Every once in a while, I have this strange feeling of not being a real person with relevant stories to tell, and consequently, no ability to write emotional music with actual meaning. I’m wondering if all I’m really doing is cobbling random fragments together, and whenever it comes out alright, that’s just a result of luck and a bit of intuitive “music theory.”
Some sort of impostor syndrome, if you will…
“I’m not like real composers and songwriters, who actually have things to communicate and express.”
Then again, so much of the music listening experience is subjective and personal, that I’m not even sure it matters all that much if it’s art or science. There are some general rules, rooted in human instincts, and culture, but beyond that, it seems to become more and more “dumb luck” if something actually resonates with people in exactly the way the composer intended. What it really comes down to then, is having a “relatable ear,” and being able to stand back and get enough perspective to tell if what you’ve done will at least have the intended effect on people who experience music in about the same way you do.
And… Now I don’t really remember where I was going with this, if I even know in the first place. “Do you need to be human to write music for humans?” or something.
Well your hardly alone. Since science so far can’t tell whether knowledge and consciousness is something you can collect or something that comes to you. Einstein for example didn’t think that humans have a free will. He and many with him thought that higher levels of awareness and information comes to us and we just recieve it as complexity increases. So the question is do we create are own music and ideas or do they come to us.
Ah but isn’t this the age old “muse” argument (In mythology, the Muses were nine goddesses who symbolized the arts and sciences)?
Can every form of art not be measured by science? Are emotions universal? How can we translate what we want to say emotionally, without using anything more than sounds that we shape and control in our compositions?
There are also plenty of things in nature that we find beautiful, and could even describe as “art”, even though they were not created by man. Which I guess is why some religious people coined the terms “divine design” and “the great architect in the sky” and so on.
But do any of these things and perspectives of art take away the beauty and emotional impact? I would say no. It doesn’t matter who or “what” created the music, or even how… if the end result is an emotional response in even one listener. That is perhaps part of the beauty of art as well.
