Part 1:
Building Self Esteem
Let's get
philosophical here for a second, please bear with me. What is music? A sound?
A series of sounds? Let's look at
this differently: If we establish the basic premise that Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" is considered art, we must ask ourselves what made it
so. There was a blank canvas, he put a
lot of time and effort into painting it, and suddenly there was a picture of a
woman. Contrast this to Barnett Newman's
"Voice of Fire", a simple painting with three columns, and it is also
considered art. Why? The level of
complexity is clearly different. Well
that's just it. Art can be simple.
Everything is technically art and any sound (or series) is music. That being said, if you walked up to a piano and punched the
keys, by definition it would be music.
Whether or not it is pleasant is a matter of opinion, but you'd be hard
pressed to find anyone who enjoys "knuckle sandwich in B flat".
What I'm
trying to say is that, as a society, we need to break out of the idea that everything needs to fit in a
box.
This
week, I suggest that you pick up an
instrument (any at your disposal - even if it's your voice), and play four
different notes. Play them repeatedly,
change the order their played in, and change their tempo. That will be your first song.... no matter
how bad it is. This exercise is meant to
show that a melody can easily be built from scratch.
