MYSTICAL MUSIC THEORY, Part 3: Music Is More Than Notes.
“Do you really want to bring him here?” she asked me. She was a prominent and amazing Blues guitar player, formerly played Speed Metal. I’d heard her play a song called, “THAT GUY,” or “THIS GUY”–she hadn’t settled on a title–and I liked the song very much.
We were enjoying each other’s company, over a week-end visit. I think she meant that if she played the song, that guy would be a third wheel in our enjoyment of two.
What could that possibly mean?
One explanation is her mind would go to that guy. Playing “THAT GUY,” she would be thinking about that guy, her mind would be on him, and not me. Not only her mind, music is primarily emotion, not thinking. She would be bringing her feelings about him into the room, into her. She was asking me if I wanted her to have feelings for him in her heart, sitting with me.
It gets deeper. Yes, the composer’s life experience goes into a song. In my poem, SOMETIMES IT COMES DOWN TO SCALES, I write:
“talking about soloing, or composing, or writing a poem
Then you’ll want considerations, the examined life, self-awareness
The struggle to outgrow the script childhood wrote for you–
These are to poiesis as scales are to a musician
I would say a good song or poem sings out of, sings out the human condition
Audiences don’t like a poem or a song they can’t hear
That doesn’t bespeak the human condition, their own condition
(LINES DRAWN AUTHENTIC: A Realized Man, available on Indigo Books online, and NOA Gallery, Bonnie Doon Mall).
My poem also brings in the audience. Music mystically connects the hearts of audiences with only Air. I think that the Air is alive. But science says air is Nitrogen and Oxygen gas.
People are returning to vinyl albums. You take a piece of plastic, and that plastic sends you into tears or ecstasy. A diamond needle sends electrical signals into speakers; speakers make air move in waves, and air waves hit your eardrums and you are joyful. Or cry. Or are transported to God if it is Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, 4th movement. Plastic, Nitrogen, and Oxygen.
Part 4 will be about the relationship between performer and audience, as well as the way this figures into the “business of music,” or club management and Artist.
ENIGMATIC DR DAVE ENTERPRISES, PRELUDED
Those pedals and the amplifier back in front of them, makes it all happen!
When I was a Swedenborgian Pastor, I emailed my musician friend Darryl Dybka about theology and metaphysics. I was not mystical, then. I was not a musician, then. I was looking in AT music from the outside, as a Pastor who forgot all about my life as a musician, 44 years ago. Music was dead to me as a participant. So, as a learned scholar and theologian, I was telling Darryl what I saw the essence of music to be, and how music is woven into the structure of Reality.
I told Darryl something I’d been believing for some time. When a musician plays music, they are connecting with forces of the whole universe. A vibrating string or sound wave, is physics. Physics is the physical, material universe. All the notes in a scale, and all the chords you make out of those notes, are contained in a vibrating string or standing air wave in a flute or organ pipe.
I am not a physicist, so I don’t know how much of the universe vibrates. I do know that an electron can be a wave, and that electron shells around an atom’s nucleus act like musical harmonics. (Atoms have lower and higher shells around them.)
Ocean waves are waves.
But the point isn’t how much of Reality vibrates like a guitar string or standing wave. The point is that music is physics and built into the fabric of matter. Musicians do not stop to think that what they do is participating in what the universe is made out of.
There is powerful Philosophy and Myth that speak to this: Pythagoras and The Muses are only 2.
Pythagoras discovered the Pythagorean Theory; for right triangles. But in a Harvard course called THE THOUGHT WORLD OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY, we learned about the Pythagorean Number Mystery Religion. That course was not about the Bible. It was about the thought world that Christianity took root in. We learned about the way Myths functioned in daily life. We learned about how Romans made offerings to the Spirits who governed the intersections of Roman roads. How when Cyrus the Mede liberated the Jews from Babylon, he told his priests to learn how to honour the God Who governed their land.
Pythagoras was thought to be divine. His Number Mysticism was based on a triangle arrangement of numbers, with 1 at the top: 1, 2, 3, 4. My interest is the number 3.
Pythagoras discovered that a string vibrating in half makes an octave. That is the same musical note next up: C to the C above it.
He discovered that a string vibrating in 3rds makes the 5th tone up. In C, that would be the note G.
And what blew my mind was the discovery of the 4th tone. Pythagoras discovered that 3/4 of a vibrating string is the 4th tone up; in C, that would be F.
This is astounding. The other tones, or harmonics, of a vibrating string do not have the 4th tone. But it’s there, anyway. Push down a string at 1/4 of its length, and let the remaining 3/4 of the string vibrate, and you have the 4th.
Why this is important is the I, the IV, and the V are the foundations of Western music: from Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven; Robert Johnson, Z Z Top and beyond.
The Numerology Mysteries of Pythagoras found the essence of Western music.
The Three Muses inspire Artists. Later traditions add more than 3; but originally, it was 3.
And the Three Muses all relate to music. They reside near a Sacred well at the foot of Mount Helicon. It is The Hippocrene Well, or Spring, because the winged, flying horse Pegasus touched Earth with his hooves and the well gushed forth.
There are 3 Muses: Nete, Mese, and Hypate. Their names mean, “Lowest, Middle, Highest.” They refer to the three strings on an Ancient Greek lyre.
I had to fight search engines because they kept telling me that Nete was lowest and Hypate was lowest. The root “hyp” doesn’t help. It can mean “hypo”–under, as in hypodermic–or it can be “hyper”–hyper which is “above.” My question was, is Hypate from hypo or hyper? The Proto-Indo-European root, “UPER” goes to Hype. “UPO” goes to hypo and its root means “under,” and a lot of other words so far from hyper that hypo isn’t what I went with.
Nete, has “NED” as its PIE root, which means “contain, hold together, a net.” That’s what bass notes do.
The origins of Western music are the 3-stringed Lyre. Each string corresponds to one of the 3 Muses. The Muses are the Goddesses who inspire all Art.
The 3 Muses are in Delphi, and connected to the Oracle of Delphi–the greatest source of Wisdom known in the Ancient World. The origins of Wisdom are the origins of Music.
I can’t wrap up this exploration. Other than to say that music is in the bowels of Creation. Maybe I should say the heart. Musicians involve themselves in the Creation of the Universe when they play a Blues song. Blues is based on the I, IV, V tones in the scale.
ENIGMATIC DR DAVE ENTERPRISES, PRELUDED
Safari detected unusual activity coming from my “research phone” when I was looking into all this, and wanted me to verify that I’m human. Whether I’m human is debatable; and, no, I did not let them know if I’m a human.
DEVI AND SHINING WORDS, Part 1: Poetry as an Aberrant Enterprise.
Ensconced pretty good at Remedy 124 Street but I’m writing without my glasses. I won’t see misspellings.
Right when I was fixing to write about poetry as an aberrant enterprise, my Sikh cab driver told me about “shining words.” The word for “shining” is “Devi” and that is what Hindus call Goddesses. For the very first time ever, I learned of the connection between Devi and Diwali. We’re pretty close to Diwali, if we’re not actually in it.
It’s a Festival of Light; it’s the Cosmic War of Light over Darkness. Those themes are in Christmas and Chanukah. In the darkest day of the year, we pray for Light to ultimately win.
My driver told me of a Vice Prime Minister of India whose words shined so brightly that Queen Elizabeth listened when he spoke. His words shone so brightly that they attracted people’s attention. It was all I could do to keep quiet and listen. He spoke slowly. But that wasn’t it. I am a teacher and a Shayari-Poet. I’m in the business of generating and expressing words. It’s my bread and butter. Without words, you wouldn’t have a poem. Without a whole lot of words, I wouldn’t have a dissertation or a book.
But it can be an occupational hazard for us to tend to do all the talking, or to dominate the discourse in a conversation. You want us to, when you are reading our literature, or when you are in our class. But not in a social setting. We have to be shape-shifters.
So I reined myself in and listened to this soft-spoken, slow speaking elder Sikh, because I knew he had something I wanted to know, maybe needed to hear.
POETRY AS AN ABERRANT ENTERPRISE
The trouble with poetry is it’s writing. Writing is a form of saying. So to write, you have to say something. Probably, my readers, right about now, are going, “Duh–uh, of course.”
But think about it. A poet is always walking around everywhere trying to think up things to say. I call that a pretty aberrant way to go about your life.
This is going to wrap up Part 1. I have some teasers about Part 2, and Parts beyond.
1) When you’re thinking up things to say, there’s always the question, “What do I want to say.” When I see Bill on Whyte Avenue, my script is written for me: “Hi, Bill.” Not with Poetry. Do I want to say something about art and the creative process, itself? Writing about playing scales is like that:
SOMETIMES IT COMES DOWN TO SCALES.
Do I want to say something about life? Narrowing that, maybe about life when you’re broke ass? Running with that, maybe finding heartfelt glory in living when you’re broke ass? If that theme works, maybe Hemingway living broke ass in Paris as an early writer, saving up his money for an annual ski trip with his wife Hadley to Schruns would he a good way to get at that idea. In fact, it becomes
SCHRUNS AND ALL IT MEANS,
which is a published poem in AWAKENINGS REVIEW. But before it is published, Sky Custer reads it in JT’s Bar and Grill at 1 am, they make a fist and goes, “YES!” takes a pic of my face with the poem next to it, asks me to dance, but I’m too shy, and through Sky Custer’s chain of connections, I meet Professor Blair Stonechild, at Indigenous University and author of “LOSS OF INDIGENOUS EDEN and the Fall of Spirituality,” and that book transformed my life! So thanks for liking my poem, Sky Custer, and sorry about the dance.
2) It is true that Robert Frost said, “Poetry begins in a pang.” And Wordsworth calls poetry, “The still, sad music of humanity.” That’s fine and all except for any of those things to be a poem, it needs words. If it stayed a pang, and a pang only, it would not be a poem–it would be a hug. If it stayed the still, sad music of humanity, it would be an instrumental–maybe a symphony or ALL BLUES by Miles Davis. A poem qua poem (sorry) needs words. Words are all artificial and made up to mean this or that. There are no naturally-occurring words. That’s what makes poetry an aberrant undertaking: we are forever thinking up things to say, and we gotta say them in words someone wants to read.
As an unemployed Elder, I have finally arrived at a position in life I’ve always wanted: I am free to do my art, in possession of some cultivated “skill,” and I have the will and motivation to do it.
I hope younger Artists are able to find their way here; I never thought I could when I was younger. Certain unreliable factors blocked me:
GREATNESS: I wanted to “make it,” “make a name for myself,” in fact, to be “great.” Now, I want to make art. I have the luxury of it being too late in my life to “arrive.” What a load off! I’m writing a poem about it: JUST HAVING FUN; but it’s not on today’s Agenda.
EMPLOYMENT: I thought I had to have a good and successful job. WHAT A CROCK. When you get to Senior Citizen status, nobody wants to hire you. It will happen to you. EMBRACE IT AS THE BLESSING IT IS! My wish for you is that you find a way to bypass all that. Say you can’t get a job so now you are free to devote yourself to your one true love in your life: your Art.
The only essential thing, is I have Canadian CPP and US Social Security to live on, even if it’s not really enough. It works.
2. Practice Piano–My own song, PANIC STATE (I wrote a blog about it a little while ago). Get familiar with the E-Minor Pentatonic Scale; also the chords associated with that Scale–the Dominant Chord is B7 or B Minor 7; the IV Chord is A-Minor; the “blues note,” or flat 5, is Bb (B flat). These are the things I need to know and play without thinking–in every key. Today it is E-Minor Pentatonic.
3. MALL WALKING: It’s too cold to walk outside, and walking is a different kind of exercise than Chen Taiji, which I also do (Grandmaster Chen Zhonghua Practical Method Taiji).
PANIC STATE: The Lead Vocalist for DAVE MATTHEWS BAND likes it! They told me in Charlottesville, in 1992 when I wrote it. I was playing through it, in a piano rehearsal room in the U Virginia Music School. DAVE MATTHEWS was trying out different configurations for his band: word was, "Something big is in the works."
Playing through it, tonight, I LOVE it. I'm astounded.
My bass teacher in Florida is a Berkeley School of Music graduate. He said the chord changes were too hard for him. They were for me, too--almost. I can play them now, and soon will make a recording.
When you write a note three bars down from the staff, it can get hard to count. I thought it is an Fb, but it's an Eb, below the third bar line down. It doesn't make me smart or anything: it means it has to be written down. So, you figure out how to write it, and there isn't any other way.
My Music Partner in Charlottesville always respected my musicianship--some other players did, too. But but I didn't realize it, and didn't have a strong profile. I was a Ph.D. Religious Studies Major.
I asked the singer for DAVE MATTHEWS BAND, because I wrote it just before my psychotic hospitalization. I had lost my perspective. I couldn't evaluate anything--was an author's point a solid argument I could rely on to quote? Why does everything look like a cartoon of reality? My close friend told me I'd list my gift for poetry. He'd read my poems at Harvard, and said my poems as a Ph.D. Candidate lost it. Now, 34 years later, I'm astounded. Can a composer say that about their own compositions?
It hurts, which makes me bitter and I can lash out that Edmonton does nor not credit me as someone who can write PANIC STATE.
The Internet world changes what "local" means. I consider a poet in Portugal my brother. An Architect in Transylvania, my sister. I have a colleague who is an Art Professor in Italy who travels and posts photographs of Temples and Statues in India, and orher places in Asia. When PANIC STATE gets a good recording, "locals" on the Internet will give me a listen. Maybe a friend I knew in 1992 in THE DAVE MATTHEWS BAND will hear it, and then it doesn't matter if someone on Edmonton's streets listens, or knows who I am. Edmonton favours its own. I like a lot of Edmonton Players.
MY MUSE is a hard taskmaster. Last summer, 2025, I just finished two books:
LINES DRAWN AUTHENTIC: A Realized Man
THE FOUR ELEMENTS: Seasons Bleeding into Existence
I thought it was time to relax and recuperate. The two books were 7 years in the making. But NO!
My Muse called me to start a new, original project: a Quest. I have studied much in Quest Literature of Medieval Europe–particularly the various cycles of the Holy Grail Quest. I read several Grail accounts from different authors–each story rather different. The most famous Grail story is in Sir Thomas Malory. Jessie Weston in the Early Modern Period theorized that the Grail Quest happened on the Astral Plane!
My Muse called me to write a greater Quest. The Human Quest we all go through: birth through maturity to the next plane of existence. I wanted this work to be truly collaborative–my words and a visual artist. They and I would collaborate on what this Quest looks like in art form.
It would be truly original. This was not a book in which my poems were illustrated by their pictures. It was as much a visual artist’s book as it was a writer’s book.
I spoke with a small number of visual artists. Some said they’d think about it. Others rejected it outright.
I just realized Tuesday night (last night) that I am in the midst of the project, and it’s going to be all me. I have four new poems recently completed. I have a mine of more already written to draw on. Fate is tumbling me into making my own visual Art for the book, also.
Last summer, I came up with the title:
“A QUEST THROUGH QUESTIONS OF TIME”
These missions are Destiny. It’s not like I can slough of not doing this. Circumstances are and I believe that they will make it manifest.
Currently, we see this as another picture book. Probably Trade Paperback. That will be 3 recent Art books.
Words. The world words generate. Genesis. Poesis. I love the world I enter when I’m talking with Carol The things Carol talks about are good things Words are about things Recently, Carol talked about how hard it is to practice The Principles In the midst of arrangements for her father’s dementia Carol talks about what makes her happy Like the bobble-head that came with a ticket to a football game Watching dancers two-step The things Carol cares about are good things Carol talks about what the good thing to do is Like her health administrator friend, debating mandatory vaccines Caring shapes itself into words Words enter into conversations I enter into conversations with words Words I speak shape my soul into existence I love to shape my soul through good words In the world invoked by good words as if the genesis of Sacred Scripture And so I love when Carol and I talk about good things And shape the world into a place I love I am a friend in all the world I meet Though involvement with distasteful words strains my friendship When I don’t love the words I speak, or hear Words that shape me into a conversation distant from my soul Not like the world I enter when I’m talking with Carol The world of good things talking with Carol generates Oh, the way I can slough through life When there are good things I can do Some days I have no will to do any good thing Then I’ll start a few scales and the music seduces me Into the fulness of hours without CNN or Facebook Words are used in ways Words are about things and words are active Words do things Intentionality generates word choice and contrives to render an effect Rooted unmoveable in the good as who she is Carol’s intentionality can’t but effect the good in me Carol talks to me and tries to make me feel good Carol makes me feel good, feel better, when I’m feeling bad Feel better about myself when I doubtful about the good in me Which is other than being OK with whatever Feeling good is being brought into good regions of my soul Those regions religion has brought me to love Regions that fill my soul with the impulse to manifest what is good So, I’ll be at the piano, write a sermon, compose a poem |I love the world I enter when I talk with Carol It is a good place to be, a place I love, a place of love Carol and I are in love and it generates good words For and to each other, generates the world our words make
These words are taking me away from my piano All art requires dedication, but music, a special dedication Art gives grace to the human who decides to dedicate A life, or even part of a life, to art When I’m done with these words, I’ll be at the piano Finding my way around the key of E Alone, just me and the piano keys When you make music, mind flows into body, maybe like dance, Music involves you with inflexible laws of physics Which become laws of the musician’s heart and soul and muscle memory I write these words in a dive with Alternative Rock in the background I glance at the waitress, the bartender, customers As I manifest this poem into these words And I am not alone—just me and these words Hemingway wrote in La Closerie des Lilas for the same reason None of this can happen when I am in the key of E It is only the articulation of my fingers on certain select piano keys No music can be in the background; the only music that is I make Writing poetry is closer to waking life than playing music is We are immersed in words much of the day Not so, the specific piano keys you must depress—and no others—in E You must wrench yourself away from everything When you come to the piano That is why it is sometimes hard to practice You don’t want to leave everything Unless music is everything to you And it is when you are playing A spell overtakes you and the ecstasy Makes you wonder later why you weren’t at the piano sooner
Sometimes it just comes down to practicing scales If you want to be good at playing music There’s a lot of considerations in life, there’s things to get mad at, There’s the examined life, self-awareness, Outgrowing the script childhood wrote for you But that won’t make you good at playing music Your scales will be effortless, unless you’re swimming in all that Then, you won’t get through one without mistakes, or a song Your mind won’t be there, and it isn’t considerations that you’re playing There’s a time when you have to let go, or work through it to peace What good are considerations, self-awareness, spiritual growth If you’re not going to do something that contributes to culture? Like the NFL player said about that body-builder on my construction site He was afraid the heavy lifting on the job would ruin his work-out “What‘s the point of having muscles if you’re not going to use them?” Unless we’re talking about soloing, or composing, or writing a poem Then you’ll want considerations, the examined life, spiritual growth Which are to poesis as scales are to a musician I would say a good song or poem sings out of the human condition An audience won’t like a song or a poem that they can’t hear That doesn’t bespeak the human condition, So poetry isn’t self-reflexive language; it’s a style of saying something Poetry that’s just playing games with language won’t go very far Nor is music but an arrangement of scales, rules, and theory, though it is Miles Davis said to forget all that after you’ve learned it These days, I’m not composing, though I still write poems, solo So I can’t abandon considerations altogether I’ve slept for 27 years, awoke atrophied, I have much to recover So tonight, and for the next good while It just comes down to practicing scales
David Fekete 