Is Music a Language?

"I don't call it dancing, I call it sparkling."

Lately I've gotten in the mindset of thinking of music as a language. Studying jazz piano, I felt like I was learning a new language and was at the baby gibberish stage, where all I was doing was making noises trying to copy those around me but not making much sense.

Where I thought the metaphor began to fall down was in the concept of "right and wrong." While trying to improvise, I was wondering if I what I was playing was "right." I mean, I knew "right and wrong" could be different in this context, but if music was a language, then I wondered if I could be wrong musically when I was playing certain things.

In other words, if I was learning Chinese and trying to speak it, was I making any sense, or was I randomly putting words together? I thought about this for a while and came to the conclusion that there wasn't a right and wrong like there is with language.

I discussed this with Paul English, and he pointed out that yes, music was a language with an idiom and there were accepted norms. Going back to the language metaphor, there are accepted ways to say things that we all agree upon. Of course, he was right, which meant I was wrong. Or at least, I was not on the right track.

Thinking about this conversation and what Paul said, it hit me. I'm not just learning the language but also how to use it. Little kids don't write novels. People start out with essays and move on to short stories before tackling novels or dissertations. In order to write certain things in certain styles, you have to learn the idioms associated with that style. Along the way they get better at the language in general. If you want to write a story about something, there isn't a wrong way to tell the story so long as you do so in an understandable fashion. This is where the accepted norms come in. If you are writing for a certain audience, then you should also write in the style they expect or require.

I think the metaphor of music as a language does work, but you have to look at it on several levels. You're not just learning to speak the language, you're learning to write it and compose more than just conversationally. I haven't determined where actual compositions fit in all of this however.

The important thing that came from all of this was that it got me away from the "right and wrong" I was worried about. That's not to say I don't have a lot to learn about music, but it gave me the freedom to tell my story my way. As I go along, I'll find better and better ways to tell it.

Posted 2010 04 27 at 6:51 AM

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