Thursday evening reflection.
I've always been a listening type of person. I don't know why it is, but sounds and music are awesome - in their way, more awesome than the most awesome sights there are to see, I would say.
The emotional impact of sound is... incredible, really. Not just any sounds, though. Music especially, but some animal calls or songs, some mechanical sounds, can trigger a response in me ranging from hair standing up to tears. One song was... when I was in a relationship about six or seven years ago, it was kind of my theme song. I hadn't listened to it for years, since the relationship ended. Then, not thinking much of it, I bought the CD. I put it on play, track 8 came up, and I was literally bowled over onto my hands and knees. The dogs came over, concerned. They don't know how to deal with tears.
The best music I've ever heard is vocals-only (here's an example). My personal preference for orchestration is the simpler, the better - vocals and piano sounds great to me. It's not that I don't like metal or prog-rock or whatever, but it's not as aesthetically grabbing-me-by-the-throat-and-shaking-me noteworthy.
I'm an amateur musician, as I might have mentioned. I've had a couple of years of formal instruction, and I rely on a gifted musical ear and my enthusiasm for the rest. I sometimes play around, whether with my voice or a piano. I don't know how to explain it, but I like to try to match or counterpoint the sounds in my environment, or to copy the music I hear. So the latest songs I want to try teaching myself are "General Taylor" and "The Green Fields of France".
Funny side note on the latter song: the first time I heard it was on YouTube, the Dropkick Murphys' performance. I'm a Warhammer 40,000 fan, though I don't play the game. And while I was poking around /tg/ on 4chan, I saw a thread: "Soldiers of the Imperium, what is your regimental song?" One poster posted, very simply:
A camp song for the Tanith First and Only:
http://www.youtube.com/...
This maybe isn't the place to explain why that's an emotional double blow, because I'd have to explain who the Tanith First are and you can go figure that out yourself if you're really interested. But that's how I discovered that song.
-- ANYWAY
Some of the most stunning things I've heard aren't music at all. I mentioned animal calls. Listen to birds singing, for example, not just calling back and forth. Listen to the calls of singing mice or the laughter of rats. Or even just the sounds made by dogs, sometimes. Those can grab you, or at least, they grabbed me.
One of the most striking things I can recall came from just trying to get my parents' full-sized upright piano to sing along with ambient noise. I just held the damper pedal down, you know, and any sound would be picked up by the strings and cause the piano to make a kind of ghostly humming sound.
It was just slightly interesting, neat, whatever, until suddenly the dogs started howling. The piano howled along with them. It was like turning on a faucet or something - dogs long-calling already affects me emotionally, but with the added resonance (with overtones) of the piano, it was overwhelming.
A video that has a similar effect on me now:
If I keep watching this kind of thing, I'll need to increase my Kleenex budget.
So, I don't know, how about you?