What it's Like to be the Eldest

Hi, guys! I know I said in my first post that this blog would only be about music but I thought it would be a better idea to occasionally add a little bit more than that. Which will give you guys the chance to get to know me a little bit and have some laughs with me as well. Here's a little bit about me and my family.

I'm the eldest child out of the four kids in my family of six. My sister and I, the two eldest, are two years apart. Being the eldest means that you get the most responsibility. Sometimes I feel like I'm the second mom of the family, especially because if mom's not around I'm the next person in charge. A lot of the time I babysit for her, which is a pretty awesome job considering how much she pays me and how much fun my siblings and I have together. Sometimes, if it's sunny enough I take them to the park and we run around playing and goofing around. There are moments where the kids can be rather irritating and frustrating but at the same time I can't imagine my life without them around.

When I was an only child, I didn't have anyone to play with and my friends weren't all that great. A lot of the time I just ended up playing by myself. I even had an imaginary friend, but that quickly ended when I got scared of the monsters in the dark. At nine years old I had a lot of friends who had siblings and I wanted to know what that was like; I wanted to have someone to play and bond with who wasn't my mom. Mother Nature was so generous that she gave me not one but three younger siblings. Three siblings who are so sweet and clever. There is never a dull moment in my life. They are always surprising us with things that are sweet, strange, and sometimes frighting. Thank you God for the amazing people in my life. I'm eternally grateful to have such a wonderful mom and siblings. I love them all!

The Radio is Neither Good nor Bad: Part 2

The reason why I question what emotions an artist may feel when writing a song is that, from experience I've found that song writing is the art people use the most to express themselves; it's an opportunity for people to share how they feel or think. I know that when I sit down to write a poem, whatever emotion is going through me at the time is taken into account. I hate writing poems with a passion. There isn't one thing I like about poems, I don't like reading them and it's hard for me to understand them. This make it difficult to write one and I get nowhere. In the end, because of my hatred, I fail to write a poem at all or it becomes a poem about how much I hate poems. Not what I was going for when I attempted to overcome that aversion. This can be applied to everything else that we do. If we hate taking out the garbage, it shows. Of course, I don't know anyone who likes taking out the garage. :) Bottom line is we like to put emotions into everything. 

Our songs are a wonderful example of this practice. We can feel the emotions the artist used to create a song, some of us notice it right away and others are rather oblivious. I remember a couple of years ago, Rihanna was talking on the radio about her abusive relationship with Chris Brown. At that point her new song 'Love the Way You Lie' Rihanna (feat. Eminem) http://rap.genius.com/Eminem-love-the-way-you-lie-lyrics - had just been released and was quite popular. It played so many times that I could have sung it from memory alone. The song was about a couple in a abusive relationship and I felt that that was her attempt to help people understand what it was like to be in that situation. It made me feel sad. I felt like I understood her. I have a great appreciation of songs that hold great meaning. Songs that talk about sex and drugs are very irritating and a bad influence on the public. Honestly, our little children are exposed all the time to songs about doing bad things, but we as a society think that as long as we block out the profanity it's okay. It's not, not only is it bad for our children to listen to but it's bad for all of us. It encourages behavior that we all know isn't good and makes it seem popular. This is why I think the radio is neither good nor bad; we're the one's choosing the songs. The radio is just there to deliver it. We need to make better choices when it comes to the things we listen to, especially as a culture. 

The Radio is Neither Good nor Bad: Part 1

I love the radio. It helps me discover new music and lets me listen to my favorite music . . . most of the time. But I also hate the radio, especially because of it's tendency to play one song over and over again on multiple stations. How irritating is it to find all of your favorite stations playing "I Love It" by Icona Pop ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K0iUo5nDY0 ) four times all in one day!!! I think that this is a waste of radio time, many people may like to listen to "I love it" all the time but it's unfair to others who would love to listen to "Clarity (ft. Foxes)" by Zedd or "The Fox (What Does The Fox Say?) by Ylvis. Both of which are also heard a lot too, but the point is that the radio is a conduit for which the public can express themselves. If this is true then why isn't there more variety, more spontaneous music choices? Should there be a limit to how much a song can be played in one day? The next question is how much does an artist make every time their song is played? Does it vary depending on the contract? How much do you think the radio stations get to promote and play an artist's songs? I don't really know.

Not only does the public listen to songs way too many times, but also to songs that may not be good for their health physical or psychologically. I've heard plenty of songs that sound really cool and have an amazing beat but are paired with lyrics that talk about suicide, prostitution, etc.  Is the radio really all that great? Maybe we shouldn't blame the radio for sex orientated and profanity filled music; for music about doing drugs or suicide. Perhaps we should look at the artists themselves and why they may have written those kinds of songs. Was it because of how they felt at that time?

To be continued. . . :)

The Soma of Music: Introduction

This blog is part of a project that I'm conducting to assist my study of music and to share with everyone else who's interested. When I was younger, I really wanted to learn how to play the violin. However, life's circumstances didn't allow for that to happen and I put it on   the back burner for the future. So instead of focusing on what I couldn't do, I developed my love for music. I learned about myself and my music preferences and spent time dancing, learning how to move my body to the different beats and having fun doing it too. ;) When I was thirteen, my chance to learn a musical instrument final came and I began guitar lessons. I meet an amazing teacher, who I still see and learn from to this day. He taught me the basic chords and finger positions at first, and soon I learned how to read music and started playing Brazilian and classical music. I learned the different scales (minor & major). At fifteen, my teacher encouraged me to compose music of my own and I began to notice how different kinds of notes made me feel. Some inspired light airy feelings, while others were morose and depresssing and others were deep and vibrated deeply within my chest. I had discovered a whole different world. A world based upon vibrations, and feeling. It almost seemed like a fantasy world and sometimes it really is; one of the songs I wrote was based upon Gnomes living in a garden. The world of music is whatever you want it to be. 

One of my main goals in composing music is to help instill happiness and peace into it and and in who listen to it. I want to make people happy and inspire them to make good choices, because believe it or not the music we listen to on a daily basis affects the way we act and how we feel. I will discuss the effects of music on all of us throughout my blog and go into more depth as my learning does. If you have any awesome questions or comments feel free to just ask! Comments are welcome!!!