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What is a Musician?
A true Musician is somebody who understands Music. Not everybody who plays Music understands it – so what is the difference? Imagine you want to learn to recite a poem in a foreign language. You could do this by learning all the letters of the alphabet and their pronunciation and meticulously stringing the sounds together as they appear on the page. Yet something would be missing, however accurately you pronounced the sounds: you wouldn’t know where to place emphasis or where to take a breath, or how you could vary your delivery. In short, your recitation would be devoid of expression because you wouldn’t have any idea of the meaning ofthe words or the syntax of the sentences. A much better way to learn the poem would be to learn the rudiments of the language first, and carefully translate each word so that you understood the grammatical function of each and were able to place the emphasis on the important words.
Music shares many similarities with language: it uses an ‘alphabet’, from which short ‘words’ can be formed, and it has its own rules of grammar and its own logic and syntax. We become aware of this at an early age without really noticing – see if you can sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and stop just before the last note. Does it feel complete? No! Stopping at that point doesn’t work at all, because it isn’t the ‘right’ note. These properties can seem somewhat mysterious without understanding how individual notes actually ‘work’. There are only seven notes in a scale, but each note has a different role to play. The easiest note to recognise is the ‘home note’ or tonic, because that is where the music comes to rest. The other notes of the scale may lead towards it or move away from it, and may harmonise nicely with it, or create a clash – all depending on where they are in the scale. Each different note has a technical name that describes its function, but this concept is most easily taught using solfa syllables or simply numbering the notes. Once understood, the gate has been opened for true appreciation of music and rapid progress in interpreting notes written on a page.
There are all too many students who are worryingly unaware of this most important system and approach music as a ‘note-learning’ activity. These people are not yet true musicians –they are ‘note-players’, who may play with great technical proficiency, rather like our meticulous pronunciation of the sounds of a foreign language, but do not yet understand exactly what they are playing. But how much easier it is to read a poem one understands, rather than a series of incomprehensible sounds! And how much more rewarding it is to discover a piece of music rather than a series of notes!
Don’t be a note-player! Be a musician.
