It is amazing what music can do to your emotions, but I think it is also fascinating how we perceive the music according to our circumstances. For example, I work out in the country, and I usually pick some music to listen to while driving. This last week, I took "Hello Dolly" soundtrack. I had always thought of the CD as an incredibly happy and joyful album, but this time I saw it in a different way.
I was driving home in the rain; it was dark and cold, and in the middle of nowhere. I had the music going, but it sounded so different. It sounded lonely, shallow and tinny. Why the sudden change from happy to shallow? I think a lot of it had to do with where I was driving and how I was feeling at the time. I wasn't feeling safe, so something that was overly happy became music that is unrealistic and shallow.
This made me think; Can we ever really describe music? After all if you had asked me before yesterday what the album sounded like, I would have said, happy, excited, full of life, loving life etc. On that drive I would have said something totally different like they are shallow, hiding their sadness in overt happiness. So how do we accurately describe music if it can have so much variance? You could examine music from just the music theory and the intervals, the technical aspect of music, but all of us know that we don't listen to music because of the technicality or lack thereof. We listen because of how it makes us feel.
Maybe we don't need to describe music, or maybe it is enough to say that the circumstances change how we perceive the music and enables the music to always stay interesting.
