“Music is so abstract, it doesn't communicate specifics very well - unless we're talking on an emotional level. Then, suddenly it is surprisingly more specific than we can be with words.”
- Thomas Baggaley
The above quote was something I had been trying to tell people, in much less accurate or concise wording, most of my life. Whether it was in my facial expressions or the simple fact of my ineptitude with finding the right words at the right time with the right people growing up, being on the Autism Spectrum has always meant that I found more satisfaction expressing myself through music than through words. Now, as a music producer and an empath, I have more tools to express the true weight of my emotions without overwhelming or upsetting people with my manner of expression. This happens for me in a few ways that I felt appropriate to share here for those out there, musicians or not, who want a better way to really feel satisfied and understood in the way you express yourself with music.
1. Using songwriting as a practiced skill.
In one of the songwriting classes when I was at Salt Lake Community College, we watched a video showing Pat Pattison from Berkely - this one - talking about the idea of "if you wouldn't normally say it that way, don't sing it that way". It was focused on the idea of putting proper emphasis on the right syllables and words to make your music carry message more deeply to the heart of the listener. I'll show a good example of this in a moment, but the number reason why Katy Perry's song Unconditionally has always bothered me is because of the way she sings the word as un-CON-di-TION-ally instead the natural way people say it which is un-con-DI-tion-ally. That song lost popularity and kind of crashed and burned after less than 2 months in the Billboard Pop Songs charts. Why? Because even though the music and beat were catchy, the human brain (however unaware people are that it's happening this way) gets tired of having the unimportant or wrong syllables or words emphasized, especially on unclimactic chords or notes. Therefore I try to make sure my lyrics and which chords and notes where I place them emphasizes the core message I want to get across instead of detracting from it and I think this one (It's Worn) does a pretty good job of that (i.e. the emphasis on the word "Lord" just after about 2:55).
For anyone who is familiar at all with pivot modulations in music, I had one professor at SLCC listen to a song I was writing while I was up there while I was still in the process of finalizing the lyrics. I played the part of the music that included a pivot modulation I had used to transition from the bridge into the final chorus. When he heard the pivot chord he said "you better have a really important word on that chord." I wish I could remember which song that was at the moment but I do remember telling him adamantly that I did have a key word on that very weighty chord and it carried the motion of the message quite well.
2. Less negativity in expressing negative emotions.
In another conversation at SLCC about how music expresses emotions the way we really want to, or at least the way our inner child always wanted to, the professor brought up the concept of what many classical pieces are actually doing to accomplish just that, but in a less childish way; and this applies to music with words, too. At the end of many pieces of classical music you hear a lot of going back and forth between two chords, quite commonly the dominant and tonic, like in the (roughly) last minute and ten seconds of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. In a sense, I think of this like the adult version of when children repeat ad nauseum and idea that's really important to them, but in a more satisfying and constructive manner, especially when the composer uses the previous 30 minutes (at least in the case of Beethoven's 5th) to build up to the final idea, like the perfect motivational speech that has a huge "micdrop" moment at the end that leaves everyone in awe of what the speaker just said.
Imagine an angry woman in an argument with a guy she's dating continually coming out of the room after storming off and saying "and one more thing!" Well, music is a less socially destructive and more emotionally accurate way to express the weight of what we really want to say, even over and over again without being annoying (if you know how to use the harmonic highway properly). I remember one of my professors saying that what a Coda - for example - is really doing is saying:
"we're done...
the end...
the end...
the end, the end, the end...
I've said...
what I needed...
to say...
thanks...
for listening...
this, is the end, the end, the end..
tadaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
It's basically a less invasive way to put as much weight as the composer wants on his final statements in an argument without swearing and using abusive tones of voice.
I once had a conversation with a high school peer back in 2005 I believe where I asked why she saw the need to swear. She told me that she only does it when she feels the need to add a lot of emotional weight behind something. The example she gave me was if something she saw was blue and she wanted to say just how intensely blue it was, she said she's say "that thing is so $%^&*() blue!" Well, had I known then what I know now about music's ability to communication strong emotions, I probably would have told her, "then just pick the right chords and sing it with that much emphasis", like at 1:13 - 1:21 in my song Scream The Truth. If you can learn how to repeat musical ideas the right way you can avoid screaming matches, insults, hurting or targeting people and getting hurt yourself and still express your emotions the way you really feel them.
3. Playing music
Even if you don't see yourself as a great composer or song writer, part of the beauty of learning to play an instrument is the amount of expression you can put into... well... anything you play. Just because a piece of music says p, f, subito, dolce, presto agitato, or any other number of tempo, mood or dynamic markings doesn't mean you always HAVE to play it that way. Obviously if you're just learning something for the sake of performing it and it's a well known piece then it might be a good idea to at least try to learn and convey the composers original ideas of how they wanted the music song to sound in your performance. But, let's say you like the well structured chords and general melodic sequence in Fur Elise but you're in more of a playful mood. There's no hard fast rule that says I can't jazz it up a bit and use those general ideas from Beethoven to create an entirely different feel to it. I actually recently did that in my arrangement of that piece that I titled "Fur Elise: Not Your Mother's Version".
I imagine that's similar to how Brahms felt when he wrote the middle section (about 1:13 - 1:40) of his Hungarian Dance that drastically contrasts the repeated first and last sections. The whole song communicates a variety of images and emotions and that's what music is for. So I say once you've got a good firm grasp on how and when to do it, create your own emotional message when you play a piece of music as often as you need to.
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Did you know that the National Library of Medicine did a study on musicians brains that proved that our corpus callosum - the part of the brain that connects the two sides of the brain - is significantly larger than the average person? This means a dramatically increased ability to take any kind of stimulus and organize and assigning meaning to it all it using a healthier balance of analytical, mathematical, interpersonal (and intrapersonal), empathetic and artistic/creative approaches. It's honestly almost like a sixth sense if you ask me. Those who know how to use music best can communicate extremely strong emotions with it and entrance their listeners, even hypnotize them, in a way that enables them to connect with their audience in a much more meaningful way than just appearance or words alone can do. I even found a graduate program recently at University in Georgia that actually teaches how to use music and frequencies to more effectively connect with the human brain and emotions and the program has a class specifically on human cognition of music, which I would TOTALLY love to take one day!
If you want to learn to communicate better, try doing a long, deep dive into how and why the best music is written the way it is.