A musician’s energy

The work we create as musicians is emotional, irrational, structured and chaotic. It encompases all our feelings, historical memories and visions for the future. We travel through time as we wade over the ripples of our lives as each drop of water drips out the notes on the score.

I often wonder if I’ve become posessed by something greater than me when I write music. It’s not that I’m tooting my own horn (pardon the bad pun), I’m not professing that I’m actually any good at this music stuff. In fact, it’s the opposite: I know how crap I am – which is why I’m often amazed at how I’ve even managed to create a track that I feel is slightly worthy of sharing with the world.

Also, other strange things happen – when we listen to the music, we travel (or drift away) into a type of subconciousness, receptive of the sounds vibrating our ears. This stimulates our thoughts and releases all kinds of emotions and memories. We sometimes are inspired and thoughts pop into our heads making suggestions of what we could or should do with our lives. If you ever ask anyone this, most people would be embarrassed to say, but truth be extracted – they would agree, I uneducatedly assume, they’ve all experienced this.

The other strange things is – as we step through our lives, and the pages are slowly building to be our story. Some of the experiences we have are surprisingly expected. Although we haven’t mastered the art of predicting the future, let’s face it we’d have won lotto if that were true. We all know that things happen, and we say “hang on, I could have sworn I’ve seen this before”. Deja Vue perhaps? Or the weaving of our lives are intertwined with steps that get us to achieve certain things.

This is where music creation comes in – and I believe, on a personal level – that there are tracks that I’ve written where the melodies are just crazy. I have no idea how I got them. I have no way of understanding them without a master’s degree in music studies. I’m not going to do that – as I have other pleasures of education to pursue first. But it intrigues me. How in the heck did these notes come to me?

I think it has to do with energy. The energy of thought, receptiveness (having an open mind), learned knowledge (what we know), historical experience (what shapes us) and physics (sound energy, and what stimulates our audible side). There isn’t a recipe that I can create to redo this magical crazy melody creation act – it happens, when we aren’t expecting it, when we aren’t clenching – we’re just letting the energy flow to and from.

So, should we enter into a room with incense burning, the quietness and start meditation? Perhaps, but most likely we’re better off in front of our favourite instrument – allowing that to stimulate us – one note at a time. Let it build. Let come to us without clenching (there, I said it again – perhaps the recipe?).

Now, I just need to understand why …