Music is a Language

When I teach my saxophone students I begin by showing them the similarities between music and language and give them a scope of how they need to approach learning music.  My focus in my lessons is jazz but the same concept can be applied to all styles of music.  

When you first learn to speak your parents show you a dog and say, “dog.” Then the show you a cat and say, “cat.” They will show you a tree and say, “tree.” As you grow older you begin to formulate these words into a sentence by saying, “the dog chased the cat around the tree.”

As you begin to play jazz you learn certain bebop phrases that you can combine to make more complex phrases and eventually you develop your own way of saying those phrases and even create your own.

Just as in our language example you can say, “It was a bright sunny day when the hairy, brown dog chased the sleek, gray cat around the tall oak tree.”  You can even elaborate further by telling us about the relationship of the cat and how it always steals the dog’s food, etc.  

This ability of language to paint a picture of a time, place and even emotion is inherent in music as well and even when music does not contain lyrics it has the ability to evoke deep emotions.

Listen closely the next time you put on music and try and here the phrases, sentences and structure and you may be surprised at how you can hear more depth and meaning in the songs you love.