You know it's music
I began to wonder after Portishead. I had doubts because of Laurie Anderson. I was completely confused by Autechre. Once I thought that I knew it, but suddenly it had become a question.
What is music?
I consider myself a person who writes music. So it's only logical to wonder what exactly I'm writing. Every time I think I've heard it all there comes up something that stands proudly outside the area I have marked as "music". But I think I've finally found an answer. I know what the music is:
Music is beautiful sound.
I know, this isn't exactly what you expected from the definition of The Art. But think - it's true! All these feelings that are created in you by any piece of art, all those emotions, no matter what sign they bear, it's all beautiful. The simple but tricky solution of a math problem, traces of raindrops on the windshield, a bird singing - it all can turn out to be beautiful. It only takes the right kind of person to find this beauty.
Because, you see, the art doesn't exist. There are no nice pictures, and definitely no music. There's just sound and light. And a person who perceives it. And it is that person who has these emotions, who feels something more than what can be heard or seen. Music exists only inside this person. Art exists only inside this person.
An artist is a kind of man who can capture these feelings and transfer them to others. All people have some common experiences they can relate to, their culture. By using elements from that culture an artist can create an experience that would make other people feel what the artist felt. The creation of this experience is called art.
Music is a complex form of art. It involves both sound and text as a medium. There are some artists who rely heavily on the contents of their vocals, and there are also those who create sound that has no textual meaning attached to it.
So what are we, musicians, exactly doing? We take some outside source that we use to create a strong emotional state in us. It's called an inspiration. Then we add more different sounds to this source, trying to preserve the emotion. The choice of the sounds comes from our experience. In fact, we're reversing the process of listening to music. The better we are at this, the closer sounds come to represent our inner state.
What the artist has in the end is a sound that lets him, the author, experience his feelings again. There is no guarantee that anyone else will hear it as music. The artist might have used some specific sound that associates with some prominent event in his life. Nobody else without such experience will be able to fully understand this music.
I might try and speculate that there are some associations that every person is given at birth and keeps, no matter how he's been raised. But such topic would lead us too much elsewhere.
Nothing really tells the musician how much sound he should add to his music. There's some minimum that represents the original idea, and the rest is what I like to call "crutches".
A crutch is a tool man uses to move around if his legs are not capable for some reason. Crutches become useless once he can walk again, and forcing him to use them will most likely annoy this man a great deal.
Those extra sounds the musician adds to his idea also help other people, by making the artist's idea easier to perceive. The more appropriate sounds we provide the better the chance that the listener will find the feeling we have put into our music.
Too much help is annoying. Also, it is irritating when somebody tries to explain you something you already know.
Now, let's look at our music. We have an idea. We have dressing for our idea, to make the whole salad more digestible for other people. The better dressing the more people will try it. Take a limit of our music when dressing goes to plus infinity and you'll get pop music. The worst kind of it. The commercial one.
The whole point of music industry is to make money. Hence the industry word. The more people like it, the better. It really doesn't matter how much they like it, because they pay the same amount of money for things they listen once and things they listen over and over.
The first step is analyzing what people currently like. The most favorite components then are put into a blender and mixed with different flavors. Then comes the second step where people are persuaded to like the new product.
I might try and say what I think about advertisements, but I'm too polite to write it here.
But where's the original idea in this music? Where's that spark which motivated the artist to write this music in the first place? It's still there. Buried under a heap of crutches. Sounds that are there just to make company. That are loaned from other sources where they were used to deliver a completely different message, or they are added because there's a vacant spot in the final mix. When you listen to it you get this unpleasant felling like when several people are trying to talk to you at once.
Do you want this to happen with your music? Because this is the most likely thing to happen if you take the path of making your sound "professional". You will buy some new musical equipment, convert yourself to MIDI, spend hours trying to achieve some effect you've heard in the music of those, who have "made it into big". You will be doing so many difficult things you are not doing now while you are writing the music. Will you be able to keep your original idea in your heart the whole time? Of course not...
There's only one person whose feelings you can understand. Yourself. It's meaningless to try and write music somebody else is supposed to like, unless you're doing it for money.
You won't become popular. Forget it. Fame is like a jackpot in lottery - anybody can have it. Not everybody. If you do this because you dream to become a celebrity or something then hear this: the sooner you'll quit the less it will hurt. Spending a big part of your life in a pursuit of your dream will leave a huge gaping hole once you understand that you can't have it. It's not worth the risk.
Music is a great way to preserve your feelings. Like a diary holds you thoughts, your songs are holding your emotions. Music, any art, it's a very personal thing. Share it with someone close, someone whose opinion you care about. And don't let them change the way you feel about your music. Because only you can understand it.
And hey, anyone can win the jackpot...