Does great music remain confined to our hearing, or does it leak through into our other senses. Can we feel, see, smell, even taste music? The premise of this blog poetic reverb is that great music does leak into our other senses. The vibrations laden in the beats-per-minute of a piece of music reverberate in the brain like the harps reverberate at the end of Blue Nile. Think of the great novel, painting, movie, sculpture that had a significant impact on you, it’s unlikely you processed it in only one sense. Perception itself is multi-sensory, and when our senses work in harmony, it leads to phenomenon of emergence.
Emergence explains that stimuli only become meaningful to us at certain levels of abstraction. So it’s not just the fact that the double bass in this song is playing at just the right tempo, it’s the fact that when the double bass is joined by the percussion, keys, trumpet and finally by the harp, certain associations become apparent and connections between our senses refine the overall experience. Therefore one instrument can have a dramatic impact on how a piece of music is perceived. Likewise, one experience can have a dramatic impact on the meaning of a song to the listener.
Matthew Halsall’s music exemplifies the power of softness in musical composition. Everything in the song seems to be moving in the same direction. Like a river. Like the Nile. After a certain point, the currents in the song become unstoppable, and we are powerless against the onslaught of cascading harps at 6:28 – like the hare that somehow cannot stop the tortoise overtaking it. Listening to this song, I was reminded of the Bruce Lee’s most famous edict – “Be water my friend”.
poetic reverb 