What Makes the Music...the Instrument or Musician?

What makes music, the instrument or the person playing it? That is my question today and it crosses over into everyday life. What a man or woman does with the essence of their breath and motion from their hands creates the music. The instrument, while very valuable in delivering the sound is in fact, secondary to the musician.

Let’s examine the instrument by itself. In fact let’s use the Steinway piano as the example. The world’s most respected name in pianos, each one hand crafted to perfection. In fact, here’s a link to the Steinway website showing how each piano is built with the hands of actual people using their talent and expertise to build each piece. It is a work of art. In Steinway’s own words, “Handcrafting each Steinway requires up to one full year – creating an instrument of rare quality and global renown.” Take your own factory tour. http://www.steinway.com/factory/

Now, if a person decides he wants this extraordinary musical instrument, he can purchase it, put it in a place of his or her choosing and yet, it sits there silent, beautiful as it may be. The piano itself cannot produce the amazing sounds it was created to make without a living, breathing person to bring it to life. Sure sounds elementary but let’s examine this just a little further.

The person that sits at the these 88 black and white ivory keys has to have more than just a desire to play, they must in most cases, practice countless hours, making hundreds of thousands of repetitions of scales, arpeggios and chord progressions to master the skills needed to bring real music out of the wood, metal and ivory sitting in front of them. Irregardless of the worth of the instrument, the musician that plays it has worked thousands of hours more than the people that crafted the instrument.

My point in illustrating this is so relative to the everyday life we live. What we expect to get out the magnificent body, mind and soul the Creator has designed with HIS own hands is indeed music. However, too many times we want the sounds of a concert pianist to flow forth in our life experience without paying forward the price required to actually realize it. There’s music inside all of us, yet we must put our hands to work to make it play. My grandpa, with a fourth grade education told my mother when she was a girl, “I don’t understand why a man says he can’t make it. There’s so much a person can do to make a living, he just has to make an effort”. He worked for himself most of his life and he was content in knowing he had done the best he could with his hands and the breath God given him. I could see, hear and feel the music that played thru his life and it was indeed magnificent.

Life charted on a musical score

Well friends, this might not be original but it is personal and real. When we get out of high school and college we embark on writing a musical composition that is completely unique in regards to the way the notes fall on the musical staff. The question that is foremost in my mind in this season of life is whether there really is a "right" road to take. It's like saying there's only ONE spouse out there for each person. I've always said that would pretty much mean we were all married to the wrong person because the freedom to chose was God given from the first breath man took. The one thing in life that we must chose correctly is something we don't get the report card on until after the last breath. We pretty much have to chose our "faith" and as they say chose it wisely. Some feel like we might as well write our life composition like a contemporary modern artist.....just take the brush, dip it in the paint, or hey, why not two or three colors and sling it at the canvass. If you were a real musical composer you definitely wouldn't want to play that back.

So what's my point? The point is most of us really do try to pick the right path. The melody we want left on our legacy is one we want people to have pleasant memories about and produce lasting impressions like a Mozart or Beethoven. Mozart is my favorite of the classics. When we come to that proverbial crossroad, the point in life that we must decide, really decide in a life-changing way where we are to go, it seems like there may indeed be no right answer. So we chose and the new road is riddled with weak bridges and potholes, does that make it the wrong road?

My crossroad is a real life-changer and those don't come everyday. Those are once in a couple of decades or more. That's about all I have to say for now. It's just another day, right?