DISCLAIMER FOR THE NEW FOLKS! If you are just joining us now: It is never too late to join in with this experiment! If you’d like to have more art in your life just jump in the river midstream. You don’t have to have completed any of the prior sessions to be able to join us now. Plus the beauty of a year is that it is cyclical so there is always the option to double back at the end to any earlier topics you’d like to revisit. :-)
The inescapable power of melody
I remember the first song I wrote.
Melody has a way of worming its way into our brain on such a deep level it can stay with us all our lives. I still remember the melody and words of this song decades later, when it would certainly have fallen away had I not sung it over and over again.
I was three years old. It was called ‘some for singing, some for non-’. This masterpiece consisted of that single line sung over and over, moving in and out of a major key (‘singing’!) and minor mode (‘non’!). This song was inspired by my recent discovery of the terms ‘smoking’ and ‘non-smoking’ (perhaps more of a not topic in the 80’s?). To my mind, the same must apply to singing?
But looking at it today, I feel like everyone deserves a chance to sit in the ‘singing’ section of life. Because it is integral to who we are.
Have you forgotten your right to make music?
Science has explored the ways that human beings seem to be wired for music. Indeed, for the duration of human history, music has been woven through our lives as an essential part of how we create culture and forge identity. Music can steady us, provide a group rhythm, and keeps us going when we would fatigue more easily, as in the tradition of marches, singing at sports matches, and working songs like sea shanties. Music has always been there for us as humans at the pivotal moments of strong emotion, when we protest oppression, worship the divine, or court a new love, or grieve a lost loved one.
Music speaks a language that goes beyond words or images - one that is available to every human being simply by existing.
We live in a time where there has never been more music at our fingertips through the magic of the internet. Yet strangely, most of us have fewer opportunities to be participants in making music ourselves.
This month is a chance to rediscover the power of music in our lives, and explore how these discoveries can expand the depth of our experience of the world.
Month 3: Music
Friday marked the new moon, and with it, our move into the month we will spend considering the power of music, and what this can unlock in our lives.
There are always so many possibilities to explore within each of these disciplines, and there were other promising prospects. For example, rhythm and melody, or sound and silence.
However, the duality that spoke most powerfully to me was that of Voice (self) and Instruments (tools). Because art exists at the place where these things meet - where our essential selves come into contact with the world.
When we make art, or live our lives, we are always combining our essential selves and tool-based skills to greater or lesser degrees.
Voice is an amazing reminder that we can create art with nothing more than air. With breath alone, depending on how it passes through our vocal cords, we can create beauty.
There are also things we can only express with the aid of objects, sounds that can only be made with the aid of an instrument. (I would argue that the craftsmanship that goes into creating a musical instrument is an art on par with the magic that is created by the musician.) Tools/instruments unlock expressive possibilities we cannot access on our own.
This month is a chance to think about how we are using tools to express our inner lives, how tools can call us to explore deeper aspects of our artistic selves, and what it means to know and own our voices.
Creative Prompt: Voice and Self
This creative prompt is designed to carry you through the next two weeks of art and life.
Your creative task:
Sing at every opportunity (even if you haven’t done this in years!). Where do you feel the vibrations in your body? When does your voice feel the most vibrant, uninhibited and alive?
Your life prompt:
Where are the moments you feel the voice of your essential self speaking? How loud does it have to speak to get your attention?
If this all feels too intimidating - other options!
Here are some other ways to get started building a relationship to music if singing feels a bit too much like jumping in the deep end.
Build a playlist of other people’s music
Try just humming along quietly to a song you love
Speak lyrics instead of singing them and try to really feel the rhythm
Tap your feet, clap your hands, get music in your body
Lip sync in the mirror pretending that another singer’s voice is yours
Even just nudging the edge of our comfort zone (rather than jumping straight into something that feels risky) can yield all kinds of exciting creative discoveries.
Just a gentle reminder that the reflective process is as important (in some ways, more important) than what you actually create. So find a way to capture the things you are noticing if you can.
In this video…
This video introduces our music month, and then explores the qualities of voice and how it communicates our essential self.
This touches on:
The relationship between our essential selves and the tools we use to create
How we can overcome self-consciousness about using our voices (your voice is a birthright!)
How I lost my voice, and how I found it again
Why the way our voices feel can be even more important than how they sound
The ingredients of making music that compels people (hint: expressiveness trumps a beautiful sound)
My mother’s legacy of music, based on the belief everyone can (and deserves to) sing
My experience of witnessing firsthand the way our relationship with music starts in utero (as my baby danced during rehearsals!)
Where to start if singing makes you nervous (listening to the sound of your speaking voice’s natural musicality, build a playlist, put on music at home)
The power of music to respond to - and also shape - our moods and give structure to our life’s rhythms
The empowerment in raising your voice, and becoming part of something bigger
Here are a couple of links to people I mention in the video - the wonderful singing teacher Jane Streeton and the song that started my schooldays as a child.
For now,
Alli
Access Support: If you have access needs that I’m not currently meeting, please do drop me a line! (The best email is contact@ac-smith.com.) I’d really like to make this project available to anyone who wants to participate.
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