What can playing music mean to you? What benefits can you gain from singing or playing steady beats of words and sound? From an outside standpoint, nothing. Playing music can mean absolutely nothing to the outside world and if all you do is play music then that’s what it means. Nothing. It’s only when you make music that you garner a deeper meaning to it all. When you make music you aren’t just playing notes on a page, you are giving them life. You are giving a chunk of your soul to those phrases and establishing a deeper meaning to them. A language that is only understood by you and God.
It opens up your soul for the world to see and it isn’t always just passionate. It can be angry, sad, happy, or anything you feel as long as you feel it. Now in some cases this is simply easier said than done. One of the most frustrating things I have to deal with as a musician is playing something I do not like. It makes it so difficult to inject any passion into a piece if you really don’t like it but as a musician you have to realize that you aren’t always just playing for yourself, you are playing for others and your audience deserves the emotion you can give them in fact that’s the whole reason they came. One thing that really makes me angry but helps me the most is when my Professor at ABAC (the college I attend) tells me I am only focusing on playing notes but instead I should focus on making music.
Now I’m a calm person who doesn’t get mad fast but when someone talks about my musicianship it makes my skin boil. I don’t get mad like a child though, instead I try to find a meaning to a piece even if there isn’t one (like my instructor is telling me). For example, there is a piece we are playing called America the Brave and in the beginning I have a solo. The solo is the main tagline to "glory, glory, hallelujah" but I don’t even think about that version of the song and its typical meaning to inspire me, but instead I use the fact that it’s an extremely popular song for UGA, which is the college I’m transferring to (my college only has a 2 year in music education). In the solo I try to start soft and unsure and slowly get stronger, ending with a long powerful note to show the confidence I know have because I know that although it may be my dream, UGA doesn’t measure my success in something I love to do. This solo doesn’t last long but in the time I have I try to tell a story and if you can tell a story through your playing then the amount of notes you missed won’t matter because at the end of it you would have played it the best humanely possible.
