Shallow, Instrumental Beauty

A few days ago, there was an article on NPR about whether music or lyrics are more important.  At the time, I read the article and pretty much agreed with what the author says:  "When judging a song based on first impressions, my primary concern is that 1) the music is done right; and 2) the words, whether in content or presentation, aren't done wrong."

But last night, I got to thinking about things, and I realised that - for me - the point of music is that it sounds good.  I don't usually pay that much attention to lyrics, and I don't spend that much time analysing them.  They only start to sink in if I listen to a song incessantly.  I started writing a post about this and wrote "For me, it’s not so much what a song says as what it sounds like," but then I realised that that's a pretty shallow view. If you substitute visuals for audio, you end up with "It's not so much what a person says as what she looks like."  With that kind of logic, you end up listening only to people you perceive as beautiful and neglect everyone else based on only one criterion.  And the ugly people you ignore are likely to have something important to say.

And while that analogy offers an iron-clad argument to take a deeper look at music (or, more accurately, a deeper listen), problems present themselves.  What about nearly all classical music?  Symphonies and concerti don't have lyrics.  Does that mean that liking them is shallow because that preference is based on only one factor?  If liking a person because she looks beautiful is shallow, is liking a symphony because it sounds good also shallow?

I'm undecided about this.  While the music/person analogy is useful in some cases, I'm not sure it always applies.  If you take the art for art's sake approach - which I'm prone to - appearance and effect are the extent of a piece's content.  The point is no-thing more than to sound nice.  I suppose that's why most of my music has been instrumental lately.  I have no other goal than to make things that sound nice.  (Though, based on how many people are listening, I'm evidently not doing a very good job.)  But I also realise that making only things that are meant to sound nice is kind of a shallow goal.  It's certainly a limited one.

I do have some plans on presenting ideas within my songs and getting back to lyric writing.  But I find writing lyrics much harder than writing music, and I think part of that is because I find it much easier to play an instrument than to sing lyrics.

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