What makes music complete?
What does make a piece of music complete? I believe music feels and is complete, if it shows the complete artist.
This is just a theory of mine, certainly this can be seen differently.
When I compose a song there are basically three things influencing my work:
- There is my head, my thinking. It manifests mainly through the sounds and the arrangement.
- There is my body, my instinct. It manifests mainly through the beats, the rhythm.
- There is my heart, my feelings. It manifests mainly through the melodies.
Of course this is just generally spoken, there are overlappings, the choice of sounds naturally is also influenced by the heart and vice versa.
As a consequence of this theory a song which is not influenced by head, body and heart will never be whole. It will never be able to show the soul of the musician, which I believe connects the three layers.
I often notice that music that is very successful contains all three layers! On the other hand:
- Music dominated by the head can be artificial, cold, theoretic, unhuman.
- Music dominated by the heart can be unreflected, fluffy, kitsch.
- Music domintated by the body can be monotonous, boring, stupefying.
A lot of psychedelic music leaves out emotion, since this leaves more doors open and possibly enables the listener to experience more individual experiences. Involving emotion in psychedelic music, on the other hand, opens other doors. more.
I believe that psychedelic music without emotion does not “express” but “function”, which I find very interesting and I also like it, but for me the perfect art, the perfect music is when the listener additionaly is able to SEE the artists soul directly through the music. But this needs a lot of bravery, since showing oneself makes one vulnerable. I experienced that many musicians seize to express their feelings because they are afraid of the reactions of the listeners. So they decide to stay on the “cool side” which is often appreciated by those listeners who are anyway not ready to confront them selves with too much emotion in the music. I think this is very sad and I hope that you take this little speach here to your heart and open your self in your music, show your heart, your soul in your music.
Of course, not all music can be emotional or has to be.. this would be very tiring. But, I believe that the way to peace on earth is only be reachable when people start to get to know eachother, start to look in each others eyes, stop hiding from eachother and start to become friends. So if you do music, always think, that your music is a message to the world, and understand, that if you never show your emotions you always show the world a rather cold side an this really doesn’t help to make the world a warmer place. At least sometimes, open up, show emotion, be honest, be vulnerable, take the risk an help to make the world more human.
