The Uses of Silence

[ragman1]

Silence does exist in nature, if only one goes high up a mountain beyond the forest line, on a day without wind. Then you hear nothing!

There's no music without silence. But more than in music, I've found silence to be very important in a musicians life! We have much more sound in our days compared to average people. For me it has been music and guitar pretty much every waking hour for decades, so eventually I've come to appreciate silence. Along with slowing down.

Generally silence is one of the things I enjoy most in life. I like to listen to music that has a lot of silence and a minimalistic character, but when I play it comes out differently, probably cause I live in a noisy, fast paced city..

Were I living slow motion in a beautiful, peaceful countryside, I'd probably be playing these kinds of music where you have 10 notes per minute!

As it's you...

Silence outwardly is one thing, necessary and beneficial, but inward silence is much more important. There's not much point in being, say, in the quiet of nature if inwardly there's a raging whirlwind going on. But very few people know real inner tranquillity, it's rare.

[Jonathan0996]

Any married man can speak volumes on the value of silence.

[Jonathan0996]

1200687[/URL]]Me too. I live with tinnitus every day. I think mine comes from gigging with 2 Marshall JCM 800’S for at least 20 years. I’m happy that stage volume has become at least reasonable in the last few years.
I can’t sleep without the tv on. If it’s too quiet I can only hear the sounds in my own head.
Take care

Tim

I have a fair amount of tinnitus myself. Too many nights standing between a guitar amp and a crash cymbal. At least I can still hear the birds sing. I’m grateful for that.

[citizenk74]

In that case, and with all due respect, Citizen, I'm not sure of the point of the thread. Don't you then have to work around what you can do with silence, however difficult and limited?

I don't see much point in making something mysterious about silence in a musical context. It doesn't mean literal silence, it just means spaces between notes and phrases even when there's a background going on. As we said before, it's the spaces that give meaning and structure to the music. Otherwise it's just continuous noise.

The point of the thread, from my point of view, was to elicit thoughtful and varied responses such as yours. As to spaces and structure, I was in Art School at perhaps the height of "Ground/Figure Ambiguity." It may have influenced my thinking.

[citizenk74]

Silence can surely be a tool in solos. I am reminded of some of the Traditional Blues solos I have heard.

In these solos, I sometimes wonder if the artists was having equipment problems or fell off the stage or something. They let the silence reign, and with some, they catch you off-guard, almost playing with your expectations with their own and off beat use of silence.

This solo comes to mind:

Yes! The silence/space/radical volume reduction - however one wishes to refer to it - signals the end of one musical unit or phrase and means that "the preceding notes are to be regarded as one thing which may or may not be related to what preceded it or will follow it" an helps organize the sounds in the listeners ear by grouping them together. Resemblances/contrasts with other such units point up and support the form of the piece and enrich the experience for the listeners, foremost of which is the player.
Yes, one can imagine notes in one's head, but hearing them out loud is just a deeper experience.

[ccroft]

Musical silence is the absence of sound, and the presence of a noise-maker and ears.

A blank canvas is the absence of paint, and the presence of a canvas and eyes.

The canvas and the noise-maker are a call to action.

Silence is the absence of sound. Silence exists as a thing unto itself.

(damn... i though i had something going here but i seem to have hit a dead end...)

[citizenk74]

Musical silence is the absence of sound, and the presence of a noise-maker and ears.

A blank canvas is the absence of paint, and the presence of a canvas and eyes.

The canvas and the noise-maker are a call to action.

Silence is the absence of sound. Silence exists as a thing unto itself.

(damn... i though i had something going here but i seem to have hit a dead end...)

It's a bit of a Zen moment, isn't it?

[citizenk74]

Silence is an illusion. It does not actually exist in the world, under natural conditions.

True silence can drive a person mad.

Anechoic chambers are famously disturbing and disorienting. My thought is that we evolved to hear our environments - not just active sound but reflected as well - and the absence of reflected sound disorients us by depriving us of sensory information as to where we are. As musicians, we use artificial devices - echo and reverb (many, many indistinguishable echoes) to create ambience - that is, a sense of surroundings, of "being in a room." Surely a species which spent so long developing in varied environments (forests, savannas, caves, etc) has developed sensory sensitivities to "ambience." Just my humble opinion.

[ragman1]

Absolutely, sound is orientation.

[st.bede]

I would say that in music, a blank canvas would be, putting boundaries on what can be created. An example would be starting a composition with the notion it can only be x number of measures long.

Every time we compose music (or play music), we have all ready decided on what boundaries there should be. If we notice that or not is a different story. I know that I always have some sort of plan.

Recently I have realized how lazy, I have become. I feel bothered if I do not have a lead sheet in front of me because then I have make the plan.

Another aspect is that, the groundwork is always limited by what I know and I can do. That limitation seems like a problem. It is not really that way. Once you have a big enough vocabulary, those limitation become part of your personal voice.

My hands are small so I play things that are small. There is good and bad, to everything. Part of the way I sound different, is by working out ideas that get around my limitations.

[Marinero]

Yes, C,
"Sitting Quietly" is the beginning and end of Zen meditation as a path to enlightenment. It is one of the most difficult things to do(physically/mentally) and is necessary to begin the path to discovering one's self. Many artists have been drawn to Zen as a pathway to personal discovery and awareness which contravenes Western Intellectual Thought and Reason. For those who enjoy quality poetry may I suggest: Lucien Stryk's outstanding translation: "Triumph of the Sparrow: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi."
Marinero


P.S. Luminaries: Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter practiced and were influenced by Buddhism in their approach to music.