In The Abstract

Division Essay

Perfect Music

I’ve often spent hours laying in bed listening to music, letting my body absorb the powerful waves of bass, the tangy, sweet chords of an acoustic guitar, and the gentle tinkering of a grand piano. I’ve been taken over by the jungle-like drums and swept high and low with the hum of a violin. I’ve been blasted away by distorted notes and pulled to pieces by harmonized voices, and I’ve almost never come close to hearing perfect music. Some say perfection doesn’t exist, but exist it does, and in very real places. It’s in the heart, in the mind’s eye, in that very deep secret you never wanted to keep. Perfect music makes my soul come alive. It makes me cry, makes me laugh, and enrages me all at the same time. Perfect music invokes my deepest emotions. You can’t have perfect music, without good lyrics. When music is perfect, the lyrics flow as smoothly as the notes themselves, and they always come from within. Perfect music isn’t in any particular genre; no specific group, like rap, or rock, or country, or pop. Perfect music is unique in classification. Perfection is created through the imperfect, and those are the ground rules.

I’ve listened to all sorts of songs, upbeat, and downers, and all sorts of in-betweens. Some of the best music I’ve heard combines all three. At my grandfather’s funeral, they played music that brought forth memories and love. Now every time I hear those songs, I get emotional and I have to turn them off. That isn’t perfect music, but it does invoke emotion. Perfect music has the ups and the downs that can send your heart rate up through the roof, and down through the cold caverns of pain. When I listen to Silverchair’s “Emotion Sickness”, the deep echoes of the acoustic piano throw my heart into a whirlwind, and the dangerous cries of Daniel Johns bring me to tears. When I hear “Blank Page” by Smashing Pumpkins, I think about the man I love and things that we have gone through together. The simplicity of the music is ironic because it crates such a beautiful sound, with only three instruments behind it. The delicate chords on piano keys overlap one another, and ride through tidal waves of bass guitar. Gentle, calming words from Billy Corgan dance atop these mountains of sound and bring me smiles and tears. Perfect music can be complex or simple, but it always helps me to remember what it is like to feel.

The easiest way to ruin a perfect song is to have terrible lyrics. When music is to be perfect, it must have perfect lyrics or no lyrics at all. If you have a perfect, powerful melody, with the right amount of harmony, and that music withdraws innumerable emotions, you cannot have lyrics about screwing hoes and smoking dope, or pumping iron and poppin’ caps in people’s asses. The lyrics need to go with the melody, but they also need to go with the energy of the song. I hate it when I’m listening to the radio, and a song starts to come on where the music is incredible, but then the vocalists start to sing and I hear something completely unexpected and violating to the sounds underlying. A song with perfect lyrics is “I Alone” by Live. The music alternates from soft to hard and takes the lyrics with it, and brings memories back to the surface of my mind. It’s about love and fear. My favourite part of the whole song are these lyrics: “I'll read to you here, save your eyes, you'll need them, your boat is at sea, your anchor is up, you've been swept away, and the greatest of teachers won't hesitate to leave you there by yourself chained to fate”.
Perfect music is not discriminative and does not hold any cultural boundaries. It has elements of different cultures, and incorporates all sorts of things into one. Two of my favourite bands that do this are Tool and A Perfect Circle. Almost all of their songs have a tribal feel to them. A Perfect Circle is slower, and a lot less edgy than Tool, but both bands have the same singer and songwriter. They are similar in that they both use the drums as key instruments, throwing in rhythmic, animal like beats in the background of the rest of the music, and also use a lot of western cultural instruments like sitars and pan flutes. When I listen to them, I am once again overcome with emotion, and almost feel as though I’m being taken into the jungle with the drums, and throwing my distorted thoughts out at the American government.

In my eyes, or ears, a song cannot be perfect without these three key elements. I don’t even like anything that doesn’t evoke emotion, and when I hear terrible lyrics, I’m revolted and I have to shut off the radio. I don’t listen to any real genre of music that doesn’t involve some cultural aspect to it, be it the American culture, the government in particular, or historical. I love listening to music, and I like it even better if it’s perfect.

posted by Kasey @ 12/03/2005 08:04:00 PM