs that you're entirely familiar with how a frog works, no matter how different each frog may be. And by frogs, I mean music. Basically, you never started out as a guy who just listened to it. You wanted to understand why it was good, right? Well, you've likely gotten to the point where you don't need to spend so much time thinking about it, and the ability to "get" the album has become a second nature experience instead of a thought process. I'd say that's a good thing. Your mentally able to immediately dissect and put back together music as you listen to it.

Thanks for the response. I can definitely relate to what you're saying and that's an interesting insight. You pretty much hit the nail on the head, I've always been one to attempt to understand why music is good rather than simply listening to it. I pretty much take that approach to life, always wanting to understand things and know how and why they work. What you say makes a lot of sense.

Thank you very much.

It's a lot cooler this way. When you understand music enough after dissecting it for so long, you know what to look for.

I understand and acknowledge the importance of all the structural elements of music but I hold the opinion that the pure creative force is equally as important. I can be moved as much if not more by a very simple piece of music as I can by a very complex piece of music.

Same here. What I'm saying is there is something to look for in every album, even if it's something different in every one. But the thing is, the thing we're lookimng for is whether the elements we examine live up to pure quality or not. That's the one thing they have in common.

I basically do a combo of the two--I automatically experience music on both the trees (the technical, music-theoretical, analysis of details) and forest (the holistic, transcendent) levels at the same time, without having to think much about either. It's second-nature to me. Of course, I've had over 45 years of practice at it--I started taking music lessons as a little kid, and I've been just as focused on composition and arranging, which helps with the forest level, for about 40 years, too.

Wow, that's a lot of experience.

Lemme know when you reach the volcano level. There's a cool miniboss there.

I prefer the underwater level. More freedom of movement.