Movement and Music

What is music? Besides a simple collection of notes or sounds or whatever, I think the answer is always personal. It has more to do with how one was introduced to music, how one listened to music, what they were exposed to; a list of likes and dislikes is never really quite simple.

For example: I hate Creed, but damnit if their first album isn't genius. Shit, I even have the two after that, in hopes they could re-catch that somehow. Alas, the singer was a douche.

For me music has always been about movement. I think it started in my middle school years. I had been subjected to painfully long busrides starting in 4th grade, and had a cd player in 5th (that I was subsequently banned from taking to school due to repeating harmless, though explicit, lyrics from a band I haven't listened to since, 311), so 6th grade was when this really started to expand and grow. It was also when I decided to pick up the guitar (fuck you high school and collegiate posers who only know the chords to "wonderwall", oasis sucks anyway). This connection just naturally developed. I was in motion and the music went in motion. The music went in motion as I went in motion. This would happen for hours a day, five days a week, all school year long.

And so naturally I gravitated to music that had a well defined notion of motion. Metal became an obvious choice for my middle school self, though naturally listening to rock radio of the late 90's, Metallica and Sabbath were often supplanted by Ozzy, Smashing Pumpkins, a slew of post-grunge bands, and the one blur album with "that woohoo song".

High School came along and naturally that led to more musical exploration. Again I had a painfully long bus ride, though only the return trip (we had to wait outside a different school for about an hour to pick those kids up). Metal was explored further, though often only nominally. Post-grunge quickly gave way to classic rock. Pink Floyd introduced me to atmospheric music, which is when I learned of my synesthesia. Atmospheric music introduced me to Radiohead. Radiohead introduced me to britpop. I refound my old blur cd(s I actually had 13 also, in anticipation of another "woohoo song") and subsequently found the entire blur catalog, just in time for their next release, Think Tank. In time I went back and searched for music from the original britpop band, The Beatles.

College came and I found jazz, which is nothing but movement. There is always a chord progression or a note progression or a scale progression. Something is always going on. Even in Free Jazz, it's just different kind of movements, movements of colors, shapes, feelings. Thus Jazz is "faster" than any kind metal, thrash, speed or otherwise.

Speaking of metal, this is also when the actual deep diving into the metal world began. What I listened to in middle school was but a wading. Funny thing is even then I knew hair metal sucked.

But all of this music I had listened to, all of it had a sense of motion to it, a sense of time, whether strict or abstract. Good music to me always knew when to move, how fast to move, when to stay still, for how long should it stay still, etc. "Echoes" has long been my favorite Pink Floyd song, because at the bridge, it simply just stops for 10 minutes, exploring its own cavernous space, and echoes itself back into the verse and chorus.

And for the music, a song which actually moves remarkably slow, which suits it much better than one would think.



-- Knuttel

PS. the current singer/songwriter who probably has the best sense of this is Lady GaGa.