Rania Chrysostomou

Pick a language you know completely nothing about. Imagine you are learning how to say a ‘bad word’ or a phrase like ‘I love you’ in that other language. You can also make it up.

We arrange letters in logical positions to form words. The letters are the body of the word. Every person, no matter what language they can speak, will see the same characters and will (generally) be able to reproduce them by copying the characters of the word and writing them down. Some might go as far as enunciating the letters to form the word and until then it is a reproduction of the sound of the word.

Later, we will find out about the meaning of the word. That’s the brain. If it’s a ‘bad word’ we might giggle knowing it’s a bad word in another language and in our language it doesn’t mean anything. This information will be stored in our brain, like any other piece of information and if we use it often we will remember it if not, it will be jumbled up in there.

Taking for instance a phrase like ‘I love you’. How do we feel if someone said it to us in our own language and how in the foreign, unknown language. The meaning is the same in both languages. But there’s a deeper connection to the phrase when it is said in the language we have be speaking throughout our lives. That connection to the meaning of the word or phrase I call: the mind. The higher understanding of the word that only repetition, practice and daily interaction with the language in various forms will eventually make us able to feel the words on that level. To realise when a word is being used correctly without having to go through grammar and syntax rules. It just “sounds” right. These rules are abstract and change according to the language and sometimes the region. Some languages may have the subject before the verb and some the other way round, some languages might not need to use a specific word to determine the person in a sentence (I, you, he, she…) and some languages do. Translating directly from one language to the other without thinking about these rules will sound like nonsense.

And now connecting it to Music. The letters are the individual notes or sounds, that we arrange in time and space to make a fragment. To form a musical phrase, we arrange these fragments into patterns, or motifs, and so on. Just like grammar and syntax rules, there is music theory that will help to better understand the needs of creating a musical passage, how to give the feeling that the phrase has finished but not the whole piece, manipulate rhythm and melody within one phrase. These rules, for me, are as important as the rules we use in our language. Just like language, these rules might have some alterations depending on the type of music; folk, eastern European, middle eastern, classical and the region of course. The special thing though is that music is universal. And no matter where or what kind kind of training someone has had, they will make sense of any kind of music much easier than someone that had no training. Wherever you are in the world, if you hear the music you are used to listening to (not necessarily the one you like) it will touch your emotions so deeply as if someone curses or says that they love you in your mother tongue.

In conclusion, learn your traditional music, practice, learn, enjoy learning and practising and prefer to defy the rules, rather than reinventing the (cart) wheel. It’s okay. Of course, some practises are straight forward and just a few interactions with the means will help you come to the same conclusions other people pay money to learn but it is a shame to see someone with such potential voluntarily stop their mind from progressing.

© Rania Chrysostomou, 2017