So, for the past little while I have been thinking about music and my dealings with it. For those of you who know my brother
trueblat, don't worry I am not that bad. I am not going to go into a long detailed monologue on a specific song describing all the points about it, and I am not going to iterate through the hymn book and discuss each song. I just noticed a few things recently that puzzle me.
For starters, if I like a song, no matter how often I listen to it, I never get tired of it. I noticed this when in the past two month or so I acquired two CDs. One was the new phantom of the Opera movie soundtrack (which is ok once you get used to it and realize that the music doesn’t have to be exactly like the Broadway version) and the other is Jekyll and Hyde musical soundtrack. I have been listening to these 2 CDs ever since I got them and I have yet to get tired of them. Some may think that well I just don't listen to them often enough. I would be to differ. Whenever I am on a computer I always stick a CD in and listen to music. Considering I am a CS major that also does my work stuff on computers and the fact that I leave home at 8:00 am and not come home till midnight; that is a really long time of listening to music. Basically the only break I take is when I go to class and even them sometimes I have access to a computer and just stick and CD in and listen. So, with all this listening to the same songs, why I am I not tired of it. This question was posed by my roommates who finally got fed up with the same songs and told me. I now listen at home with a headset on, but they posed a good question. Why don't I get bored with it all? You would think with my family's background in music (as displayed by my brother and sisters) that I would get tired of hearing the same flat voice or the same mistake in a song every single time. But I'm not. How weird is that.
Anyways, another topic is the fact that why is there a certain set of songs that wards always sing. I've more noticed this as a western\eastern\international difference. At church recently the conductor has been selecting songs that I haven't heard since coming out west to college, and apparently everyone else in the ward has never heard them at all. So I play my heart out on the piano and after the first verse you can tell that the congregation is slowly getting more confidence in what they are singing. So, when did the separation of songs occur. Does it deal with what songs fit best with the culture, or was there a missionary that came back east and he only liked the odd songs they don't sing in the west, and thus started the separation. It is a very interesting phenomena, or at least in my mind.
A final topic is I just don't understand how people can be singing and then just randomly change the key in the middle of a phrase. I am not talking about purposeful changes or even changes because the music got too high or too low. I am talking about you are singing ‘row, row, row your boat’ and all of the sudden the boat sank a few feet. I know it grates on my mind when I hear it, so why doesn't it to the people who are doing it. Or are there just a ton of people out there who can here any sort of noise no matter how 'wrong' and call it music. I have a pretty high tolerance for bizarre music (I tend to like international music), but I just can't stand it when this happens. I guess it shows how different we were all made and brought up. I wonder if there has been a study to see what most affects people's perceptions on right and wrong in areas that at first glance don't have a defined right and wrong, but when talking to certain individuals you can tell they have their own views.
Anyways, I was just thinking about all of this and decided to write it up to show my family that I am still alive (actually, I mainly did it to procrastinate homework that I don't want to do, but hey that's what college kids do best). If you have any thoughts, then please tell.
