Thursday, May 10, 2012

The Hills Are Alive

There is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.

Edward Elgar
*******************
Hello Bruce
********************
One year I took a college geology course. The professor was excellent and got me fascinated with rocks. I would walk down the street analyzing rocks where ever I saw them: stone walls, stone buildings, any stone structure, even pebbles on the beach. I would try to determine what they were, what they were made of and how they were formed. For a year I was a rock fanatic. It greatly improved my observation skills.

Another year I spent taking a music course called ear training, where you learned how to recognize intervals and chords by only listening to them and not reading the notes from a score. It was very difficult at first, but was an interesting exercise and improved my listening ability very much.

I began to listen to all kinds of sounds, the birds, running water, cars and trucks passing, people talking. I realized how many different sounds there were in a single sound. Some of those sounds were tones of a scale while others were toneless. I began to hear sounds where I didn't expect them. Buildings. Buildings have sounds. My building emits a quiet, high pitched trill.

There are sounds in the air. They're there if you listen for them. They are quite harmonious sounds as a matter of fact. This giant rock we stand on is filled with sounds. They say there are even sounds in outer space. Though no human ear has ever heard them , as far as we know, sensitive recording devices have picked up some of them.

As there is with rhythm, there is music everywhere. More than we could ever require.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
**********************

2 comments:

Jon said...

Beethoven was always greatly inspired by the sounds around him - - especially the sounds of nature which had a special music of their own. Unfortunately he went completely deaf at an early age, but he retained the sounds in his memory. Most of his very greatest compositions were written after he lost his hearing.
The world is filled with incredible music - - if only we take the time to listen.

pacific62 said...

"...if only we take the time to listen".....which is a big reason I wish people would take those damned plugs out of their ears and listen to the world around them. There is beauty out there and it is there for the listening. Within a few years we are going to have a generation of people who are stone deaf because of those things they stuff into their ears so that they can listen at full blast. By then it will be too late for them.