What’s it like to be “inside” the music?

You might wonder what the experience of making music feels like.  I mean, it looks cool, right?  You know what music sounds like and you know what music feels like to you, the listener.  You are moved by it, physically and emotionally, and have danced, bounced or simply nodded your head along with the beat.  But what is going on inside a musician? What is it like to be in the music?

Making music, or more precisely singing, is the perfect fusion of mind, body and emotion.  It is the perfect, all-engrossing activity.  In it, I can experience what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow,” that activity that so engages every part of you that you no longer experience the passage of time.  To sing is to manipulate breath, the very fuel of life, and to create vibrations which create sounds which express emotion.  I wish I had the Joycean gift of stream-of-consciousness writing to convey the experience.  When it all goes well and mind, body and spirit are fully engaged, it is a magical, ethereal experience.  I wish I were of a more poetic bent, for what I feel when I am inside the music merits language of a higher order than I am able to conjure.  I gave it a go once and trust me, it was drivel.

So allow me to break it down for you in rather un-Joycean terms.

Being inside the music uses your brain.  You are counting the beats, the measures, the repetition of patterns.  You are remembering (usually) lyrics and the melody and the rhythm and the way they all fit over the chords being played by the guitars, bass and drums.  You are remembering the tiny details of entrances, cut offs, and dynamic changes. The brain is alight on both sides of the hemisphere, as making music uses both the logical/rational and the creative hemispheres.  It takes a lot of concentration and adherence to pre-arranged rules and patterns, and yet simultaneously requires you to be “in the moment,” able to react and be flexible to small changes or disruptions from the agreed-upon pattern.

Being inside music also uses the senses of sight and hearing intensely.  I’m looking at the lyrics, I am watching the bandmates, I am watching their hands and faces and body language.  Their eyes tell me when they want to extend their solo; their faces tell me when it’s really good, and when it’s not.  I am watching for the slight nod of the head to indicate the next section.  I am watching for the sly smile of satisfaction when it all clicks.

I am listening, perhaps more intently than at any other time in daily life.  I am listening to the pulse, the rhythm laid on top of that pulse, the chord progression - do you hear that subtle dissonance in the dominant seventh chord that brings about the bridge? - the subtle changes in the drum pattern to indicate the end of a section of the music.  More than anything, I am listening to the pitch of the guitars and bass and also to my own and making millisecond judgments about whether or not they agree.  I am listening to the dynamic level and to dynamic changes and making sure my own coincide with theirs.  I am also listening to the emotion that is conveyed in their playing and feeding off of it.  I hear them feeding off of mine in a delicious spiral of feedback and mutual reinforcement.  

This communication with the other musicians is one of the most gratifying and entertaining aspects of making music.  The back-and-forth between musicians which happens on so many levels, all of them non-verbal, is exciting in the same way as knowing a secret language that is shared only between you and your friends.  You’re having a conversation, the subtleties of which may only be noticeable to you, and which both reinforce and spur your performance and experience of the song.

Being inside the music means being acutely aware of my body.  I am paying attention to the breath and controlling it.  I can feel my belly, my sides, and my back all expanding as I breathe in.  The sides stay expanded as the diaphragm begins to rise against the lungs, creating a steady pressure that fuels the vocal cords.  The breath goes in quickly and deeply and goes out so slowly, and always in service to the pitch, vowel and dynamic combination.  Higher notes require more air volume and pressure.  Lower notes require slower air at lower pressure.  Loud notes require a different kind of pressure than quiet ones; but quiet ones still need lots of constant air pressure.  It’s like I am working with the very basis of life to create the sounds of music.

I am also paying attention to tension, which is the enemy of good sound.  I am on the lookout for tension in my legs, back, hips, belly, shoulders, chest and neck.  Tension anywhere can affect the sound.  I am especially aware of tension in the throat and neck; the throat has to be held open, the neck has to remain very loose.  Higher notes need even less tension in this area, more space than lower ones, which feels really counterintuitive to a young singer.    

Maybe most of all, I am feeling for the vibrations in my face.  It sounds odd, I am sure, but the vibrations there determine the quality of the sound.  I manipulate my jaw, tongue and soft palate to create subtle differences in vowel sounds, which carry the vibrations.  I manipulate where the vibrations are focused in order to get just the sound I am looking for at any given moment.  Warm and smoky sound?  Vibrations are mostly around the mouth and somewhat in the back of my throat.  Light, bright, clear and high sounds?  Vibrations are focused around my nose and forehead.  These vibrations are perhaps the most important thing I am focused on when I am in the music; if I can focus on these, I can forget all the other things and just transform myself into a musical instrument.  (Here I fear I am straying into the hyperbolic, if so, I apologize.)

Mind, body...what else?  Oh, yes, spirit.

Emotion in music for me comes from so many things:  the rhythm, the arc of the melody, the lushness or austerity of the harmony, and, finally, the words.  A great melody can say more than words; a great melody paired with words that perfectly match it is like being able to look at a great painting in 3-D; it gives exponential depth to the experience.  

The emotions are perhaps most obviously in the words of the song.  For that moment when I am singing the lyrics, I don’t affect or “put on” the emotion, I find it, I find the actual, real and true emotion that the song expresses inside my own set of emotional experiences and let that come to the fore.  So, in that moment, I really am joyful, in love, peaceful, pissed off, hurt, or broken hearted; I don’t just try to look like it. Sometimes this spell breaks as the song ends, sometimes it does not, but rather lingers a while after the final cutoff.

When all the things I just described, the perfect fusion of mind, body and spirit, of melody, rhythm, harmony and lyrics, come together for one brief, wonderful 3-minute period of flow, it’s like nothing else in the world.  It is pure.  It is transporting.  It is bliss.  It is as simple as a melody and as complicated as landing a jumbo jet in crosswinds.  I forget everything for those minutes except the sensation of being in the music.