The Healing Power of Music

While listening to the radio on Memorial Day, I happened to hear a caller to Coast to Coast Radio mention this program for Veterans. Musicians in the Milwaukee area donate time to provide guitar instruction as well as guitars to injured veterans. The healing power of creating music seems to be especially helpful to those suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The initiators of the project have acquired non-profit status, and hope to expand the program throughout the country. For more information, visit guitarsforvets.org .

Visual Tool for Songwriters

I happened across a wonderful tool on Alice Hancock's Design blog that might be useful to other songwriters. Wordle is an online program that turns your words into pictures which can then be printed or exported as pdf's.  The frequency of a word's usage determines its size in the visual.  Results can be randomized, or you can customize them by selecting fonts, colors, etc.  I decided to experiment with the lyrics to one of my songs, and then used the graphics to create a video.  Wordles could also be used to generate posters, t-shirts, album covers or whatnot.  And they might prove valuable in providing a visual tool to examine your writing style.  Have fun with it and see what you can come up with!

The Universal Language

                     

A musician friend shared this video with me, and I think it speaks volumes.  We often talk about music as the universal language, but this demonstrates it so clearly.  It's part of some incredible documentary footage put together by Playing for Change, which describes itself as "a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music."  A laudable goal, and the movement has certainly provided me with some inspiration. As economic distress reduces the funds available to schools for music programs, and pits different groups against each other, let's think about what micro-movements we might undertake in our own communities to create unity through the language of music.  

In The Pocket

There's a phrase musicians use for a rhythm section that finds the groove and stays there: "in the pocket."  It's a zen thing.  Like being in the zone.  Being the ball.  Once you're there, it's effortless, intuitive.  It just flows.  Getting there isn't quite so easy, though.  It requires practice, confidence, and the ability to make infinitesimal adjustments to rhythm and tempo that bring all the players into alignment with each other.  If you make a conscious effort to make it happen, you lose it almost instantly.  But if you reach out with your heart to the others in the band, feel where they're playing from, the groove catches you all up to a new level of playing, where it's not just a song anymore, it's genuine music.

Life has its "in the pocket" times too--days when everything  just seems to fall into place without any help from us.  Serendipity.  Synchronicity.  Even the traffic cooperates to get us where we need to be right when we need to be there.  It can't be forced any more than a groove can.  But it can be invited by being prepared to do our best, believing that the universe wants to cooperate, adjusting to the changes we encounter along the way, and reaching out with our hearts to those who are along for the ride.