Today when I got home from school, I found a happy surprise sitting on my kitchen table. This past summer I spent a week at All State band camp, and today the CD of my band's recording session had been delivered to my house. This triggered a rush of memories and emotions from camp for me, and I immediately popped it in the kitchen CD player. I blasted the volume and sat on the counter top for 40 minutes listening to the songs that I had spent almost 50 hours preparing over the summer, and all I could do was listen intently until the CD had finished.
While I was sitting and listening, my younger brother walked downstairs and stared at me. He asked, "do you need to listen to that for homework?" When I told him I just wanted to listen, he shook his head. "How boring. You can't even hear yourself with the entire band playing."
A minute later my mom walked in. When she heard the song playing, she immediately smiled. "This is like a Christmas song, I noticed it right away at the concert." She then walked away humming her version of the song. It was completely wrong - a mix of the real melody, and "Carol of the Bells".
This took a lot of explaining to get the the knowledge issue and I apologize, but my brother and mom's reactions got me thinking. Here we three were, listening to the exact same song, but having completely different reactions to it. For my brother, he immediately identified it as boring band music and didn't see why anyone would choose to listen to it, especially since my flute sound was buried with 60 other musicians' sounds. The same song must have triggered some memory of my mom's, and her limited exposure to the song left room for her imagination to create a spin-off of the melody all together. She listened with an untrained ear, while visions of sugarplums danced in her head.
While I listened to the song, it was an entirely engaging process. After all the the hours of practice and intensive rehearsal, I knew the song inside out, and no melody, harmony, or ornamentation was lost to me. I heard the mistakes as well - mushy entrances, an early horn - and while I listened to parts that I remembered from rehearsal, the main melody was almost lost to me. The song provoked so many memories and emotions as well - there is no feeling like sitting in the middle of all that sound happening, and contributing to it all at the same time.
The sounds coming out of the CD player were the same bits of data for all three of us, however, our experiences caused us all to hear and respond to the music in different ways. When somebody says they "know" a song, what does that really mean? Is my mom "wrong" for humming the melody differently from what I played, or am I wrong for defining the music only by the exact way it was written?
Holy cow, I never expected to write more than a couple paragraphs on this. I apologize for ranting. But once I starting thinking about it, it just got stranger and stranger to me!
In the realm of TOK it is important to know that no one is wrong and this leaps into the realm of perception. I associate it with connotations of words. Though they may have a similar feel to them, we all attribute different memories to the reason that they mean that. Music is the same. Many songs are directly related to the situation one was in, which tends to trigger that memory whenever the song is played. One example is the song played at a wedding has so much more meaning to the bride and groom than to the people participating in the dance; this is the couple's first song as a married couple while everyone else at the reception is thinking of a time when they heard the song, or what it means to them. I think when someone says they know a song, I think it means that they know it in their own, personal, way.
ReplyDeleteI have so many memories associated with songs that hearing one of them will simultaneously take me back to when I remember hearing it clearly for the first time, and create a new memory of enjoying it then. Plus, tastes can define an initial reaction. Your brother's response was based off an assumption that all concert band music is "boring" because it is not marketed towards him, and he is not into it for whatever reason. I myself find a band piece boring until I hear it/play it a lot. In fact, most songs grow on me the more I hear them until they become annoying and boring. And I wouldn't expect your mother to know exactly how your piece goes after only hearing a snippet of it that happened to strike a memory of another song.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, holy crap you spent over 50 hours on a song?!
ReplyDeleteNow that I have that off my chest, I found your whole story really interesting Jackie! Something I learned about myself after going through band, was that before I was in band, I thought their music was boring and tasteless. But when I joined, it completely changed my perception on the music. I began to see compositions as art forms and composers as artists. If I had gone to a classical orchestra concert before I was in band, I probably would have fallen asleep. But now I would love to go to such a concert and would find it very entertaining! I think it's interesting how after certain experiences our perceptions can change on the same thing!