Music is a vibe, a vibration. It never becomes physical. That’s what makes it so special for us.
Music has been stored on various physical platforms such as vinyl albums, cassettes and CDs, but the songs themselves avoid being physical.
We listen to music by employing physical speakers, whether we listen to large hi-fi speakers, bluetooth speakers, or the tiny speakers in our Airpods. Those speakers must get the air to vibrate in order for us to receive the sound waves in our physical ears and translate them into a song with our brain.
We can’t touch songs. We can’t see songs. We only hear songs. And hearing is merely our translation of vibration, of sound waves in the air. We are literally feeling the air with our ears, and if loud enough, our bodies too.
And because we are only feeling music, it puts us in a state where we can easily shift into our emotions. It’s like music stirs them up.
As a songwriter and songwriting coach, I love how a particular song with a very strong vibe can bring up different emotions and memories for different people. Usually after a show someone comes up to me and tells me what meaning and feeling they got from a particular song, and quite often it’s different from what the song means to me. This is because the song stirred some very personal emotions within them and maybe accessed certain memories.
We usually agree on what the vibe of a song is, but for each of us that vibe will access different emotions and memories. So, if a very popular song with a strong vibe is heard by a million people, it can trigger a million different emotions and memories. How cool is that?!