Music Video Lesson: Why Can't All Music Be Profound?

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin, this is livingpianos.com. The question today is why can't all music be profound? Wouldn't that be great if everything you listened to was enlightening? Well, first of all, the question is, is that really desirable? Naturally there are many different purposes that music serves. Going to concerts and having a really uplifting experience is certainly a very important aspect of music, but what about parties? What about dancing? There are times in profundity is the least concern. You just want to have something that you could move to, that feels good. So let's just dismiss that idea for a minute of what about concert music? Should all contract music be profound?

Before I answer that question, I'm going to bring up a kind of a parallel. Have you ever been to a band and they were playing really high energy, fast and loud, and at first it's like, "Wow, this is impressive." But as the night goes on, everything they play is fast and loud. After a while you kind of tune it out, and nothing seems energetic at all. How can this be? Well, that becomes your new base level. Now you go to a same club, different band, and this band has dynamics. They take it up and then they come down, whisper, quiet and you're listening and then it comes up again and it's enriching.

So what is the lesson here? Is that something could only be exciting if something else is more mellow. And the same exact truth is evident with how profound a piece of music can be. More than that, if a performer tries to make every phrase of a piece of music profound, nothing is profound, and it becomes labored and it becomes self-indulgent. Some things you just have to let them speak naturally. And it's the places in which you focus attention. That's what molds a performance, so that the entire work will have a profound nature, not because every single phrase is to the nth degree of what could be done with it.

And great compositions and great composers understand this, and they make the music such that the parts that you want to focus on are set up in the form, in the structure, so that not everything is profound, but when you get done with the piece, you're left with something really meaningful and special that stays with you. So that's why all music can't be profound. If everything is profound, nothing is profound. And remember that in your playing as well. And I think that will be some good advice for you. Thanks for joining me once again. This is Robert Estrin at livingpianos.Com, your online piano store.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/general/why-cant-all-music-be-profound/

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