250 Words on Musical Appreciation

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

One of my life regrets is that I have little facility or deep understanding for music. 

I’ve tried. I can’t sing. I played violin for a bit when I was very young, then picked at guitar through my teens, but showed no aptitude. I don’t think I’m tone-deaf but I may be tone-impaired; simply tuning an instrument was a struggle because I couldn’t really tell when two close notes sounded the same. I think if I’d stuck with guitar I could've become a competent player, but no more. Never a musician. 

I love classical music and took deep dives into Beethoven and Bach in college, which became slogs of sheer brute force memorization. Harmonics, counterpoint, the circle of fifths: music theory might as well have been quantum theory, which I actually understood better. Those two classes taxed me more than most physics coursework did.*

And music composition? Sorcery!

Watching a good musician play fills me with admiration and envy. They’re not thinking about where to put their fingers or how to move their hands. It’s all muscle memory—playful, expressive, intuitive. Beautiful.

I think I know what that feels like when I’m doing art, particularly using a brush to ink or paint. I’m not conscious of pressing hard or light, moving fast or slow, or how the medium will flow. It just does what I want it to. It’s my instrument and sometimes I can make it sing. 

And sometime it surprises me. I bet musicians get that, too. 

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*I expect some smart readers to point out how music actually is physics, with mathematically related vibrations and such. Yes, I know. I don’t find that as helpful as you might think. Why does a major chord sound triumphant while a minor chord sounds sad? How does a composer weave melodies together to tell a story and, while they’re at it, know to play some notes with an oboe and others with a trumpet? How can a song make you cry? That’s the ineffable magic. 

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