On Music, Teaching and Sound

Or 'The Perils of Over-Intellectualising Music'

What is music if not sound? If we talk only in the colourless language of ‘notes’, might we render ourselves deaf to the true majesty of music, where the opening of, say, My Bloody Valentine’s Only Shallow is merely ‘an intro riff drawing on the G minor pentatonic scale’ rather than a musical cascade that drenches the listener in euphoric tones. Similarly, if we’re not sufficiently attentive, could Aphex Twin’s Avril 14th become a ‘five-chord piece diatonic to F minor’, as opposed to a deeply introspective and melancholic composition, replete with sounds treading ‘between the mechanical and the human’?

I’ve taught music in various guises – theory, live performance, composition – for several years now. Like most teachers, I’m continually trying to refine my pedagogical practice and emphasise those areas that I believe are most crucial for students’ creative development. As such, one question I’ve been pondering of late is the following: when teaching composition, is there a danger of overlooking sonic texture in favour of other compositional elements?

In discussing music writing, it’s handy to first recognise the seven basic parameters of composition. Written alphabetically, these musical ingredients are:

• Arrangement (or ‘form’)

• Dynamics

• Harmony

• Melody

• Rhythm

• Tempo

• Texture (or ‘sound’)

Experiment with these seven creative ingredients and, hey presto, out comes a musical piece of some kind at the other end. But in my experience, both tutors and students are prone to working on certain components over others, with a particular focus on harmony (e.g. chord progressions, key changes etc.), rhythm, and melody. I’ve long considered why there’s a tendency for this to occur, and I believe it’s primarily down to one simple reason: these compositional elements can be schematised; that is, notated and written down. Sound cannot.

It’s understandable why there can be a propensity to deemphasise texture and colour, not least because in articulating these concepts, we only have vague descriptive terms that rely on imprecise language to convey complex sonic characteristics. Discussing aural properties qualitatively will always lack the mathematical exactness of the Pythagorean principles that underpin musical notes and chords.

I’ve even allowed this mindset to slip unknowingly into my professional practice. For instance, in the initial phases of my main creative project – Kanoo – I’d often scratch my head as to why, when we migrated our original material from the live environment to the recording studio, it failed to translate. Under the microphones’ forensic gaze, the guitar sounds became lustless, and melodies that I thought beautiful failed to come to life. It was as if we had the beginnings of a vivid oil painting that, on closer inspection, lost all its colour and became monochrome.

After a period of further reflection, I had a sudden realisation: I was focusing too much on schematics and compositional strategies, on chords and notes and harmonic modulations; I wasn’t paying enough attention to sound. Thankfully, I managed to partially remedy this by purchasing a host of new guitar pedals that were then integrated into the band’s writing and recording process, which seems to have done the trick (although the listener is likely the best judge of that). And while the old adage of ‘good frames won’t save bad paintings’ always holds true, it’s also worth remembering that a well-chosen frame can truly enhance the artistic piece within it.

And so I say to my fellow musicians and educators: heed the above and don’t fall into the same trap that I did. Try-out various effects, explore unfamiliar tunings, write on different instruments, for in the words of writer Ted Gioia:

 ‘Music is always more than notes. It is made out of sounds. Confusing these two is not a small matter’.