What's music for you?

Good music is nourishment. Bad music is like ingesting poison.

Of course what everyone considers to be good music is completely subjective.

Music is a life saver. Music leads me out of myself into a place where I can be whole without trying.

I’ve been a trumpet player since I was 8 years old. Even during the fifteen years that I only touched my horn once or twice a year, I was still a trumpet player.

When I was 17, I remember being in a band performance, and feeling that shiver crawl up my spine and out the top of my head. I didn’t know it then, but that was the energy the Chinese call chi (breath). I have since learned that everything in our bodies starts with our breath. That energy running up my back was a powerful explosion of chi, and I have since felt it thousands of times through music. It can happen through other openings as well, but music is the most reliable.

Now that I know what it is, I can understand what is happening, and I can recognize it as an indication that my thinking mind is shutting down and my body mind is opening up. When I think without words, I can experience the world directly, with no mediation of what we usually think of as “thoughts” and “words.”

I just am. Purely in the moment. That’s where music takes me, reliably and easily. From this point, I can interact with other people on this level of direct connection. I become aware that I am not separate from others—or at least my fellow bandmates—sometimes it might feel like more than that. But we start thinking with the same mind, and it is music that connects us and makes this possible.

Music is much, much more for me, but I’m going to stop here. I hope people can get a small idea of what it means and what the experience is for me.

GQ (great question), @guihurts, and welcome to fluther!

Music for me is music that is melodic, pleasant, and memorable. Something that makes you want to sing it, dance to it, and listen to it over and over, without getting tired of it. The stuff that you hear on the radio these days is not “music” for me.

I won’t get into the cliche “Music is Life” because although it certainly is part of life, it isn’t really all that life is about.

Music is a form of art that doesn’t require you to visually see or even touch like many other forms classical arts, but to listen. By listening, you are opening one of your senses and completely focusing on one thing only. The way you feel about the rhythm and lyrics is completely subjective to the individual. It all depends on who you are and how you have been raised. Our environment can dramatically impact the music we listen and like. Music affects everyone in different ways. The only thing we can ever be for certain is that Music—any type of it—is universally something everyone in the world shares and likes.

Music is a companion, a muse, and a mantra. It can move me faster, or make me stop to drink it in. Music is happiness and misery shared. It is love and heartbreak.
As Carlos Santana says: the rhythm is the male, the melody the woman.

Music is different things to me. It can be an energy drink: a shot of adrenaline that gets my blood pumping and makes me want to move. It can also be a sedative that brings about feelings of calm serenity. It can be a slap to my face. It can seduce me. It can be a disease with an onset of multiple symptoms (“I gotta fever!”) Music pulls on so many different emotions, grows into a symbiotic entity with my memories to the point where I cannot dissever the two, becomes a story I can fall into.

And there’s the words to songs. I’m a word person. I see the words to the songs in my head and fall in love with them. There are so many lines that have been burned into my memory.

I’m sure I could live without music, but I’m glad I don’t have to.

Music is a language to the middle of your soul.
I love music. I’m a musician as well. It’s understanding, feeling and love. PASSION

Wow, you folks are certainly waxing poetic about music. I like it, I like it low in the background but I can’t say that it feeds my soul or anything like that. Watching the waves come onto the beach does that. But admittedly the world would definitely feel a lot emptier without it.

It’s a series of random sounds that encourages body movement. Kind of like right before the wife explodes into orgasm.

@wundayatta Thanks for your wonderful answer, I think I found what I was looking for. :-)

@rooeytoo What are your favorite bands?

@guihurts – my itunes has a very strange combination of bands, ranges from australian aboriginal to country to asian to a little (but not much classical). The names would be Yothu Yindi, Nabarlek, Keith Urban, Jerry Jeff Walker to New York philharmonic. But as I said, only in the background, I don’t really like it in my ear unless I am swimming laps, then I like rock and roll blasting.

@guihurts You’re welcome. I’m quite serious about it saving my life. Of course, a lot of people get some of the credit, but if any of the elements had not been there, I don’t think I’d be here.

When you’re depressed, it’s like you shackle yourself to a devil on some kind of horror merry-go-round. You go round and round, and it gets worse and worse with every turn, but somehow, music holds a key to your shackles, and it relieves you from the pain for at least the time you play, and sometimes for longer.

That’s an important respite. Maybe if you could play all the time, you might work your way out of it, but even if it’s for only an hour or two, it makes a huge difference to be relieved of that death wish for a little while.

Music for me is my drug of choice, or so to say. It’s a core and soul thing, really.

Music, is me…:)