Language of the Soul

"Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends" -Alphonse de Lamartine

There are many quotes similar to this that express the same sentiment: music is the language of our souls. It speaks when words can't convey the message. I couldn't agree more. Music has a strange power to evoke and help us cope with emotion. Music can pump us up, calm us down, make us happy, make us sad.

Instrumental music can tell a story saturated with events and emotion. One of my favorite examples of this is "August's Rhapsody" from the movie August Rush. That song is phenomenal and musically tells the story of the whole movie. It speaks the sentiment of August's soul and his story in a way words can't.

While instrumental music is powerful, I love hearing lyrics people come up with to help convey their message. How eloquently some artists can express themselves and their emotions blows my mind. There are countless examples of this. I, like many others, use music to cope with emotions I feel. I could probably find a song with lyrics describing every emotion I've ever felt. I love doing this because music helps me express myself when words (as they often do) fail me.

I have tried writing my own music and have written a few songs. Unfortunately, I am never completely satisfied with the result because I have not yet found how to convey the emotions I have stored deep down. If music is the language of the soul, my music is currently learning how to speak. But I guess everyone has to start out with "goo goo ga ga".

I have always loved being part of music and band was a very big part of that experience. I played euphonium. I was second chair, our first chair was Chris, and our third chair was Scott. Not to toot my own horn, but we had quite an amazing euphonium section. One of my most memorable experiences from that class was when we three euphoniums had to hold out a whole note in a very exposed part of the song. We strived so hard to be perfectly in tune with each other and the majority of the time we were successful. As a result of being in tune with ourselves, we were also in tune with the tubas, saxophones, and other instruments in the band. Sounds cheesy, but that was a special experience for me. First to be creating such beautiful music and have it be so in tune was nice. But there's a lesson to be learned here. Everyone can make their own sound, and everyone is built to make their own sound. But if we strive to be on the same page and be unified and in tune, we will create beautiful harmonies that will make our human interaction so much more beautiful and worthwhile.

This has been quite a long post, but I just wanted to convey how beautiful music is and how much I love and appreciate it.