To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it. ~
The History of Music Is Long; This Synopsis is Not
Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but many quality inventions and discoveries hit the scene thousands of years before we felt the sun on our faces. We don’t know exactly when the Neanderthals’ ancestors began to hum, clap their hands, or rhythmically bang on a cave’s stalactites. However, in a 2017 issue of Science Daily, we learn that archeologists have found remains of bone pipes (carved from swans’ or vultures’ wings) dating back more than 39,000* years. And yes, there is evidence that the stalactites were used as gongs as far back as 12,000 years. *The use of instruments could be a great many years older, but any horns made from wood or reeds decayed long before scientists began looking for them.
Did people sing then, like we do now? They had the pipes for it (sorry, couldn’t resist), but whether they did or not, we don’t know. We don’t even know whether dance or music came first. Did people begin to sway and create the music as background? Or was it the other way around? There’s no answer for that, but we do know some sound reasons why music was made and instruments were used:
- Communication – a horn’s brassy notes will travel farther and be more consistent than a human’s voice.
- Ritual – almost every belief system incorporates music.
- Bonding – music isn’t called a universal language for nothing. It soothes babies and patients and hungry diners. At least temporarily. And it brings people together who might never have interacted otherwise.
Mixposure adds that a song’s rhythm can keep large groups working or marching at the same pace and alleviates the boredom of repetitive jobs. Even the dwarfs whistled while they worked, right?
The Ancient Art of Making Music -Via a Contemporary Artist
A few months back I had the pleasure of meeting Ashley Hepperly. She is a songwriter and music artist, and was able to answer a few questions about songwriting. Ashley’s attraction to music started early; she began playing drums at age 9. She loved the rhythm even then and knew she wanted to have music in her life forever. At age 10 she shifted her focus to the piano, picking out melodies. The guitar came after that. She picked it up quickly and decided she could make a living at it.
Of course, she had a running start at the business; she began writing songs in earnest at age 12. You know, about the time most youngsters struggle to write book reports.
Naturally, Ash’s family influenced her musical leanings. Her late grandmother’s parents were tent revival evangelists and her grandmother was a pianist. Ash’s maternal grandfather loved the Beatles and even covered some of their songs.
Among other musical influences were Phil Collins, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Dolly Parton, and Folk-Appalachian music. It sounds like (see what I did there?) that music is in Ash’s DNA, but her style is a product of her influences, just like all of us. The difference is that she’s able to speak through her own music.
Ash has undoubtedly inherited talent, but she’s also had professional training – by studying music at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and with vocal coaches in Nashville.
An Example of How Music is Written Today
When I asked Ash about her music-writing process, she responded that she hears melodies in her head. Once she works out the tune, she selects the motif that works best for the style or mood she’s creating. So, is there a formula of sorts? That is, what comes first, the lyrics or the melody? For Ash, at least, there is no set pattern. She simply allows the creative process, and that is dependent on the type of music she’s writing.
But when it comes to the tune, how does she write a song that is entirely new? Where does she start? One way that Ash does this is to make up a little ditty and whistle. If the piece she’s working on has a Celtic or Bluegrass influence, she chooses notes from the pentatonic scale (a music sequence that uses five notes within the octave). “Why?” Those styles are comprised of pentatonic scales. See more on scales in the next section.
As I have no musical ability, all this is a mystery. One thing is familiar, though. The process is similar to writing in that it has to be fluid, subject to continuous revision and eventually the writer has to turn it loose – to publish or to absorb privately. Another way–perhaps the only other way–writing words is similar to song writing is the way to push through writer’s block. That is, if you aren’t feeling creative, throw something, anything, out there. Ash just starts playing a few chords and sings over the top of that. Sounds easy, right? To her, perhaps. Not so much for most of us.
Does Ash always have a message (spiritual or otherwise) that she wants to convey? For her, writing is an avenue for creativity and there’s a higher motivation. She wants to spread God’s love and her lyrics and vocals are her media. Ash was raised on hellfire and brimstone, but she realizes that Jesus’ sacrifice is enough, and she wants to spread that message.
If you’d like to stay in touch with Ashley’s work, you can find her on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
- Chromatic, or dodecatonic (12 notes per octave)
- Nonatonic (9 notes per octave): a chromatic variation of the heptatonic blues scale
- Octatonic (8 notes per octave): used in jazz and modern classical music
- Heptatonic (7 notes per octave): the most common modern Western scale
- Hexatonic (6 notes per octave): common in Western folk music
- Pentatonic (5 notes per octave): the anhemitonic form (lacking semitones) is common in folk music, especially in Asian music; also known as the “black note” scale
- Tetratonic (4 notes), tritonic (3 notes), and ditonic (2 notes): generally limited to prehistoric (“primitive”) music
Ending on a Thoughtful Note
Looking back over the last year or so (in posts), we know that quilting is an art dating back at least 700 years. Whiskey and coffee have been brewed, if you will, about 1,000 years. Pottery has been around more than 10,000 years. We see that music significantly predates all of that and, in many ways, its benefits outweigh anything that keeps us warm, gives us liquid comfort (or energy) or serves as a vessel for whatever needs a place.
Music can lift us up; make us cry; encourage us to sing; or raise our thoughts to our Creator. It can generate a sense of camaraderie with just a few chords. A fife and drum send men to charge the enemy and also to retreat. I can’t say I ever considered the immense scope of music benefits/uses before my 4-4-24 post, and even then I only added healing to my repertoire. Sigh.
The more I learn, the more I believe that our ancestors have done the grunt work and today’s innovations are primarily new verses to ancient songs. Or, as Ecclesiastes 1:9 tells us, “… there is no new thing under the sun.” Well, not entirely. Thanks to geeks for technological advances and thanks to musically creative people like Ash, we have options. From one minute to the next we can switch our soundtrack from the tear-inducing “I Will Always Love You” to steering wheel thumping “Chattahoochee” to praise-inducing “In Christ Alone.”
That’s not nothing. And I’m still in awe of the whole process. Perhaps I’m not alone in that.
You?
I know enough about my musical talent to stay with my writing. I started out in C-band playing trumpet but had to drop out when I got a job bagging groceries after school….that was the happiest day of our band director’s life. I was actually dreading telling him yet it was the only time I had ever seen him smile!
The esteemed Mr. Day. Perhaps he knew the trumpet would never be your passion. 🤷♀️
I like to write songs but they tend to come in infrequent bursts or when something inspires me to write. It’s fun when the tune and the words come together to create a song and rewarding if it is appreciated by others.
I can only imagine how satisfying it must be to create music. I’ll have to be content with complete sentences. 😉
As a sound junkie, I’m always playing with ordinary objects to see what sound I can produce from them. My head is full of ideas on how I would arrange/orchestrate a song. Songwriting for me is trying to organize all the jumbled ideas in some logical fashion. Sometimes the melody comes before the lyrics. Sometimes the lyrics dictate the melody. But always, it’s inspiration that drives or motivates me to sit down and focus on the songwriting. Thanks for your vlog. I will check out Ashley.
The diversity of talent among my friends intrigues me almost as much as how you, and others like you (is anyone like you? 😉 ) manage to get your musical concepts transferred to a score. It’s impressive.