There I am, maybe fourteen years old, one hand shoved deep in the pockets of my brown school Levis and the other furiously knuckling back tears as my piano teacher plays a piece I’ve long since forgotten.
I haven’t forgotten the feeling. My teacher had a silk-black Kawai upright and we were only allowed to play it after scrubbing our hands within an inch of their lives in her perfumed bathroom.
The sound of those notes was something else entirely.
What is it with music?
I lean in the doorway now and watch seven year old Brydie frowning over her right-hand-only rendition of Missy Higgins’ “Set Me On Fire.” Brydie is in love with Missy Higgins. Actually, Brydie is in love with just about anything melodious and catchy with a hook and a rhythm that lifts her up and that she can play over and over again. She’s not good with lyrics. It doesn’t matter. Put it on repeat. Play it loud. We’re partners in crime on this one: Jem, Brydie and I, heading down the highway with the stereo cranked loud, the three of us singing our guts out. Happy as.
In the mornings I’m a shameless manipulator of their moods, sensing on Brydie’s dark days that we’re going to need some Coldplay and that when Jem wakes sleep-smeared and fragile we’ll need some Birdy. To hell with the fact that we’ve listened to them both a few hundred times before… Music has the power to transform our mornings.
It’s well documented, this mood thing. According to the experts, music can make you more productive at work, less anxious, more creative, more relaxed, more attractive to the opposite sex, more able to withstand pain, more likely to complete your tax return on time. Well. I may be exaggerating some of the claims. There are a few caveats. Apparently the music should be in a major key. It should only be death metal or rap if you particularly happen to like those genres, otherwise it’s more likely to make you want to neck yourself and those subjecting you to it.
Some can concentrate with music playing, others can’t. But almost everybody, apparently, will feel better after listening to music they enjoy. The feel-good chemicals literally increase, according to the studies. They’ve even drawn the blood of guinea pigs to prove it! (Not actual guinea pigs – people guinea pigs. Guinea pigs are not all that receptive to music, although the studies do indicate that music can be beneficial for some breeds of animal too. Not the subject of my blog just now, however.)
It’s also said that your personal playlist is your “mood on paper”. Lyrics aside, the overall ‘feel’ of what we listen to most frequently is supposed to be the best indicator of where we’re generally at…. (So now you’re looking through your playlists and feeling, on the whole, quite good about your ABBA collection because surely that says you’re just a fun-loving person who looks great in flares, right?)
I’ve got mixed feelings, though, about how easy it is these days to get the music we want, whenever we want it.
Remember the days when you caught a snatch of a song you liked on the radio and then you had to wait days, weeks even, before you might be lucky enough to hear it again? There you were with your tape primed, hoping to be able to hit ‘record’ at exactly the right moment so you could trap that melody for your desperate, waiting ear…
A few months back, I heard the last 30 seconds of a song on the radio in the car on the way home from the gym. At the pedestrian crossing I hit Shazam on my iphone, found out what it was and had it downloaded to my collection before the car pulled into my driveway. Ridiculous. And that’s even before we wade into the absolute delights of Spotify. So much for delayed gratification…
My first Walkman was a black Sony and I spent my first ever paycheck – four shifts worth – from my job as a checkout chick at Flemings on a Huey Lewis and The News album (I know… I know). I swapped vinyl and pirated tapes, spent hours listening on my bed and then hours more learning the chords to Paul Kelly songs on my first ancient guitar. My fingers didn’t actually bleed, but they felt like it.
Music came hard.
Not so much anymore.
But does that make me appreciate it any less? I don’t think so, actually. I still cry over music. Piano. Strings. Almost all live performances. Children’s choirs. Recorder ensembles (but that’s usually because they’re so bloody awful that it’s brilliant.)
Music has the potential to make me feel more than just about anything else. All of it is wordless.
There are just seven notes in a scale – another five if you count the sharps and flats. Twelve in all. And yet for time immemorial, combinations of those twelve simple sounds have been moving us and shaking us and we show no signs of growing weary. That’s extraordinary, don’t you think?
So here’s what I reckon. Book some tickets. Download it. Write a song. Get under the shower and give it full throttle.
It’s time to turn it on. It’s really, really good for you.
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