When I improvise on the piano, I have the sensation not so much of creating music, but rather of channeling music that comes from somewhere within me that is a bit mysterious. The simple act of moving my fingers over the piano keyboard brings up a kind of emotional resonance distinctly different from the feelings I experience in other contexts. It’s almost as though there is an alternate personality in my head, one that speaks not in words but in music. <\/p>\n
Just as there is a kind of split in our brains between the left side and the right side, perhaps there is a similar split between the musical and the non-musical parts of our mind, reflecting some schism that began long ago in human evolution. When we create music, or sing along to a favorite song, or simply listen as a beloved tune comes on the radio, maybe we are actually experiencing a kind of identity shift, becoming — for a time — this alternate version of ourselves.<\/p>\n
Who is this person that I feel inside me when I improvise on the piano? What existence does he have outside of musical expression? I get the feeling that he feels emotion more deeply than I do, and that I might have much to learn from him. It would be great if we could one day just go for a coffee and have a good chat.<\/p>\n
But that is unlikely to ever happen, because we don’t speak the same language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I improvise on the piano, I have the sensation not so much of creating music, but rather of channeling music that comes from somewhere within me that is a bit mysterious. The simple act of moving my fingers over the piano keyboard brings up a kind of emotional resonance distinctly different from the feelings … Continue reading “The language of music”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8345"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8346,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8345\/revisions\/8346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}