Response to Blog - Emotions

This is a response to Sara Dion's blog. In her blog the question is what is music without emotion? Music without emotion is like a person without a dream. In my opinion, emotions are the driving force behind the music. Music is filled with emotion by the artist and consumed with emotion by the listener.

Let's look at the composer/ artist first. They had to have felt something in order to make the piece that they made. Music is suppose to represent something, and most of the time it is what the artist is feeling while creating their piece. The artists wants listeners to know that they hurt, to know that they feel happy, or annoyed or angry. The artists wants their fans to know, though talented and famous, they feel, and this feeling they have is the muse for their music. From my experience with music I see that artists always tell a story. They usually tell their story. For example, Miley Cyrus has a song in which she wrote for her grandfather who died. It is a sad slow song which she most likely wrote when she was feeling down. Other artists usually sing love songs with their significant other when they just got together and "I hate you" songs when the relationship goes sour. Many artists dedicate songs to mothers, fathers, and others close to them who are ill, dead, or just because they feel like it. If artists didn't use emotions in their songs, wouldn't the songs be terribly bland. It is the emotion and energy that they put into their songs that we feel when we listen to the end product.

As for listeners, the emotions that consume us when we hear songs, may be the emotion that the artist puts in or just our emotions manipulating the song to fit what we are going through. I remember a person in class saying that they listen to this one song in which they get a different message out of depending on how they are feeling. When they are sad it is a sad song that gives them the impulse to cry, when they are happy it's a profound song that makes them smile, when anger takes over the song then turns into a contemplative song in which they can identify with. Emotions are just as important in interpreting music as they are in creating music. Think of a stoic person creating/ listening to music. Wouldn't the end product be just a monotone "song" with no melody or basic musical components? Emotions play a large role in music because it plays a large role in everyday life (which always is associated with some kind of emotion). Music and emotion go hand in hand; they are like a lock and key, they need each other. Though this is my opinion I can't help but think that today's music is just getting angrier and angrier as well as degrading to women. So I have two questions;

Can we call degrading music "real music"? and Since anger is a popular emotion in today's music what does that say about today's society?

What we hear

Today's class consisted of many interesting points. While the discussions were going on I was thinking about what I hear when I listen to music. I have many thoughts as well as many questions in my mind on this topic.

Today I tried to think of when I listen to my favorite songs, one of which is "To Love You More" by Celine Dion, what do I hear? Do I hear the music as a whole or as small elements grouped together. That is, am I hearing just one body of "noise" or do I hear the violin section and the drum section and the voice of the singer coming together making one thing. Can we break apart music psychologically? If we can, can we do it for the duration of a whole song? Does our brain let us, or does it just puts everything into one uniform thing in which we cannot decipher the cymbals from the flute and the flute from a voice? I guess the real question is that when listening to music can we psychologically forget about timbre and just hear the music instead of the components of it? I do not know if what I am saying is clear, it is just a question that came to me. When I listen to songs, sometimes I hear the different components and sometimes I just hear the music for what it is, I hear it in its whole entity. Maybe, it depends on whether or not you are a skilled musician? To the untrained air music is music without any elements, its like a plant is a plant but to a botanist a plant is so much more than just a mere plant. It has features that distinguishes it from others.

Is this what philosophy of music is? Tearing apart music to see all the elements that makes it music? So in the end, though we may not be experts, we are able to stop looking at the big picture and look at the smaller components that make up the big picture?