I see music

I was walking in the park next to my place in Philadelphia and suddenly noticed something that wasn't there before. Someone decided that not only fancy mini-size dogs has to have cute sweaters in the winter, but also trees might be cold and need some attention.

One tree in the park was wearing a colorful stripes sweater. This magnificent sight made me stop and think this spontaneous chain of thoughts: I wondered — what if each stripe produce a different note of the musical scale — so you could play music by touching the stripes on the tree? The tree is like a Y-axis, its height can naturally represents climbing up the musical scale. Then I thought: what if the tree was reacting with sound to tree-huggers? So if I hug a tree with one finger, it makes one note, but the more surface I cover with my body — both hands, arms, torso — the richer and fuller the sound and harmony gets...

Then I noticed a squirrel... I watched its movement: rapid jumps followed by sudden pauses. I heard in my head the type of melody that its movement may produces. And then I thought about a cow... Cows play totally different tunes than squirrels do, when they move. And than everything around my started playing. All I was looking at produced melodies, patterns and harmonies.

I came back home and kept asking myself: what music can be produced naturally from the anatomy of a chair? The toaster? My plant? My lamp?

Music is everywhere, whether we hear it or not. It's hiding in the structures of things, in the motion of beings. All is needed is to listen more carefully. Listen.

In the past month I have become more dedicated to my passion of “understanding what music can look like”. I started researching that as well as writing down ideas that come to my head. I'd like to share this exploration with you.

My desire is to create a visual system that will easily reveal the essence of music to all people. I wish that people will no longer say "I can't play a note... I am not talented..."    I believe that using the visual sense, which is the strongest of all senses, the basics of music can be explained. I believe all people can learn how to improvise and communicate with one another with the universal language - music!

Not all of us should be groundbreaking mathematicians but we all know the basics: how to add, subtract, divide... we need it in our daily lives.
Not all of us should be a professional musicians but I believe we all can know basic level of music making, so we can have fun, express ourselves, communicate with others and feel good about ourselves! Look at any program that take kids from poor places and teach them music and see how playing music contributes to the kids' self esteem. (and they grow to be better citizens.) And on the other side of the spectrum - I bet I can take a group of older people that never learned to play and teach them to play the blues and improvise. The structure of the blues is simple and improvising is easy using only 6 or 7 notes. (the blues scale). I'm sure that at first most people are going to be a little shy and embarrassed, but then they will have a lot of fun and feel liberated. I know that every time I'm playing it elevates my mood.

Another aspect of "seeing the music" is pure joy. Entertainment. Perhaps with a little educative "side-effect" to it. I see games coming out of this music visual system. Games for kids or for adults that will forever be kids... (My grandfather is 97 and still a very young and playful soul).

I invite you to share your thoughts and join me in this journey. May we walk a beautiful and colorful path and arrive to ecstatic places. Or just have fun while walking.

Magic.
Michal

Storyboard of my Giant Steps animation. Watch at http://michalevy.com/giant-steps