I make music because…

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I play music and what I want to accomplish with it, and, in general, why people make music. Here are my thoughts.

Making music is something that has a purpose. No one sits and practices scales or designs and programs sounds without a reason. Maybe that reason is to improve finger dexterity in general, because a teacher or parent forces you to play, or because you want to sell a sound library for money, but there’s some reason.

I started out playing because I was forced to. In public school, I had no intention of making music a career, but put in long hours for a child, getting up to play before school each morning. It wasn’t entirely miserable; I did enjoy a lot of the pieces I played, and gained appreciation for more than just what’s played on mainstream radio, but looking back, I couldn’t really say that I did it for me.

During high school and university, I played in a variety of settings: worship bands, musical pit bands, jazz bands, accompanist and rehearsal pianist for a choir. I played for a few reasons: to worship God (both in and out of church, by using the skills he gave me), for fun, and for the enjoyment of playing with others and being part of something bigger.

Since grade 11, I’ve had to deal with tendonitis, which has greatly limited my playing, especially on keyboards and piano. When my wife and I moved to Toronto after graduation, I hardly played at all. Part of the reason was that I tended to gravitate to whatever was most fun and easy. I didn’t have the opportunity in Toronto to play with others, making music less fun, and providing little incentive to work to overcome tendonitis and regain some of my speed.

Buying a house in a new town, finding a church home, and some general maturing and other life events have completely changed things for me. Right now, I play at church fairly often but do most of my playing alone at home. Instead of just playing songs and doing it solely for fun, I’ve been working on a lot of different things. I’ve spent a lot of time doing technical exercises to help regain my former speed and dexterity. I’ve been experimenting with different sounds (organ drawbar positions, electric pianos with various effect combinations, and some synthesizer stuff), and before too long will have another keyboard to add more varied synth and orchestral sounds and start doing more complicated things with layering (multiple sounds played at once). I’ve been doing exercises from a book on playing the Hammond Organ. And over the past six months or more, I’ve started listening to music outside my usual favourite genres to get ideas to work into my own playing.

Why am I doing this? Like I said at the start of this post, no one does exercises without a purpose. I’m not just trying to improve my skills arbitrarily. One reason is to make the music at church more interesting on Sunday mornings. Playing at church does have a downside though: we don’t often practice during the week, so I often have to pick sounds on my own and hope they fit the particular style we want to use on a given Sunday, since only rehearsing Sunday morning leaves little time to change things if I don’t like them. The bulk of my work before the service is in figuring out what to play, not in practicing it, so this often leaves me at a disadvantage.

The other purpose for playing comes from looking ahead. Right now, I have a fair amount of time, something that I’ll lose when we have young children. I’m exploring new realms of music, and I’m trying to learn all I can while I have the time. I do intend to do something with all that I hope to learn now. What is it? Something better left for my next post.