Music - Magic to the brain, peace to the soul.

Whenever I listen to music, I feel alive. Everything around me comes to life. It feels like all my bones are active, all my muscles working, and my heart pumping blood to its maximum efficacy. The butterflies in my stomach, the thoughts from my mind, either converge on one thing or vanish like they never existed. The stress on my body, the pain that I feel, maybe physical, maybe mental, disappears like I never felt it. Music has the ability to divert and distract the human brain, the most complex thing in the universe. That is what makes music such an important part of our lives, societies, cultures, and experiences.

To break it down on an atomic level, music is just notes (well, to break it down even more, it's just harmonic frequencies but that becomes a bit scientific so we'll stay out of there). Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni, in the traditional "Indian" system or C, D, E, F, G, A, B, in the "Western" System. That's all that music is. If you were to ever visualize it, that's all you would see. These notes, in whatever way you use them. Generally, notes go in pairs. Pairs of two, mostly three. We call them chords. There is a lot of convention to name the pairs and stuff but we don't need to go there now. This is about appreciating the beauty of the harmonics we hear. If you play three notes or maybe more, at once, you get a chord. If you play multiple chords in a certain sequence that sounds good to your ears, you get the mainframe of all music. It's just chords, arranged in a way that makes us feel different feelings. Furthermore, there are harmonies, melodies, bass, and a lot of other stuff that go with these. But, basically, all we play are notes. When you speak, your vocal cords are vibrating and they generate sounds of certain frequencies. These sounds of certain frequencies are notes. For instance, the middle C on the piano has a frequency of 261.63 Hertz or Hz. Middle C? Yes, there are a lot of Cs on the piano. They are said to be octaves apart. Now, what that means is some have a lower pitch than others. The higher the octave, the higher the pitch. What we hear is a combination of these. All in all, my point is, music is just a bunch of the same notes, some octaves apart, having different pitches and frequencies in a way that sounds good to us.

We all have different tastes in music. Some like hip-hop, and some like Indie, Blues, Pop, Rock, Classical, Jazz, and whatnot. There are a lot of genres out there. We all have some of them to our liking. Personally, I might have listened to all genres by far. But, Indie and acoustic don't seem to leave me. It depends on my moods mostly. If I want some peace, I listen to Indie or classical, or acoustic. When I am entering the ground or going to write an exam, I'll listen to hip-hop or cinematic soundtracks from Hans Zimmer mostly. Time by Hans Zimmer is my go-to before any tests or matches or just when I need to perform. It makes me conscious about myself and what I need to do and who I need to do it for, and I know for a fact that no words can prepare me for the moment like the song does. Likewise, everybody has some songs dedicated to particular times and feelings and days and seasons and stuff. When I am writing blogs or just want to focus, I listen to Acoustic or Classical again. Sometimes pop too. Right now, I'm listening to EDM. So, I have a pretty wide taste in music.

Enough about me.

Music is a painting. A painting of everything you ever feel or have felt or will feel. It's something that you can stare at and break down everything about your life, everything about your times. Everybody has songs that remind them of certain times and phases of their lives. Some songs remind me of the lockdown, and some remind me of when I had a small Nokia indestructible phone. It's like a time machine. It can take you back, whenever you want. Sometimes, going back to some things hurts, but sometimes it makes us feel good. It's all part of the journey. I find it very unsettling that a particular piece of music can make me feel so bad or so good. Sometimes, it is enough to ruin an entire day. Sometimes, you listen to music and it changes the way you feel, and the way you act. Sometimes, you listen to music to escape from reality, while sometimes you listen to music to escape from all the fakeness around you. It's crazy. To have the power to make you feel a way in something else's hands is very difficult to handle. It makes us feel vulnerable. Overall, the brain is a vulnerable thing. It can change what it wants or what it is doing in fractions of seconds, but only some things have the capability of making it forcefully change those things, music, being one of them. It connects your mind to your soul, your soul to the universe, and the universe to you. May it be an arrangement of notes or an arrangement of words, it has the power to change your feelings, at least for that instant. Music, songs, notes, chords, frequencies, whatever. What it makes you feel is what defines it.