Starise
One common trend I'm noticing, although it's been around for a long long time, is music that really makes no meaningful sense to the average listener, yet it conveys emotion. Usually in artsy poetic circles, I come across some darned strange lyrics, set to pretty good music. Where else can you get away with that and have it be accepted? In almost anything else I can imagine we expect something at least understandable.
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Actually this has been a very strong tradition going back to the late 60's when Burroughs and many other writers kinda made this famous. In Germany, for example, Peter Handke was writing what should be called "word plays" and he went on to write for Wim Wenders and others. Davie Bowie, Eno and many others also used the same process I call "52-pickup" for any words and sentences within lyrics, and it came out fine. The Canterbury folks were very good at this stuff, but it is not as well known. Heck, one listen to Robert Wyatt, and you feel like you are listening to a 5 year old banging on something or other! And the lyrics are the same thing! Pointed? Maybe. To what?
Only in America, because of the radio controls by the media, is this not as well known. Today, with the Internet, none of this is invisible anymore, however, there are not many, if any, artists around that have any inkling at how to do this, and the Coffee House Band, is not exactly a prime example.
Starise ...
I have read authors of this say, " I really can't tell you what it means". Apparently the emotional impact of music generally supersedes the importance of meaning, yet an understandable lyric with wide understanding coupled with the associated emotion is greater. If the musician can't feel something and then convey that to someone else, then the music has no reason to be shared.
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From a theatrical aspect, it is not as much about "meaning" as it is about HOW it is stated and said and the context it is used under. Think of it as a foreign language and you have no idea what is being said, but you know there is a conversation taking place. This is the part I have been telling you guys works, when you can put together 2 people that do not speak the same language, or music, and they can still co-ordinate and play and come up with something different. A lot of the early ECM recordings were about this kind of stuff, within a white room context. You never knew what was going to happen.
But it is something that most musicians will NEVER experience or try in their lifetime, because they are not around enough creative folks that spend their time coming up with new and different things to try. Even here, in my mentioning exercises on a parallel world with acting, folks don't seem to enjoy it, or consider trying it.
Learning is almost ALL based on what you don't know! Not what you do!
Starise ...
The way to convey emotion is simply to feel it first and then let the music happen. This is the core of it. Training in music is always helpful because it gives you the tools you need to make that happen, but if you don't feel it you don't have any basis for creation.
I don't think so. Why? Because there is only one core. AND that core belongs inside the composer himself/herself and sometimes they created something that was instinctive and they themselves have no idea what it meant, but it came out alright. Everyone else's, is an idea of what that core is!
Sort of like there is one tree in the middle of the room and we're all around it. The only "core" is the tree! And the rest is all our observations on it. The idea that everything has meaning, is based on the "ego" thinking that we have that music, like all the arts, has to be a mind exercise, and not anything else. For many, and sometimes most, it is not a mind exercise but a "doing" it exercise. Sometimes it just is. Maybe the astrophysicist in Bryan May will find why a certain string is so different than the other in the cosmogony of the universe! And figure out how to tell us!
Can that be done with music? I say YES all the time, but the issue I run into, even here, is that folks are too self-conscious and tied to what they know, to try something they don't know, or understand. I keep telling you all, that the main secret to "learning" how to use, and play music is based on this intuitive lesson, because from that point on, you will never ask what it means, and you will simply play it as the moment asks for it, and it will sound magnificent and your touch will stand out ... because most can only play notes and chords!