When a Sound is more than a Sound

What do Shamsuddin Farid Desai, John Coltrane, Toru Takemitsu, and Jimi Hendrix have in common?

The answer is that one cannot understand their music without being appreciative of sound. Of course all music is made of sound, but knowing that is not the same as being aware of it. You walk into a room and someone asks you if you were aware of walking into the room. You think back and remembering the entrance way and the fact that you were previously outside and that now you are inside, you answer, “Yes, yes I was aware of entering the room.”—but this is not necessarily true. Remembering that you did something is not a guarantee that you were aware of what you were doing at the time. And knowing that you just listened to this or that piece of music is not a guarantee that you were, at the time, aware of sound.

Sound, what is it? Let’s first  take a look at a sound, a single sound. A sound is not a note. Nobody hears notes. Note is, in fact, an abbreviation for notation—an indication of two aspects of a sound—pitch and duration. Notation works well in a system in which sounds with specific pitches and specific durations are used to create and express concrete musical forms—a music in which individual sounds are combined in various way to create forms. In this kind of music the sound is often subservient to what it creates.

But the music of Shamsuddin Farid Desai, John Coltrane, Toru Takemitsu, and Jimi Hendrix make sound itself equal to, or even superior to, what the combinations of sounds produce. For musicians like these, a single sound can have more than one pitch and duration of these sounds often cannot be measured out on a grid defined by a time signature. Also, from the timbrel point of view, sounds previously considered non-musical are sometimes embraced by musicians and composers. Want some concrete examples?

The Star Spangled Banner – Jimi Hendrix  –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjzZh6-h9fM

Raga Yaman – Shamsuddin Farid Desai  –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9L9YrMuXuI

Impressions (India) – John Coltrane  –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSViN6lwGKU

From me flows what you call Time – Toru Takemitsu – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWipy3Q6gAI

A soundician is someone who works with sound. Not all soundicians are musicians and not all musicians are soundicians. But, it is my opinion, that the best musicians are also soundicians. Without an awareness of, and a feeling for, the living quality of sound, music seems somehow flat to me—like wallpaper—somehow two-dimensional instead of three—or four.

Technique is not only a matter of fingers or lips and tongues, and physical training can go only so far. Real technique results from a striving to create sound in accordance with one’s musical vision. To accomplish this, instruments are sometimes stretched to their limits and when they can stretch no further they are modified or replaced. Can the same be said for the ones who play them?

Spirit Garden

“Spirit Garden” is the title of an orchestral composition by Toru Takemitsu. It is also the name of one of his cds which contains an incredible collection of some of his greatest works. The following thoughts were inspired by listening to this cd.

“Little children remember, but only a few, and down they forgot as up they grew” – e.e. cummings

I think I nearly forgot—forgot that what attracted me to music in the first place was its power to alter my state (of consciousness/of awareness). The kind of music did not matter, it could have been jazz, or classical, or pop, or later, the music of the East; what did matter, was something quite intangible and subjective, it was whether the music touched something in me—opened some place—where everything was beautiful and made sense. Life has never made sense to me…

I have always known that it is the silence behind the music that gives music the power to transform my state. Music is beautiful; doing music can be a beautiful thing; but it is silence that I have always loved. What is silence? I am not speaking about merely the absence of sound; it is not the rests in music notation; nor is silence the canvas on which sounds are painted; silence is the very soul of sound—silence is sounds’ inner most dweller. Sound can be the messenger of silence when sound is aware of and experiences the silence within itself.

There is a story about a Perfect Master who favored a certain disciple—much to the consternation of His other disciples. One day they approached the Master and asked him why. He indicated that he would answer their question and promptly removed a magnificent gold ring incrusted with precious jewels from his finger. “What is the value of this ring?” he asked them. They replied that they did not know, saying that they knew nothing of such things, but, if the Master would allow them to, they would bring an expert to appraise the ring. The Master agreed, and an expert was brought, and the ring was appraised for some astronomic amount.

The Master then called the ‘favored’ disciple into the room. He had not been privy to the previous conversations. The Master gave him the ring and asked him its value. Without any hesitation he answered, “Like this, off your finger, it is worthless, on your finger, priceless!” 

Silence is the Master and music is the ring on the Master’s finger.

The music of Toru Takemitsu not only reminds me, but inspires me to experience that silence and that state of transformation that I have always found priceless. Was Toru Takemitsu aware that music can be the messenger of silence? He speaks of silence often in his writings and conversations. One of his books is titled, “Confronting Silence.”

When the casual listener listens to music it is melody and rhythm that creates a path for them to follow through the music. Toru Takemitsu’s music also has melody and rhythm, as well as harmony and dynamics. But the melodies of Takemitsu are not the tune-like melodies most listeners of classical, jazz, and pop music are familiar with, neither are his use of rhythms, harmonies, like those found in more familiar musical forms.

Without the familiar paths, many people feel at a loss to be able to follow, let alone appreciate the music of Toru Takemitsu…

Consider an artist who squirts ink into some container, then presses a piece of paper into the ink, and then pulls it away. What do think? It this art?

The best answer I ever heard to this question came from one of my students. Without hesitating he said, “I would have to see it.” Indeed…

Andre Segovia once said, “What the world does not need is another guitar player—what the world does need are musicians and artists who happen to play the guitar.” The guitar players works from the outside in. He is like a conductor that follows, rather than, leads the orchestra.

A musician works from the inside out. He is like a conductor who hears the music inside himself and finds the way to express it through the orchestra. An artist, not only creates music, he creates art—his music is art. Art has the power to transform the listener’s state, to wake the listener from his dream of life into the dream of that which is beyond life—the divine dream that ends in the experience of real silence.