🖊️ Rules of Music

To: (123) 456-7890 -- From: Asteri

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Song: [Every Side of You - Vance Joy]

Book: [I Have Lost My Way - Gayle Foreman]

Keywords: [life, music]

"You have to learn the rules before you can break them," is something I've been told lots of times in music, and probably will be told dozens of times again. It's the idea that you have to learn the rules of an instrument and/or music theory before you can make stuff up. You've gotta know what you can do before you can imagine new things!

It's the kind of statement that beforehand made me feel caged and daunted and rebellious, like "I don't have to! I can create all on my own without the rules." I didn't want to conform to the rules.

But now, that kind of statement is what inspires me to study music further. My craving to create, to add music to the lyrics that have flowed so freely from me all my life. I want to learn the rules to break them, and so I know what I'm doing instead of just doing it. I want to study different kinds of music and decipher the differences and the elements of each song. I want to find out what makes each song its own - the lyrics, the melodies, the instruments and how they're placed, the rhythm and form of each song. Why songs are good, why they're not good. And I want to learn on a smaller level than that too. What the different notes and chords are, how they're made on different instruments, why they are what they are. 

I want to study music.

I want to study music in a way I've wanted to study very few things before. It's the way I want to study stars, the way I study emotions and psychology, the way I study karate, and the way I study riding. It's something I want to devote endless hours to with the sole purpose of the ever-unattainable goal of ~learning music~. Cause I know I'm never going to know all of music; that's not how that works. But chasing a goal that keeps going further away is okay because I want to do it. I want to study music and keep expanding my knowledge because when I'm in music I am enveloped in a world of safety and color and creation. It's all I am when I'm in it.

I've been studying songwriting for years now by myself, not from any teacher but simply by seeing what works. Learning scales from scratch without knowing the technical terms; I'm asked what my range is and I just say, "I don't know, I just sing." I've studied singing and songwriting by composing, over and over, testing and adapting and learning with each note I sing. 

I'm ambitious, and excited, and a little bit scared. But who isn't? It's going to be fun :)

--Asteri