“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” – Aldous Huxley
As a musician, I am constantly amazed at how full and, well, noisy today’s music is. It’s a barrage on the senses, note after note and chord after chord of non-stop sound, from intro to stanza to stanza to chorus to ad lib to chorus to stanza to chorus to chorus to ending (that’s the formula for most songs these days, give or take a stanza or two). Even the new “acoustic” music, so called because it uses acoustic guitars and such instruments, can be a dense mix of wang-chung (to borrow from the 80s band, which claimed that its name was the sound a guitar made) chug-chug-chugging along to the drone of the vocalist either whispering to a mic or screaming to high heavens.
It’s probably a sign of my age that I miss the days when musicians relied on real songwriting to move their ideas along. I was talking to my wife one morning about this, and I told her – and she wholeheartedly agreed – that even the Beatles, widely seen as a noisy rock band, actually relied on hooks and other musical tools to catch the ears of their listeners. Their music relied as much on what they did not play as on what they did. They were of the same mind as Les Paul, the musical genius who designed the guitar that bears his name, who said, “I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it’s the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with 20 notes.” Or the poet John Keats, who said, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.” Or the classical pianist Artur Schnabel: “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes – ah, that is where the art resides.”
Speaking of quotes, here are a few of my favorites from famous people, not all of them musicians:
“I often think in music, live my daydreams in music, and see my life in terms of music. I get most joy in life out of music.” – Albert Einstein, physicist
“The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice.” Andres Segovia, father of the modern classical guitar
“It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.” – Johann Sebastian Bach
“Lean your body forward slightly to support the guitar against your chest, for the poetry of the music should resound in your heart.” – Andres Segovia
“The piano is a monster that screams when you touch its teeth.” – Andres Segovia
“There was this big skiffle craze happening for a while in England… Everybody was in a skiffle group… All you needed was an acoustic guitar, a washboard with thimbles for percussion, and a tea-chest- you know, the ones they used to ship tea from India – and you just put a broom handle on it and a bit of string, and you had a bass… you only needed two chords; Jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing. And I think that’s basically where I’ve always been at. I’m just a skiffler, you know. Now I do posh skiffle, that’s all it is.“ – George Harrison
“God has a way of telling you when to change your strings.” – Dave van Ronk
“My best songs come from making a lot of mistakes and playing a lot of garbage.” – Eric Johnson
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