Jamming at The Crooked Path, seen here: Randy Cobb, Lasse Berthelsen, Frank Palmer, Ronn Cobb & others with yours truly.
The Miracle of MUSIC.
For over half a century, I have played, composed, performed and recorded songs and scores. I have also studied the effects of music.
As my good friend and bass-virtuoso Randy Tico said to me yesterday: “People have been starving for music for a long time.”
One note
We agreed that what most of us hear in the world today is not music. It is a description of music. It is numbers made into sound.
Digital systems replace real events with numerical descriptions of them.
Digital audio recording does not record the sound, it records a description of it.
Real music has been an important part of every human tribe, people, religion & country since language was invented – perhaps before.
Why?
What good is music?
Music provides no clothing, food, or shelter.
What value, then, has music had to Human Beings for thousands of years?
My answer: Music connected us to each other, and to something beyond.
I say, Music only exists when someone is listening.
A hundred years ago all music was live.It was played by musicians using voices and instruments to listeners who were present.
Music was a shared experience, that at times became a spiritual experience when a presence entered called, “the Muse”.
- Churches used pipe-organs and psalms,
- Spiritual practices included chants.
- Armies sang songs, used horn orchestras and drums & bagpipes in battle.
- Mothers sang their children to sleep.
- Musicians, dancers came to life at gatherings.
It was all “live”, in-person, actual voices, real instruments. It was personal and felt.
Today, there is little of that.
Digital music fills our ears, perhaps stirs us through our memories, but it does not provide the same connection, healing even, that live music offers. If you are a musical person today, you are starving. My suggestion would be to go to live music performances, join groups that chant or sing together, or simply sit in nature and listen to the birds.I, like you, am forced to mostly use the digital medium as a way to reach others, but I still, practice, write and expand to offer the richness of real music live and in person.
The song included here is about music (use headphones if you have them).
And you can hear much more original music & songs by yours truly here…
