Music is the answer. Last night a DJ saved my life. Groove is in the heart.

You definitely heard these words somewhere and if you are an avid music listener you have definitely had the melody playing in your head while reading these first 3 sentences.

My relationship with the music started very early. Before I started attending school, I had violin classes and attended the music school. I was very happy being able to express myself with the help of music instruments. As a lefty I had some struggles with the music teacher, who was not very fond of me being left-handed. So she tried to re-teach me to play with the right hand. That was a disaster and I refused playing violin anymore. And because this violin teacher was the only one that we could afford, I had to change the instrument. I soon changed to piano. I am not sure how one led to another, but I was able to play musical compositions after several times hearing and seeing how another person plays it. I hated reading notes from the book. So I dramatically cheated using my ‘power’ – for the daily exercises I ask my classmates to play it for me and for exams we had to learn several pieces by hard and I looked precisely where the page had to be turned while my classmates played, to make an impression as if I was playing while reading the piece from the pages. With the years passing, the compositions became more complicated and I reached the level where I couldn’t fake the reading from the page anymore so I got very frustrated and had to really go through the process, fail a lot and it didn’t end well. Being a teenager at that time, made me a horrible pain in the ass for my parents too. So I (sadly) stopped playing piano around 5th year of the music school and my mom didn’t insisted on continuing so I changed the instruments. I chose classic guitar and had great fun learning the chords and playing the solo parts of classic and not so classic pieces and melodies. Again my cheat and my ear did a great job. Then the time came, being at the university in Almaty, I founded a music band Sub11. It was a fun time. We started in a basement of our university building, with 11 people – 1 singer (me), 3 back vocal singers, 2 guitar players, a violinist, a flautist, a drummer and a keyboard player and a band manager ( this one was an extra funny human). It was incredible – we played covers of famous songs from different genres and our own songs. After a while the band got smaller – the classic instruments people were gone and stopped by on demand. We were inspired by ska, punk, rock and pop music genres. We also gave 2 concerts (if my memory works correct). Once we covered the song Nemo by Nightwish and for the concert we invited a real opera singer, who was the librarian at the university and by a surprise an opera singer and we did an amazing cover of that particular Nightwish song. We had standing ovations after this song. Great times and amazing experiences.

The life continued. After almost 2 years, I left for a better future – to study Design in Germany and the band times were over. I still miss these times and the band. I really do. I tried to find a band or a music group in Munich, but the lack of time didn’t allow that. Language courses, university, work and library pilgrimage changed life priorities drastically. A while ago I had a chance to get an electrical piano and a guitar that I occasionally play to stay in touch with my passion that I sadly cannot truly follow yet.

Another side of having music passion is listening to the music. I listen to almost every music genre. Of course through the years my music taste developed and changed influenced by my parents, friends and films. I am a passionate film score and traditional music listener. I heartily enjoy music from the 20’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 2000’s and 2010’s. I like sad songs, motivational songs, folks music and off-beat songs and just random rhythmic melodies. What I currently don’t really understand is where the music industry is moving. Since around end of 2010 the music moves more in direction of repeating the old songs and sampling the remixes of remixes of songs. Young musicians need to feel their passion and stop moving in the save direction through remixing old songs. There is a very small bunch of musicians that push the boundaries of old, used sound patterns. They move the music and influence the music industry to reinvent itself. To make more and better music. Not the same repeating, synthetic, dead sound. A lot had changed since the music stars like Bee Gees, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Nirvana and Beethoven made music history. But their music is still with us – influencing the musicians to go for more, to put more soul into the music, try new paths and redefine the value of “less is more” in the music. Famous artists like Jain, Manizha, Adele, Sam Smith, Alessia Cara, Nothing, Kamasi Washington, St. Vincent, Childish Gambino, Lorde and many more revolutionise the music world, reinventing and developing themselves and the listeners around them.

The sound and music is everywhere. It became a soundtrack of our lives. On your phone, in your earphones, on the TV, in a series, advertising, shopping – almost everywhere we go. But still the best music that we loose due to growing cities and rising population is the sound of nature. Bird singing, water flowing, wind blowing, rain dropping. All these sounds get lost in the sound of the cities that are overfilled with sounds of cars, people talking and other human- and machine made noises. This leads to a noisy head and buzzing ears and to being overstressed and overreactive. We need the silence and the natural sound atmosphere to find our inner piece and to destress. So my view on the sound of tomorrow is new innovative, non-repetitive, not old-to-new music combined with a daily dose of natural sounds. To be able to enjoy the music and the sound of nature. Because we don’t know how long we can enjoy it and how long we can create it.  Be a part of generation who creates the sound of tomorrow.

Recommendations:
Quote of the week:
“Music doesn’t lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.”

― Jimi Hendrix

unsplash-logoPhoto by Spencer Imbrock