What Music Means to Me: a reminiscence.

In Fall 2010 at MTSU I successfully made it through my fourth semester of music theory and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a long road that I began way back when I was 18 years old and a freshman in Fall 2006. As a music major, I started theory I in my first semester like most music majors do, followed it with theory II the next semester, then my education stopped altogether for a year. When I returned to school, my major had changed, and I was trying to get back in the swing of things, so I started focusing on gen eds while I figured out what exactly it was that I wanted to do. Once I finally felt that I was on track and settled in everything that I wanted to do, one of those things being that I wanted to finish out the four semesters of music theory, I was a junior, and it had been almost three years since the last time I had been immersed in the world of theory. But I enrolled in theory III in the spring of 2010, then completed the four semester run in the first semester of my senior year. What should have been started and completed in two years of my life took approximately four.

During our last meeting together, on the day we had our written final in theory IV, Dr. Linton reminded us of one of our first assignments in theory I. For most people who had him for theory I, that was approximately two years before, but my memory had to reach much further back, to a time that seems almost like another life. The assignment he referenced was an essay he told us to write titled "What Music Means to Me." That was the prompt, and we were to take it and fill approximately a page expounding upon it. He surprised us all when he said he had a couple of those essays to hand back. Mine was one of those couple.

As I took it from his hand and into mine, it was like a blast from the past. My 22-year-old, senior-in-college self was looking at my 18-year-old, freshman-in-college self, and it was surprising. First of all, I wasn't expecting Dr. Linton to do this, to give us these essays. Honestly, I had all but forgotten about it. My mind was focused on taking a cumulative final that spanned back to material I had learned four years ago. It had been so long, I was surprised he still had it in his possession. But I suppose if I was a professor, I would keep things like that as well. I don't hold on to much, but something like that, especially if I intended to return it to its author one day, would be something that would be hard to part with.

As I was about to take a test that would take me two hours, I didn't have time to read it just then, so I put it away and pulled it out to read when I got home. This essay was one of the first substantial pieces I wrote in my college career. The first class I stepped foot into as a freshman was music theory, and this was one of the first bits of homework I was assigned. If memory serves, I think the only other essay I wrote before this was an in-class one on my first day of my first English class. When I started college, I was extremely nervous. I had not been in a formal classroom since I was 12 years old, and as hard as I worked while I was home schooled, and as much as I felt that my six years of "alternative" education had been a benefit to me, I still had doubts about whether I would be able to succeed in college. I knew that I would work hard, but I feared that I would be at some sort of disadvantage, and I would have to work twice as hard as everyone else just to be able to survive. So the depth of meaning that was contained in this essay being one of the first of my college career was that much greater. For me, this was the moment of truth. Could I write something that would be sufficient for university standards?

It turned out I could. This particular essay wasn't explicit confirmation of that. Dr. Linton didn't make any marks on the page, so I don't know what he thought about it, and obviously he didn't return it to me anytime close to the time I turned it in, but other essays from that first semester were encouraging. I soon found out that I was nervous about almost nothing. A lot of freshman can't write, and teachers know this. Thus they attempt to teach. And unfortunately, there are some people who graduate with writing skills that aren't remarkably better than when they started, but I will not be one of them. My area of study dictates that writing be my life, so it was improve or perish. I have yet to perish, and I know that I have improved in the four years since I began.

Since I know that my writing has improved, I was almost afraid to read this essay when I got home. Would it be too painful? I braced myself for the much cringing in which I anticipated to find myself engaged and started making my way through my reflections from long ago. To my great surprise and pleasure, I didn't cringe as much as I thought I would. Maybe I wasn't as bad of a writer as I thought I was. It's certainly not like it would be if I were writing it today, but it's not painful.

I present it to you here, exactly as I wrote it at the age of 18.

What Music Means to Me

Music and the definition of what it constitutes is debated among people globally. I think that music is whatever a person chooses it to be. A simple definition of what music is to me personally is a unique and rhythmic use of sound and silence that is used for self-expression or as a means to communicate with others.

I thoroughly believe that the self-expression aspect of music is important because people who express themselves, I believe, are healthier and happier overall. I am not a very self-expressive person on my own, so music definitely provides a much needed outlet for me to express myself and the emotions and feeling I have deep within me; positive and sometimes negative. I mostly use music for positive expression, but sometimes negative things seem to overwhelm me and music can be my outlet.

Music can also lift a persons spirits. There are times when I feel bad and I can listen to a song and it will immediately make me happier or more joyful. There are a precious few other things in this world that have that affect on me. Often times, music can be downright fun. I think the term "playing an instrument" is absolutely correct, because I have a blast creating music. That definitely is one reason why music can change my mood as dramatically as it does.

Beyond that, I believe that what music is at its core is passion or an expression of passion. Music inspires passion within me and allows me to express that passion. One passion I have other than music is God and my faith. Music allows me to express that in a way that nothing else can. There are times when I am so thankful for everything that God has done for me that I can't help but sing. Other times I have questions or I'm confused and music is a way in which I can communicate that to God. Without music I don't think God would hear nearly as much from me, because that is the way in which I communicate most with Him.

I also like to sing to express a third passion I have which is people, mainly those I know well and love deeply. There are times when I want to them to know something or I need to express how I feel about them or how they make me feel, and I can use music to do that.

As I hope you have grasped in all I have said, bottom line to me music is most importantly passion. I have heard people try to create music without passion, and it doesn't work. They can be trained in all the technicalities and be able to play triplets as fast as lightning, but without passion it's nothing. As long as a person has passion, then all the music that person creates will be beautiful, even if that person is the only one who thinks so.



In reading this, the evolution of my writing skills was not only striking, but also was my own progression in life. I have changed remarkably in recent years. But in many ways, I am the same person that wrote these words about passion and expression. I still believe everything that I said. The things that make up the core of who I am are the same. But I feel like I understand them better. I understand myself better. Music's place in my life has become more defined. It's more special to me than it has been before, but only as I've come to understand how it fits in my life as a new creation in Christ. It's funny how everything that I've always valued has become so much more vibrant, more treasured, more special, more important, more valuable, more real in light of Jesus becoming the central focus of my life. Like David Crowder says, he does "make everything glorious."