How does it work? Is it the lyric? The melody? The rhythm? What makes music have such power? As a person who writes songs, I have often wondered about this. What’s your definition of great music?

When I was in college I taught a little music class at a children’s center after school. It was in a poor section of town, and the kids were all classified as underprivileged. My job basically consisted of coming in for an hour in the afternoon and teaching my students some folk songs. I played the songs on my guitar and we sang together. The fact that they were all African-American and I’m about as white as a sheet of notebook paper made matters interesting to begin with.

I remember one little girl who came in one day and announced that she had written a song. Although I didn’t expect too much, I invited her to sing it. I thought I could probably follow along on my guitar. She was about ten years old and skinny as a pencil, but I’ve never forgotten the song that she shared. For me, it came about as close as anything has ever come to expressing how music weaves its magic. I don’t remember every word, but I remember a chorus:

Music makes you sing and shout — Music!
Music jumps you all about — Music!
Music really do’s you up — Music!
Talkin’ ‘bout music in the air.

The song had a nice, bouncy rhythm and a melody that we could all sing and feel. I went out of there humming this song, and it became part of our regular list that we sang during each of our sessions together. I think the line I liked the best was the one that made the least literal sense: “Music really do’s you up — Music.” I don’t know how to express what that means, but I understand what she is talking about because music “do’s me up” too. It creeps in at almost a cellular level and causes me to change my outlook on things. It helps me to celebrate in good times and begin to accept when I’m going through the bad stretches. Next thing you know I’m singing, shouting, and jumping all about — maybe not immediately, but over time. And music, good music, does that for me.

I think I have that lyric sheet somewhere in the morass of papers that I’ve accumulated over my life. I don’t want to get rid of it because for at least a moment in time she “got it.” What about for you? How does this thing we call music work for you? Partial or incomplete answers are totally accepted. — Bob Tatum

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8 Comments to “SongTravelin’: 12.17.10 — Explain if You Can….”

• December 17, 2010 at 9:19 am
  Jacques says:

  Actually, the little girl in your story does “get it” as you say. The fact is music is processed in a different part of your brain than ordinary thoughts and words are. Music is sometimes able to take a short cut into emotional centers of your brain and start working a change before your conscious thought processes become engaged. Now this whole process is facilitated by one’s having an open and receptive mind. The little girl obviously had that, many adults do not. I enjoyed the post.
• December 17, 2010 at 9:22 am
  admin says:

  Thanks, Jacques. I couldn’t agree with you more about your assessment. I think you’re right that we’re wired to receive music in a different way than we receive spoken communication.
• December 17, 2010 at 10:20 am
  Doug says:

  Well, not being a musician, I am responding totally off the cuff. No answer to your question came to me immediately.

  I sing. There is no logical reason for me to be in a church choir. I sing, but I don’t sing wel – only adequately. I guess I sing for the fellowship of other singers – the vast majority of us adequate. Mercifully, there are a few extraordinary voices to which we lend volume and enthusiasm. And sometimes WE sound grand.

  As for you songwriters, what would we do without you. You give words and harmony to our lives – past, present and future. You make it possible us ‘adequates’ to experience and, at times, even express the joys and sorrows of our lives. Afterall, you are one of us.

  Thank you.
• December 17, 2010 at 12:16 pm
  Bob says:

  It’s great to hear your voice on this site, and your expression of gratitude humbles me. I think you bring up a very important aspect of music — the WE factor. I have heard some technically complex music that never moved me at all. Then I’ve heard some very simple songs that brought me to tears upon first hearing them. For music to truly work its wonders it must represent some series of connections among the writer, the listener, and the performers.

  By the way, I have heard your singing voice. It is more than adequate. There is a warmth and sincerity that you convey through your singing that is compelling to a listener — me.
• December 17, 2010 at 1:47 pm
  Naomi says:

  This kind of goes along with the previous post. I feel like my answer will probably be very similar, but here goes anyway. I like talking about how and why music makes me feel.

  First, It’s clear to me that there’s a very serious difference between music and other forms of communication. Wouldn’t that be why some people can still sing even when they aren’t able to speak? (A thought I’ve always found remarkably intriguing..) Speaking words is not the same as singing them, even if they aren’t your own.

  I just had a thought. Music is, in a way, very similar to the aspect of photography that has always, always, since my very first camera filled me with love. Photography captures a single moment in time that will never again happen, that would, in most cases, be completely forgotten simply because it was so small. However, when a photo is taken, that is forever, that moment is captured in its entirety. You get a very intense feeling of what was happening in the mind of whomever you’ve photographed for just that split second, and the photograph allows others to experience it as well. Good music has a way of taking a single moment, a single feeling, thought, idea, experience, and enhancing every aspect of that moment in such a way that allows others to feel it too, just like the photo. Every note the artist picks, every word, every pause adds to the sensation they’re trying to capture. I’ve never written a song, other than the few when I was younger and walking around outside, but I imagine it’s more of a feeling process than anything else. Digging into the emotion and finding the notes that feel the same as you do, finding the words that feel the same as you do, even if, when dissected, the words don’t make sense.

  I guess that’s why I think music has such an effect on the listener. There’s a reason happy music makes you feel happy, why sad music makes you feel sad, because that’s exactly how the song feels. It’s incredible how that’s possible. How any of these things everyone has mentioned can come together and create something so powerful to so many people.

  Music keeps me going, in the good times and in the bad. I honestly do not believe I could be considered sane without music in my life. It completes me in a way I can’t quite understand, but I know you’re following me Dad, because I know you feel that way too.
• December 18, 2010 at 10:25 am
  Bob says:

  This is a beautiful and apt analogy — that between music and photography. I have often thought of live music performance as art that exists as vibrations that create a vivid image for a moment then dissipates into some general sense of experience. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I do “follow” what you are saying. I think that is a gift to both of us.
• December 18, 2010 at 10:00 pm
  Kay says:

  Well… I feel totally inadequate in saying anything regarding music after ‘Omi and Bob, but if Doug feels his voice is only “adequate” then maybe I’m not a lost cause after all.
• December 22, 2010 at 12:43 am
  Ellie Hjemmet says:

  “How does it work? Is it the lyric? The melody? The rhythm? What makes music have such power? As a person who writes songs, I have often wondered about this. What’s your definition of great music?…”
  I think different people have different orientations to what reaches them in music. For me, it’s vocal harmony first, that’s what catches my attention and I can’t begin to explain it. I know people who are primarily cueing in on the lyric, or on the instrumental line, or on the vocal quality. There’s many ways to “hook” someone methinks.