It begins with listening.
We teach our children our language by speaking it to them from the moment they are born. They listen and gradually pick up on the sounds, the pronunciations, the inflections and grammar of our language. It takes years but eventually they are able to fluently converse with us, expressing their emotions, desires and experiences. There are patterns in speech, pitches, accents, phrases, articulation and dynamics. In order to be affective in speech, sometimes we yell, and sometimes we whisper.
We can’t learn to speak french simply by reading it. When we learn a language, we listen to someone else speak it so we can pronounce words correctly. We listen for the accents, articulation, the punctuation, the phrasing, the elements that give the language it’s unique quality.
The language of music is equally complex. In the beginning, we learn to find our voice by copying the voices around us. Most musicians will tell you that they spent allot of time listening to their favourite artists when they were just beginning to play their instruments. We are inspired by performances that reach us on an emotional level.
Just as children develop a sense of humour as they learn to intellectualize language, so too does the musician as they gain confidence in their abilities to communicate through their instrument. If you have a favourite guitarist or saxophonist you know that you can recognize them by their sound and their stylings just as we get to know each other by the the sound and style of our voice. Music resides within all of us. The voice is a musical instrument. Even if we are not singing there is still a pitch to our voice. Our voices move up and down a musical scale of pitches every time we talk.
We may not think of speech as music but as we compare the languages of speech to music, we must then realize that they are, in fact, part of the same larger picture of language.
The following Ted Talk touches on some of the ideas I have discussed.