The Beginning

I found myself starting at this blank screen watching the black line blink but not realizing what I was doing. I was lost in a trance: wanting to dance, to sing. I was listening to music. Music is a big part of my life and most peoples’ lives whether they realize it or not. A person jumps in their car and drives to work or the grocery store they turn on the radio, pop in a CD, or tune up the I-pod. I remember an English teacher saying, “When you’re driving down the road singing and bobbing your head to a song it doesn’t faze you until you’re at a red light then you look around to see if anyone is watching you.” I wondered if that was true. It was. That was in high school but now I do not care. Let the music play and let me enjoy it as I please.

When I was ten, I began taking piano lessons. I loved that I was able to produce music from the ivories. I found during my eight years of piano lessons that when I needed an escape I could go and sit at the piano and play. It was and still is an amazing feeling to sit in front of a piano and feel it underneath your fingers. It was this ability that allowed me to escape the pressing eyes of people in the neighboring cars. I found this quote by Aldous Huxley, “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” Music is a connection to others and oneself. I will listen to a sad song when I feel that I need to cry or I will listen to a classical rock song when I want to smile and bob my head. But when I am playing the piano, creating music on my own it’s a different kind of trance. It is a different escape.

It has been a few years since I have been in the discourse of playing a musical instrument; however, playing a musical instrument is like riding a bike once you know how to you don’t seem to forget. My grandma had Alzheimer’s disease she couldn’t remember much, but when my dad would sit her in front of a piano she would play. Myself it has been a few months but I sat down and began playing. As I was tickling the ivories I began thinking about the context of music as its own language. HTML is its own language. It has rules, syntax, and when HTML has been strung together in its own form it creates a program. Music has rules and follows some of the English language rules but instead of a program it creates a story. But because music is so vast I will be focusing on the composition of music.

Composition of music is the written notation of music but it also the ability to play that music. I will be gathering data from two different groups: people who play a musical instrument and people who do not. I hypothesis that both groups will have an understanding of musical language, the terminology; however, the group that do play musical instruments will have a better understanding of composing music and the difference regarding playing a pre-composed piece of music compared to an original composed piece of music.