Posts
.
Meet Ta and Ras, two friends of mine who in one of their get-togethers several days ago got the chance to talk about music they like. The way Ta described it to me, I got the impression that the conversation started casually but somehow heated up, and even, out of nowhere, made a mention of me.
It started, so I was told, when they both listened to a playlist Ta made, during which they both were so joyful to find their taste in music resembles each other’s. In the middle of that disclosure --during one song (I’m not really clear what exactly)-- one of them said half-whispering (I’m not sure who said which, either), that she knows how I would dislike that particular song, and all songs similar to that. The other second that motion. Ras said, that she enjoyed a song mainly through its melodies, a sentiment Ta instantly agreed with. Ras said (at least I think it was Ras) that, contradict to her, I judge a song by its lyrics, a sentiment Ta (at least I think it was Ta) agreed back.
Meet Ta and Ras, two friends of mine who in one of their get-togethers several days ago got the chance to talk about music they like. The way Ta described it to me, I got the impression that the conversation started casually but somehow heated up, and even, out of nowhere, made a mention of me.
It started, so I was told, when they both listened to a playlist Ta made, during which they both were so joyful to find their taste in music resembles each other’s. In the middle of that disclosure --during one song (I’m not really clear what exactly)-- one of them said half-whispering (I’m not sure who said which, either), that she knows how I would dislike that particular song, and all songs similar to that. The other second that motion. Ras said, that she enjoyed a song mainly through its melodies, a sentiment Ta instantly agreed with. Ras said (at least I think it was Ras) that, contradict to her, I judge a song by its lyrics, a sentiment Ta (at least I think it was Ta) agreed back.
The way Ta told me, that concurrence --that “silently” disgreeing this with me is what they actually have in common-- is a big relief, freeing them from a hidden guilt, victorious even. And that conversation continued full of warmth (I’m not sure from which sentence I started exaggerating things).
Although I am happy such agreement has made their sisterhood stronger (and there may be more of that where they came from, thus I should beware), I feel I have the right to place my argument. There is a reason why I pay significant attention to the lyrics instead of merely the sound. If this doesn’t enlighten them of their premature inference about me, at least it would save my self-esteem (this, I am too, curious how).
Experience: the sounds it vibrates
It would be impossible for me not to appraise music from its melody, for sound (in which melody is included) is what music mainly offers. But music is more than sounds. A definition of music I know even includes the absence of sounds. I know Doy, my musician friend, writes songs not because he wants to make sound, but because he wants to say something. He has in him one idea at least to share. I am confident of this about him, even long before I inquired this from him. I have a feeling musicians, maybe even all of them, feels the way Doy does. Thus it is almost automatic for me to try to find out what it is they want to “say” through their songs.
Although I no longer fancy classical music, there is something about them I still marvel. It is a custom that when a composition is perfomed, it isn’t called “played”, but --I love the term-- “interpreted.” Every piece of sound, tempo, dynamic (and any other musical terms I may misuse and never understand) in that composition is a part of an interpretation of a complete experience from the perspective of the composer. Thus, there is always an explanation why a song sounds the way it does.
Pines of Rome (Pini di Roma), one of a famous compositions, was made because Ottorino Respighi, the composer, took his seeing-pine-trees experience seriously. Each of its four movement portrays the location of pine trees in the city during different parts of the day. Had people not known him a great composer, they would have said: hey, amico, I think this floral obsession is not only time wasting, but loco too. If it had been so, Italy must have been fortunate that Respighi didn't mind such comments. He made what he saw, heard, touch, smell, and taste fitted into an auditory experience. That was a lot of work.
I suspect this tendency of not taking things for granted lives not only in classical maestros, but also in every song writer, amateur and professional, though the intensity may varies. If they pour so much heart to encode such experience to a song, it is then worth decoding.
There is something rewarding about making sense of why a song sounds the way it does. When I get what the songwriter wants to “say”, I feel like I have done my part as a good listener, though I know I have no such obligation. Sometimes, when the sounds of a song make sense, I can suddenly see the genius in him (yes, or her) There are only a few flattering occasions other than to have a genius entertaining you. Moreover, understanding a genius, even from afar, is always an uplifting feeling.
Sometimes I even agree to the extreme with the resulting sounds; that they should sound the way they do, or worst, that they cannot sound any other way. Even if they can, I probably won’t let them. Thus if I find someone sets Ode to Joy his cellphone ringtone, I will have a great deal of difficulty keeping my self from saying, “Please, sir, change it with something else. You stripped it off from the grandness it so eternally deserves.”
Sometimes I fail to understand why they sound the way they do, but at least I I tried. Obviously, I give a damn about sounds more than Tas and Ras think I do.
Experiences: the words it speaks
As early as Plato and Phytagoras, music has in its exploration some mathematical flavors (notice the term: scale, interval, etc). This tradition survives to this day, and even takes stronger scientific foothold (see for yourself). But take the “artist” and the “genius mathematician” out of a songwriter, and what is left of him is a statistician. Their only assets are the number of possible combinations of melodies (Add to that, if they’re resourceful enough, the total number of possibility of how to present them --the instruments used, the color of the sounds, etc. Thus two songs with similar chords combination may sound totally different). For them music is about making new sound, ones which people may never hear before. Their question would only be: has anyone publish this sound? Boy, how the supply is getting thinner and thinner at every album release.
I don’t know this for sure, but I think that the total number of such combination is much much smaller compared to the total number of vocabulary of any language (Oxford English Dictionary has in it more than 300.000 word entries). I also doubt that this mathematical consideration is the motive behind putting lyrics into songs (many musician friends I know actually despise mathematics). I suspect, as many other would, that musicians use words to make their messages more explicit. It makes it clearer that the messages, hidden or out in the open, are also meant to be understood. I don’t know when this custom started, but I’m positive that it is older than the culture of pop music (most of which, probably more than 99 percent of them, use lyrics).
This is the foundation of which Ta and Ras thought I give a song a strict verdict. If a song lyrics is cheesy or girly, I will find it unforgiveably guilty for the crime against humanity (of crossing beyond the male chauvinists’ line, to be exact). I don’t not deny the male chauvinist in me, but saying this to be the reason I like or dislike a song is an oversimplification.
Given that we have more words in our dictionaries than we do notes in musical scales, the room of possibilities to customize our experiences into words should be as spacious as the universe itself. Thus, the list of song themes should go on forever. Even the most popular one --love-- may provide endless list of possible verbal combinations. So when a song writer choses words like “baby, I love you so”, or “I’ll be there for you”, or “you’re the air that I breathe” (and the list goes on), unless they are presented in such new and genial sound structure, or fit perfectly to my personal experience(s), their songs will not make it to my personal top 100 list, let alone my top 10 (not that they need my vote nor this will sadden them). Chosing such cliché-ish verbal approach, to me, is like making a Power Point presentation with a limited Microsoft templates. It hinders, if not diminishes, that which suppose to be meaningful messages.
Just because love is so common, it doesn’t mean that its expression automatically is. Actually, to say that love is a common experience is almost like saying that there is nothing special about whom we fall in love with. Most of us would find that deeply offensive. Diane Ackerman, an American poet, said that poetry has a way of lifting a feeling or idea out of its routine so that it could be appreciated with fresh eyes. The same goes with lyrics, I suppose, and any songwriter who accomplishes that deserves a proportional appreciation. Such accomplishment is not a few. Here are some (feel free to add).
One of the Brand New Heavies, to describe how one feels so small before one’s object of affection, wrote “you are the universe” [1] (Ha! Universe. Didn’t I mention that word before?), while Frankie Valli chose “I love you, and if it’s quite alright, I need you” [2].
Both Sting and Bono love their fathers full-blown, though neither quite got along with them and barely spoke. While Sting said “For all my days remaining/ I love you with my fashion” [3], Bono said “I know that we don’t talk/(but) can you hear me when I sing/ you’re the reason I sing/ you’re the reason the opera is in me” [4].
My favorite version of saying “I can’t get enough your love” is that of Dave Matthews Band’s: “I’m gonna take more of you letter by letter” [5]. That is the first time I found a writer uses full name to personifies the completeness of a person. It is as if he reinvented the word “letter”. I read in one of their unauthorized biographies that Dave, feeling that he was not much of a writer, spent hours and hours every day practising writing lyrics. I personally think without doubt that his efforts paid off.
Sometimes it is love itself, instead of the person, that we find endlessly beautiful. One of songwriters who expressed this articulately is Imogen Heap. She said: “oh (I need to) empty my heart/I've got to make room for this feeling/(because it is) so much bigger than me” [6].
Even the speechless effect love induced isn’t completely verbally paralyzing after all. One of the Jackson 5 (I don’t know which), made his lost for words his advantage when he wrote “la la means I love you” [7] (though I find the rest of the lyrics rather icky). Natasha Beddingfield, after a great length describing her efforts to poetize her affection, in the end apologetically said “(I can only write) I love you/is that okay?” [8].
Maybe it's just the reader in me, but with such a restless possibilities of describing how we experience life, or particularly, how we love, how could I not give lyrics a big credit?
There is something rewarding about making sense of why a song sounds the way it does. When I get what the songwriter wants to “say”, I feel like I have done my part as a good listener, though I know I have no such obligation. Sometimes, when the sounds of a song make sense, I can suddenly see the genius in him (yes, or her) There are only a few flattering occasions other than to have a genius entertaining you. Moreover, understanding a genius, even from afar, is always an uplifting feeling.
Sometimes I even agree to the extreme with the resulting sounds; that they should sound the way they do, or worst, that they cannot sound any other way. Even if they can, I probably won’t let them. Thus if I find someone sets Ode to Joy his cellphone ringtone, I will have a great deal of difficulty keeping my self from saying, “Please, sir, change it with something else. You stripped it off from the grandness it so eternally deserves.”
Sometimes I fail to understand why they sound the way they do, but at least I I tried. Obviously, I give a damn about sounds more than Tas and Ras think I do.
Experiences: the words it speaks
As early as Plato and Phytagoras, music has in its exploration some mathematical flavors (notice the term: scale, interval, etc). This tradition survives to this day, and even takes stronger scientific foothold (see for yourself). But take the “artist” and the “genius mathematician” out of a songwriter, and what is left of him is a statistician. Their only assets are the number of possible combinations of melodies (Add to that, if they’re resourceful enough, the total number of possibility of how to present them --the instruments used, the color of the sounds, etc. Thus two songs with similar chords combination may sound totally different). For them music is about making new sound, ones which people may never hear before. Their question would only be: has anyone publish this sound? Boy, how the supply is getting thinner and thinner at every album release.
I don’t know this for sure, but I think that the total number of such combination is much much smaller compared to the total number of vocabulary of any language (Oxford English Dictionary has in it more than 300.000 word entries). I also doubt that this mathematical consideration is the motive behind putting lyrics into songs (many musician friends I know actually despise mathematics). I suspect, as many other would, that musicians use words to make their messages more explicit. It makes it clearer that the messages, hidden or out in the open, are also meant to be understood. I don’t know when this custom started, but I’m positive that it is older than the culture of pop music (most of which, probably more than 99 percent of them, use lyrics).
This is the foundation of which Ta and Ras thought I give a song a strict verdict. If a song lyrics is cheesy or girly, I will find it unforgiveably guilty for the crime against humanity (of crossing beyond the male chauvinists’ line, to be exact). I don’t not deny the male chauvinist in me, but saying this to be the reason I like or dislike a song is an oversimplification.
Given that we have more words in our dictionaries than we do notes in musical scales, the room of possibilities to customize our experiences into words should be as spacious as the universe itself. Thus, the list of song themes should go on forever. Even the most popular one --love-- may provide endless list of possible verbal combinations. So when a song writer choses words like “baby, I love you so”, or “I’ll be there for you”, or “you’re the air that I breathe” (and the list goes on), unless they are presented in such new and genial sound structure, or fit perfectly to my personal experience(s), their songs will not make it to my personal top 100 list, let alone my top 10 (not that they need my vote nor this will sadden them). Chosing such cliché-ish verbal approach, to me, is like making a Power Point presentation with a limited Microsoft templates. It hinders, if not diminishes, that which suppose to be meaningful messages.
Just because love is so common, it doesn’t mean that its expression automatically is. Actually, to say that love is a common experience is almost like saying that there is nothing special about whom we fall in love with. Most of us would find that deeply offensive. Diane Ackerman, an American poet, said that poetry has a way of lifting a feeling or idea out of its routine so that it could be appreciated with fresh eyes. The same goes with lyrics, I suppose, and any songwriter who accomplishes that deserves a proportional appreciation. Such accomplishment is not a few. Here are some (feel free to add).
One of the Brand New Heavies, to describe how one feels so small before one’s object of affection, wrote “you are the universe” [1] (Ha! Universe. Didn’t I mention that word before?), while Frankie Valli chose “I love you, and if it’s quite alright, I need you” [2].
Both Sting and Bono love their fathers full-blown, though neither quite got along with them and barely spoke. While Sting said “For all my days remaining/ I love you with my fashion” [3], Bono said “I know that we don’t talk/(but) can you hear me when I sing/ you’re the reason I sing/ you’re the reason the opera is in me” [4].
My favorite version of saying “I can’t get enough your love” is that of Dave Matthews Band’s: “I’m gonna take more of you letter by letter” [5]. That is the first time I found a writer uses full name to personifies the completeness of a person. It is as if he reinvented the word “letter”. I read in one of their unauthorized biographies that Dave, feeling that he was not much of a writer, spent hours and hours every day practising writing lyrics. I personally think without doubt that his efforts paid off.
Sometimes it is love itself, instead of the person, that we find endlessly beautiful. One of songwriters who expressed this articulately is Imogen Heap. She said: “oh (I need to) empty my heart/I've got to make room for this feeling/(because it is) so much bigger than me” [6].
Even the speechless effect love induced isn’t completely verbally paralyzing after all. One of the Jackson 5 (I don’t know which), made his lost for words his advantage when he wrote “la la means I love you” [7] (though I find the rest of the lyrics rather icky). Natasha Beddingfield, after a great length describing her efforts to poetize her affection, in the end apologetically said “(I can only write) I love you/is that okay?” [8].
Maybe it's just the reader in me, but with such a restless possibilities of describing how we experience life, or particularly, how we love, how could I not give lyrics a big credit?
***
This is not to say that Ta and Ras choose wrong songs to adore. Nor it is to say that I will stop making bad comments about musics Ta and Ras find pleasureable. Intimidating them by disagreeing with everything they say has been really fun so far (particularly of Ras, I did so with the Je’s implicit blessing). It would take a person with a big heart to put a stop to such a guilty pleasure. Unfortunately for them, I’m nowhere near that. Fortunately, they know this, and some preparations have been made, some coping techniques have been chosen (Somehow, this might not be an exaggeration).
2 comments:
Despite of his elaborative and convincing argument about weighing the lyrics as an important criterion to decide whether he would include a song to his 100 most favorite songs, which he posted on his personal blog (whether or not it was written in purpose of defending himself), we believe that Adih had misinterpreted some of the content of Ta and Ras talking, which we also believe the chat indeed was very amazing, interesting, yet hilarious. While Adih perceived that they thought he merely relies on the content and the choice of words in a song's lyrics, it was actually not what they said.
In their last-Wednesday chat, on Ta's car in a journey from West Java to Banten via Jakarta, Ta and Ras found a kind of relieving feeling (and not victorious, we think this is where Adih started to exaggerate Ta and Ras' sentences), when they confessed to each other that they usually did not have particular reason, or usually were not able, to explain why they favor a song. Their primary criterion for song preferences was merely the ambience a melody and arrangement create ( and they liked Disney's songs instead of those top-40 songs, one fondness that almost never got approval from most of their friends, who perceived it as boring ones), and they both found it was unquestionably difficult to explain the ambience to other people. Ta said that she would even be more excited toward a music with a good melody, when she knew that the song belonged to a movie's original soundtrack ( most of Disney's are movie soundtrack, right ?). To make the case even worse, Ras said that she was very gullible to a fancy orchestration, and thought that most of orchestrated songs are good to be heard (most of Disney's are also arranged in full-piece orchestra, aren't they ?) .
On the other hand, they said that Adih always has a strong, or at least sensible, rationale in picking a song. For example, Adih gives a significant proportion of attention for the lyrics, while Ta and Ras, almost never give that huge sentiment toward the words a song contains (in addition, they agreed that they ignorance toward the lyrics might be caused by they mediocre ability in listening. Hahaha. Yes, they might be a bit “auditorily challenged” in catching foreign language). Well, not to say that they don’t care about the lyrics. Good lyrics -with a good melody of course- would be appealing for them. Especially if the theme of the songs suit their condition or moods. For example, Boyz II Men's I'll Make Love To You was once a lovely song for them because it had a good melody and performed with golden voices, but then it became a pervert song once they listen to the lyrics (Throw your clothes on the floor, I'm gonna take my clothes off too.... yuck!) However, if the composers or writers were not able to wrap the lyrics with a good melody or present it in an adequate performance, then the good lyrics would unfortunately become a waste. For example, Bjork's Joga has a good lyrics ( All that no-one sees, You see, What's inside of me, Every nerve that hurts,
You heal, Deep inside of me, oo-oohh,You don't have to speak, I feel) but unfortunately (sorry Dih) they couldn't tolerate the melody, left alone her voice. Hence, Adih's judgment to the lyrics was just used for an example of his source of rationale for his playlist, and it had nothing to do with saying that Adih does not give a damn to the melody, nor disdaining Adih's careful attention to the lyrics. They even appreciated such aptitude, which they probably not possess one as good as his.
Having read Adih's latest entry, the women also came to another inference, that there might be a different primary function of music between them and Adih. While Adih treats music as a medium to send message, Ta and Ras saw music as a tool to affect their own emotions. Ta said that she often uses particular music to boost her mood, and it works for her ; Ras used to have at least two playlists that contained particular songs in her previous computer, that she regularly played each day. The playlists were titled “Morning Music” and “Nocturnes”, to be played in the morning (to rush her adrenaline) and at night (to soothe her before she went to bed), respectively.
In conclusion, we believe that neither Ta and Ras intended to detest Adih's attention to a song's lyrics. In contrast, they would agree to Adih's explanation although they would not stop giving appreciation to the melody over the lyrics. In addition, they would punch back once Adih stroke their musics, either for Ras, who has already started to get used to his mocks, in spite of Jeff's discrete approval for Adih, at least until her departure to save herself (XP), by fleeing to a faraway country next year (wish her luck!) or Ta, who's now being a new target of his mocks since her alliances with Ras, as well.
* While writing this text, one of the writers was listening to Eric Martin's “I Love The Way You Love Me” (one of her “before-dating” anthems), while the other one was listening to Renee Olstead’s “A Love That Will Last” (Princess Diaries’ 2 Original Soundtrack). Any alternative for cheesier songs, Dih ? xp
I love the way Mas Adih and Ta & Ras "inteprete" what's called a music by their very-own sense of the music itself...
"Music isnt just music" may be the best-to-say. Yet, every each of ones could even possibly "guess" what the music's supposed to be, no matter how tremendous the lyrics "run" and the melody "swings".
For me (not to judge and demean what Mas Adih and Ta & Ras have stated), music is to be listened to... Music is to score how we score the life itself...It is really not a case of preferring or liking a music but indirectly a matter of how we value things in life (sounds so naive,hehehehe)
Simply finishing, Mas Adih has just done the mesmerizing to me right in the minute i reached this blog. Great...[no exagerrated contents provided in the comment]
Post a Comment