What Does Music Mean To Me

In a nutshell, music is one of the driving forces in peoples lives, in my opinion. It can bring joy, sadness, anger, love etc. Perhaps they evoke certain moods depending on occurrences in ones life, perhaps a song was playing on the radio on a honeymoon or on your first date and that's associated with love, or perhaps a song was playing when you were at your most depressed self or perhaps certain songs for happiness such as a wedding or something. Music can do so much to a person, and it does so much to me. I often turn to music when I'm feeling angry or sad/depressed because it helps. Sometimes I go for instrumental songs and other times I go for lyrical songs, both can help depending on the situation. More often than not, lyrical songs help me more nowadays, especially since I've expanded my music collection a lot and because I've found a lot of songs that I can connect with past incidents in my life. Some 70's and 80's songs remind me of my childhood, even though I was not born in the 70's or 80's but the songs remind me of childhood because they were playing on the radio a lot or my parents listened to them. I guess I have my parents to thank, mostly my dad, because without them then I probably wouldn't have got into so many bands, most notably, Tangerine Dream and the Beatles. I also have some online friends to thank as well especially for getting me heavily addicted to Depeche Mode, a band of which have many good songs that help me when I'm depressed mainly because I can connect with the lyrics.

That's the good thing about songs that include lyrics. More often than not, you can identify with them, with your own life, and that in turn means something to you and can help in a way, like it helps me and countless other people I know. Instrumental music can evoke certain emotions as well. Most notably, movie soundtracks. I say this because movie soundtracks are meant to convey what is happening on the screen for example, a person may have died so the music might be down-tempo, slow and with some classical instruments (most of the time) such as the piano or strings. Those two instruments both on their own and played together are very powerful and can evoke many emotions. Is it no wonder that most love songs have the piano and/or strings as the main instruments? It's because it gives you that feeling. It's hard to explain but it just does something, to me at least, that makes me feel happy inside.

Music means that much to me that I listen to it every day. I have to be in a certain mood to listen to particular songs, but most of the time, rock, synthpop and love songs I can usually listen to over and over again, regardless of my mood. What I like about music is that it is often unpredictable, and most good songs should be unpredictable and not follow the same format as most other songs. It's these things that make music just that extra bit special because you never know what may happen. These days, though, that isn't exactly the case. We have a lot of crap these days with most lyrical songs, with the likes of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and countless others which just make me sick. The songs, in my opinion, are not good at all. Over the years, I think music has evolved in a bad way, it's lost that something special which most older songs have. That's originality, creative and accessability. For me, music needs to be original because that just adds to the appeal of it. It also needs to be creative which, again, adds to the appeal of it and it also needs to be accessible. I don't particlarly like songs which are hard to get into and I need to listen to them over and over again until I finally build up some kind of appreciation for them. Songs need to have that special something that attracts the listener on the first listen. That's what makes great songs and I think that's what has been lost over all these years.

I guess the same can't be said for instrumental music because that's been steady over the years, in my opinion. Movie soundtracks are better than ever (although I'm still biased towards older movie soundtracks), but they are doing good. They haven't lost that spark which makes them good. This also, in a way, applies to Game soundtracks, although I think these days, the game developers spend more time on the graphics and not so much on the music, which is a great shame. This isn't always the case, however, since some newer games have both good graphics and fantastic music, like Fable for instance (that's the first one that popped into my mind). I do like the older game soundtracks, notably the DOS game soundtracks because that was more original, in my opinion, and much easier to get into and more importantly, it was catchy. I find great enjoyment in getting to a boss stage and having this really kickarse music in the background. It just hypes me up and I get totally immersed in it, which is, obviously, a good thing.

I listen to 60's, 70's and 80's, mostly, and most of the songs in this timerange will always be timeless classics and can't be replaced. Music is most definitely an art and it will always hold a place in me.

To expand on the fact that sounds can evoke emotions, let me just give you a few quotes regarding certain chord structures and keys:

G Minor

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart considered G minor the key most suitable for expressing sadness and tragedy, and many of his minor key works are in G minor, such as the Piano Quartet No. 1 and the String Quintet in G minor. Though Mozart touched on various minor keys in his symphonies, G minor is the only minor key he used as a main key for his numbered symphonies (No. 25, and the famous No. 40). In the Classical period, symphonies in G minor almost always used four horns, two in G and two in B-flat alto. Another convention of G minor symphonies observed in Mozart's No. 25 was the choice of E flat major for the slow movement, with other examples including Haydn's No. 39 and Vanhal's G minor symphony from before 1771 (Bryan Gm1).

B Flat-Minor

B-flat minor is traditionally a 'dark' key." Some important oboe solos in this key in the orchestral literature include the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4, which depicts "the feeling that you get when you are all alone", in Tchaikovsky's words. Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 is also in B-flat minor.

The old valveless horn was barely capable of playing in B-flat minor; the only example found in 18th century music is a modulation that occurs in the first minuet of Franz Krommer's Concertino in D major, Opus 80.

D Flat-Major

Hector Berlioz called this key "majestic" in his 1856 Grand Traité d'Instrumentation et d'Orchestration modernes, while having a much different opinion of its enharmonic counterpart. Charles-Marie Widor considered D-flat major to be the best key for flute music.

With this key being relatively unexplored during the Baroque and Classical periods, Franz Schubert used it quite frequently in his sets of ecossaises, valses and so on.

E Major

Only two of Haydn's 104 symphonies are in E major, No. 12 and No. 29. Even in the 19th Century, symphonies in this key were rare, with Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 being one of very few examples (see list of symphonies in E major). For Bruckner, "the key of E major is frequently associated with music of contemplation."

D Minor

J. S. Bach's entire The Art of Fugue is in D minor and, jokingly, so is P. D. Q. Bach's Musical Sacrifice. According to Alfred Einstein, the history of tuning has led D minor to be associated with counterpoint and chromaticism (for example, the chromatic fourth), and cites Mozart's chromatic Fugue in D minor. Mozart's Requiem is also written primarily in D minor. Of the two piano concertos that Mozart wrote in a minor key, one of them is in D minor, No. 20, K. 466. Sibelius's Violin Concerto is in D minor as is Schumann's, although many of the best-known violin concertos are written in D major.

...

Nigel Tufnel of the fictitious band Spinal Tap facetiously believes that D minor is "really the saddest of all keys," and that when a musician begins to play in D minor, "everyone instantly starts weeping".


-Will