For a global view of Music

Global view of Music

Material form of the sound, energy power of the sound, emotional capacity of music, mental effort to master the notes’ organization, and pure conscience ; all this is included in the notes-bubbles. And that is where, in this set of all human dimensions that fit, music lies. When we start perceiving the subtle nature of each level of our reality – the being, the thought, the emotion, vital energy, corporeality – and that we understand the links between these levels and the way they interrelate, having a « subtle » language calling on all these levels opens a new perspective, and understanding this inevitably has an impact on the way we play.

All these dimensions are of considerable interest for the musician because in purely practical terms, music is still too often taught as something originating only in themind. The choice of the notes and their organization possibilities indeed require a mental effort.

The art of improvisation actually pushes this mental effort very far as one needs to learn how to do it instantaneously. But there are many benefits to be derived from investing also the other layers of our self in a global approach of music, equally integrating the dimensions of physical body and material of the instrument we play, the energy body with the chi of which we nourish our music, the emotional body through the emotion we express or try to arouse, and finally the principle of conscience, conscience that we express in our music and that we try to nourish in others through it. Because it is the whole of these components that makes up music; and with all these accumulated aspects we strive to create a sound able to touch the heart, body and soul of people who are listening to us.

A view of Music through five human dimensions

As musicians, we often ask ourselves : what is music ? What is the nature of its existence ? How can we best honour it ? How can we best teach it ?

Our culture approaches music through solfège – so through reading and observing – and this form of learning places mental effort in the centre of musical activity, whereas in most cultures, transmission is mostly oral. Observing various musical cultures, I realized that it was possible to have a more balanced approach between the elements composing music.

To classify these key components I referred to the old Yogic texts that present human beingsas a combination of five layers : the material body, the energetic body, the emotional body, the mind and finally the conscience, or deepest being.

In my view, we can find these five dimensions of our humanity in music in the following forms:

• The material body of sound : the material of the instruments that produces it, and the way we interact to produce this sound.

• The energetic body of music : the energy that we put in it and the link with the energy we arouse in the listener.

• The emotional body of music : the emotion that we put in it, the range of emotions it can potentially stimulate or arouse.

• The mental body of music : the organization of notes and rhythms, from melody to harmony, so everything a composer or improviser has in mind when creating and conceptualizing music.

• The conscious body of music : the purest intention that can be felt or transmitted in music.

For music as for the human being, the concept of these five dimensions is represented as five circles fitting into each other. The outer circle symbolizes the material body, and as the qualities of vital energy become more and more « subtle », we are getting closer to the point in the centre that represents the conscious principle of existence.

I have therefore taken the liberty of approaching music according to each field of human reality, that is to say according to the physical, energetic, emotional, mental and conscious dimensions.

Music and material

Mineral, vegetal or animal origin of the material of which the instruments are made.

Sound has no body but the music instrument always has one. Becoming aware of the nature of the materials we use to produce and make a sound vibrate is therefore an interesting way to establish the link between energy and music. On the basis of the different forms of shamanism we can find in various cultures, one can distinguish families of materials according to their nature and their order of appearance in the history of the Earth : first the mineral, followed by the vegetal and the animal. Logically, each family contains the traces of the previous ones. This is why, generally, shamanism considers that the mineral, the vegetal and the animal can be used to approach the human body but will echo at different levels of its being.

When we consider the sound produced by an instrument, when we listen to it, when we compose or arrange, or when we play an instrument, we can therefore become aware of the type of material(s) that creates each sound ; this opens our mind to a very lively and realistic approach of music as it is its only material dimension.

• Mineral : brass ( trumpets, saxos, etc… ), guitar, violin and piano strings, clips of some skins, metal mouthpieces, …

• Vegetal : bamboo flutes, reeds of wind instruments, clarinets, oboes, violins and guitars’ body, the barrels of the percussion instruments, the piano body, the plug in some percussion instruments, wooden mouthpieces, …

• Animal : bone or horn flutes, percussions’ skins (cow, pig, goat, fish,… skins), hair of horse manes (for bows), leather under the keys of some wind instruments.

All the acoustic instruments we know are indeed made of material coming from these different families : mineral, vegetal and animal. Becoming aware of this materiality of the sound can first seem strange or eccentric but it turns out that this brings us back to something really rooted in the very essence of music as well as in the natural and human history.

We can therefore enjoy trying to find the components of each instrument :

• A djembe is made of wood, vegetal, but the skin is animal.

• The bansuri, flute from North-India is made of one only piece of bamboo. There is also a cork inside and possibly a thread to tighten the bamboo and limit possible cracks.

• The violin is vegetal because of its body but the strings are mineral. The bow is made of wood and animal (horsehair).

• The saxophone has a brass body (mineral) but the reed creating the vibration of the sound is vegetal (in reed) and under the keys we can often find some leather (animal).

This way of approaching music,totally nonexistent in our culture and education, may allow one to approach the sound and the instrument in a different way. A very « essential » and fresh way to feel the spirit of a sound and of the instrument producing it.

Music and energy : The Chi (vital energy)

The chi is vital energy. This energy is present everywhere in the living world. In the yogic vision of human being, it is the fluid that runs through our physical body so that it brings it to life. Without chi, the body would be dead material.

Similarly, we can imagine that notes are like bubbles. Notes are our raw material and the way of organizing them to create a language is the basis of our education and of our cultural specificities. But inside these bubbles, there is all the energy we put in it : emotion and vital energy and this constitutes a universal dimension of music, way beyond the diversity of the notes’ forms of organization. We can indeed be deeply nourished by a music of which we do not understand the forms, similarly we can be deeply moved by a musician without knowing anything about his culture.

Also, from the musician’s point of view, the will to perceive and to try and generate chi through his music, and to fill in each of his bubbles with some energy that could be perceived by the listener, is an additional dimension. Let us be clear, chi is of course an integral part of any music but what is emphasized here is the will to nourish music with this energy; this will pushes the musician to dovery specific research.From a personal point of view, I am very fond of this form of music creation.

P.S: I have learned the foundations of these chi techniques in VladyStephanovitch chi school. Vlady, musician until he was 60, then created a school that became international and carried out a lot of research about the interactions between chi and sound with the support of Ircam among others. Unfortunately, he is dead now but his teaching is perpetuated by the teachers of his school.

Music and emotion

The emotional dimension is of course at the heart of music. I actually think that music is the language that best expresses our emotional reality. When we like a music, the wave moving inside us is indeed emotion. And from there, the body can also react, its expression may vary between the most transcendantal dancing and total relaxation. With regards to our mind, it will enjoy the colours of the different feelings aroused by these emotions and spark some memories, stimulate dreams, release some stress or provide an escape. Emotion is therefore at the centre of the impact music has on us.

Referring back to our image of the five layers of the being, we can see that the emotional level is exactly in the middle, lying between our physical body and our mind. Consequently, emotion is a dimension of our reality and is both rooted in our mind and body.

It is interesting to observe that, beyond the external forms of each type of music, we end up with two main functions of music : one urges the emotion out of ourselves, the other urges the emotion deeper inside ourselves. One is outgoing, towards the body, and the other pushes us inside ourselves.

Western music’s essential function is to bring our feelings out. Indian music, for its part, mixes these two emotional functions of music with long introductions that are only melodic and with an internalizing purpose, followed by increasingly rythmic and exteriorizing compositions.

The internalizing function is special in that it does not arouse emotions in the individual to bring them to the surface and go out, but rather to help him go inside himself and meet his own emotions and depths.

Once again, I would point out that even if all musicis filled with emotion, it does not mean that the conscience of this is always valued. I was personally very impressed by the way Indian culture could integrate this conscience of the emotional dimension to its music education and I am convinced that for a musician, focusing on this dimension allows broadening both the perception of what he listens to and the control of what he tries to convey when he plays.

Music and mind

As I often say, except for some quarter tones and some microtonal inflections here and there, the 12 notes of the chromatic are the basis of musical thought and form a universal material acting as shared knowledge. Based on this, from one culture to another, one style to another, one composer or improviser to another, the only thing that changes is the way of organising the notes and how they are melodically, harmonically and rhythmically arranged.

These forms of organization of notes make up the mental part of the musical activity, particularly for the composer and for the improviser; however the interpreterwill try to understand thembut will not need to master them as much. Some of these forms of organization are quite simple, some others as in contemporary classical music, jazz or Carnatic Indian music for example, can reach very high levels of complexity. So mental effort is essential.

Even more than in composition, the art of improvisation is a creative process made spontaneously, in the present moment and for which mastering these forms of organization seems essential. In my view, Jazz and Indian music have this in common that they push the mental exercise needed for improvisation to the limits of human capacity. Mastering not only one’s instrument but also the instantaneous understanding of the relations between melody, harmony and rhythm make that improvisation is an artistic form linked to a very special mental exercise. The codes obviously change from one music to another, the frame is different – the same way as a game of checkers is not a game of chess – but jazz, the ragas and the maqams are spaces of freedom among the most binding and enriching.

I cannot resist adding a few words regarding the nature of all these rules defining the frames of improvisation or writing. Because the trap to which musicis exposed, and even more for improvisation and free music, is that these rules must in no way become a straightjacket. We can find in all social environments of music as well as in all political and religious factions, defenders of a rigid classicism and supporters of a continual evolution. For me, there is no choice to make. I take as much pleasure in playing a jazz standard from the ‘50s than in experimenting free improvisation, I enjoy as much listening to a raga played in the purest classicism than to a solo by Zakir Hussain in Shakti.

We often forget that freedom means not having to choose between extremes, but allowing ourselves all the artistic experiments we desire to have, as far as they mean something to us and to the public.

Therefore I think that it is a good thing to explore all these ways of arranging notes between them because the biggest secrets of music are hidden in the mathematics of these physical relations between frequences. But beyond our taste and ability to improvise inside these codified frames, we should also make sure that we do not stick more than we should to these ways of doing things as if they were rigid principles, because the evolution of the forms and rules controlling the artistic forms is the basis of the diversity that makes our cultural richness.

PS : Personally, to spread my personal approach beyond my jazz education and interest for classical and contemporary music, I am also inspired by many foreign music from India, Brazil, China or Morocco. But beyond this multicultural horizon, I also try to innovate by going deeper into personal research about the possibilities of organising these 12 notes according to a system I called « Rajazz ». (If you want to know more about it, go to Rajazz).

Music and conscience

In the core of every human being, conscience appears to be the most « subtle» dimension. And as any other human dimension, it can fill our musical reality. There is indeed a « conscience in the sound » that should not be confused with the conscience « of » the sound which is generally limited to considering the quality of the sound, its aesthetics and beauty. It is rather the conscience that we put in a sound, and I have no doubt that a sound can convey this conscience. Otherwise Coltrane would not be Coltrane, Stevie Wonder would not be Stevie Wonder, Rostropovitch would not be Rostropovitch.

In the improvised musics, in jazz as in Indian music, in the Arab maqams or other forms of improvised musics, the meaning of present is systematically sharp as it is in the mean time a composition which is spontaneous and interacting with others. The conscience of present and the conscience of others are therefore components of the musical creation field. The conscience of time and of the relationships with others is here inherent not to the note-bubble but to the practice of improvisation itself.

Overall, it is clear that all these wonderful human virtues – depth, love, opening, generosity, the gift of self or empathy – can be evoked and nourished by this mysterious language, music. At different levels, from form to content, composition to arrangements, improvisation to interpretation, we can therefore find or transmit this purest energy to music.