It's always been an ability that I had, reaching far past the appreciation of the melody and the harmony, the chords and inner structures. It's a knack, a talent that I was born with, and one that I've nurtured and developed over the decades. I take it for granted, and it's only when I'm reminded of it that I realize how truly special it is.
I hear the totality of music much differently, much more complexly than most people. I hear three or four different elements at once---the melody for sure, it's what the music rides ahead on...the bass line, the bottom, the foundation, the part that I've been singing for years and years and years 'til it's ingrained in my soul...the middle, not just the rock and roll chords, but the stretched harmonies, the flatted sixths, the diminished sevenths, the halftones scraping against one another in their quest for resolution. I feel these notes viscerally, the tonalities moving within my body, the dominants and subdominants always pulling towards their tonic resolutions, the suspensions hanging before resolving home.
And as I look back over this post, I realize how ineffectual I've been in expressing myself, how utterly unclear all of what I've written has been.
And I know that you, dear reader, have absolutely no fucking idea what I've been trying to say, not through any fault of your own, but rather at the causation of my inability to write about sound.
Earwig---Counting Crows, Einstein on the Beach
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1 comment:
Huh? :)
After listening to cheap radios for years & now that I have my iPod, certain sounds "stick out" so much when I have my headphones on that I almost can't get past them. I don't hear the song anymore, I just hear that one background note every time it's played...
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