How long before music becomes a long strange trip?
After more than 50 years of guitar, my ears and how they connect music to my brain have become much more sophisticated than they used to be. Something happens to the mind once you’ve been noodling around for about 20 minutes or so. This has been very surprising to me over the past five or so years. I am not a real musician by any stretch of the imagination, but after 50 years, I know quite well after about 20 minutes what I’m trying to create.
Something very special happens. You realize you’ve arrived in a new dimension where tone, harmonics, melody, and rhythm all seem to show up from somewhere hidden away. The sound created seems important somehow. It’s reaching far beyond any feeling you have listening to others playing their own songs.
Real musicians understand this, I’m sure. In fact, yes, I was a youth baseball coach for 15 years. That 20 minutes is known as warming-up. If you watch music documentaries, you’ll see musicians and singers playing together for a while before they hit the stage to perform. Same with theatrical actors rolling through a series of vocal drills.
With music, though, there’s a very real mystery to how playing an instrument can be so deeply soul satisfying. After that 20 minutes, I honestly often can’t believe I’m hearing what I’m playing. It feels like a legitimate chemical experience, a natural high. You’re not just warming up your fingers, you’re waking up musicality in yourself. I often think when I hit that mysterious feeling,
“What a long strange trip this keeps turning out to be.”
Some people might say,
“Dude, it’s just music.”
If you’ve been reading these dispatches, you know that’s probably not a response I would agree with. For what it’s worth, I’d guess if you read my novel Sound Effect Infinity, you’ll see how far inside that mystery may travel.
You can write to howdy@flatbranchpress.com. We promise to respond.
Thanks for reading.