Expressing Yourself with Music

by Ysrafel

As a musician, there are many reasons for playing music...to make money, get the attention of others, have a hobby, be like someone you admire, etc. However, no matter what, one of your top priorities (if not the highest!) is or should be self expression.

Why?

Self expression is unavoidable with music. Why is it unavoidable? First we should define what music is exactly. Music is the act of organizing rhythm and sound in order to express ideas or emotions. Music is self expression. So how do we use this concept of music? How do we make music? Well, music is played by using musical instruments. Any time you pick up a musical instrument and play, you are using your brain and your body to organize and express ideas or emotions. This concept applies to any melody, scale, arpeggio, or any other pattern that can be played. Everything you do with an instrument is done to express some kind of idea. That being said, the idea of practicing an instrument really has nothing to do with moving your fingers or learning new scales. The goal of all musical practice is to express yourself as clearly as possible. This means taking the ideas you have out of your mind (using the medium of an instrument), and bringing them into the observable world for others to hear and understand.

As a beginning musician or artist, a person will not yet be able to fully express them self. This could be for several reasons:

a.) They have not mastered the physical muscle movements required to play comprehensive patterns on an instrument.

For example, as a guitar player they may not be able to accurately play notes on the fret board in their left hand, while also picking the strings with their right hand. This also applies to a player who is still learning a specific technique, but cannot yet play the technique accurately enough to express what they want to express. Lastly, this also applies to an advanced technical player who can express ideas through technique and patterns very clearly, but only based on the actual ideas from other players. In other words, this player does not posses the ability to create their own musical ideas. They can make patterns and play techniques, but they do not yet fully understand why the music they make makes them feel the way it does.

b.) They do not have enough knowledge of music theory or music composition.

While a player may be able to play techniques and patterns on an instrument, that does not necessarily mean that they can fully express them self. In order to understand the way that music and emotion are connected together, one must have an understanding of music theory and music composition. Understanding these topics is what gives the musical artist the ability to express emotion through music. The ideas presented by music theory and composition are not just rules on understanding intervals, keys, building chords and chord progressions, etc. They are guidelines and concepts that are to be used in order to understand how sound connects a listener to an idea or emotion. As you study music, you should always think about how what you are learning can be used to express yourself more clearly.

c.) They do not have clear definitions of the emotions they want to express.

Many times, musicians are limited in how they express themselves because they simply have not invested enough time in thinking about what they feel. We all feel a large variety of emotions all the time, but until we recognize these emotions and voice them, they will only remain in our mind as an untapped resource. Many people also do not have clear definitions on specific ideas of emotion. For example, we all know the basic ideas of happy and sad. However, in order to expand our expressive possibilities, it would be beneficial to understand more complex emotions such as lament, melancholy, confusion, wonder, and so on. The more you understand these types of emotions, the more options you have when you want to make music.

Exercise:

The following exercise is something I consider to be a very useful tool to help you express yourself. For this exercise, all you will need is a thesaurus and dictionary (online or book), a pencil, and a piece of paper. It is fine if you want to type on the computer rather than use pencil and paper. The goal of this exercise is to help you expand your emotional vocabulary, as well as to relate emotions to music with chord progressions.

This exercise has 3 parts.

1) First, write down about five basic emotions, this could be like happiness, sadness, anger, etc. Don't use all of the same emotions, try to use different ones. Make sure to leave some space in between each one. Now, go grab a thesaurus (book or online) and find 4 synonyms for each one of the emotions you wrote down, and write down the synonyms by each emotion.

2) Now, in order to help you understand these new emotions, look them up in the dictionary. Don't worry, there is no need to write down definitions, but what I would like you to do is once you have read the definition of your new emotion, write down any times you have felt that way, and what was happening to cause you to feel this way. What you are doing here, is you are hard wiring this emotion into your brain by remembering a time you experienced it. This brings the emotion out of your subconscious mind, and into your conscious mind. The act of doing this, will give you a better idea of how you can express this emotion to others.

3) Now you should have a total of 25 emotions written down. 5 basic emotions, and 20 more complex emotions. You should also have written down 20 past experiences of the more complex emotions. By now you can understand how when you only think in general ideas of happy and sad, that you are missing out on a huge amount of opportunities to express yourself further.

Finally, I'd like you to write a short 4 - 8 chord progression beside each emotion. This progression should express through music the idea of the emotion beside it. You may not be able to do this right now. That is ok. You can keep this paper as a reference tool to come back to as you become better with harmony and songwriting. For now, fill in as many chord progressions as you can by using any knowledge of music that you have, and by using your ear to hear what sounds right to you. Some emotions may be harder to express than others, but anything can and has be expressed in music, so do not give up. As you learn more about music, you will be able to come back to this and add on to or improve your ideas to where you can express them more clearly for yourself. Come back to this exercise every few months to check on your progress.

Self expression is part of what makes music so great. As you become better at it, you will really begin to appreciate both your own music, and the music of others from a more in depth perspective.

If you found this information to be useful, you may also enjoy my free newsletter which contains free high quality lessons on guitar technique.