Paranormal Music Fact for
the Day
Music is a big part of most
people’s daily lives. Today in Winnipeg we will host the Juno Awards which is
the big music award show for Canadian musicians. This being the case it might
be important where music comes from and how musicians get their songs.
In studying the music
writing process I have come to see that it is much more a paranormal, non-local,
and a right brained activity, than anything even close to being rational or
carefully planned.
One of the key surprises in
his study turned up what might become one of the key elements to the process.
Consider the following list of highly successful musicians.
Elvis Presley
All four of the Beatles
Michael Jackson
Jimi Hendrix
Keith Richards – Rolling Stones
Eric Clapton
Jerry Garcia- Grateful Dead
Jimmy Page – Led Zeppelin
Thom Yorke – RadioHead
BB King
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Marvin Gaye
Adrian Smith from Iron Maiden
Angus Young from AC/DC
Eddie Van Halen Slash of Guns and Roses
Jackie Gleason whose orchestra produced 20 record
albums
The key thing that links all these musicians is that
none of them could read or write music.
Lennon UFO Drawing |
The process of what
actually happens is best summed up by how John Lennon described the music
writing process,
“When the real music comes to me – the music of the
spheres, the music that surpasses understanding – That has nothing to do with
me because I am just the channel. The only joy for it to be given to me and to
transcribe it, like medium.”
The most popular rock song
every composed was Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” No one in the band
knows where the song came from. Band member Robert Plant described what
happened,
“Pagey had written the chords and played it for me.
I was holding the paper and pencil, and for some reason I was in a very bad
mood. Then all of a sudden my hand was writing our words. I just sat and looked
at the words, and then I just about leapt out of my seat.”
Or the process as explained
by Michael Jackson.
"It's the most effortless thing in the world
because you don't do anything. I hate to say it like that, but it's the truth.
The heavens drop it right into your lap, in its totality. The real gems come
that way. You can sit at the piano and say, "OK, I'm going to write the
greatest song ever written," and nothing. But you can be walking down the
street or showering or playing and boom, it hits you in the head. I've written
so many like that. I'm playing a pinball machine, and I have to run upstairs
and get my little tape recorder and start dictating. I hear everything in it's
totality, what the strings are going to do, what the bass is going to do, the
harpischord, everything. "
Next
question..."Is it difficult translating that sound to tape?"
Michael:
"That's what's frustrating. In my head, it's completed, but I have to
transplant that to tape. It's like Alfred Hitchcock said, "The movie's
finished," but he still has to start directing it. The song is the same.
You see it in its entirety and then you execute it."
The moral of the story
might be. If you want to your child to be a great music star don’t send him to
music lessons.
For those who thing music
is a rational process involving random neurons banging into each other,
randomly pulling melodies and words out of thin air, to create music they
should watch the following 4 year old destroy the theory.
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