Introducing The Music Rookie

Greetings reader. This is the first piece of The Music Rookie, a new column at Chordvine that aims at initiating and educating complete noobs to the world of music, which can be intimidatingly large and complex. And the general elitism of the average musician or music connoisseur doesn’t really help the situation for the straddling newcomer. What a lot of us forget once we get comfy in the musical world is that all of once started off as noobs, and that there’s always something else to learn. Ergo, there’s a noob in all of us. And this column, is for that noob.

Everything from Albini’s drum recording peculiarities to Zimmy’s shoe size and Kishore’s yodeling technique will be discussed here. From trivia, to music theory, from history to hair splitting differences in sub-genres, nothing is too small or too complex to be tackled here. And tackled in a demystifying manner that makes something as natural and universal as music a lot more accessible and understandable to a lot more people.

Occasionally this will also be peppered with personal anecdotes and experiences. (For the ‘human interest’ angle, you know…) Like the other day I was talking to a friend who claimed she didn’t ‘get’ music. Now she paints, and pretty darn well at that. So it was surprising she couldn’t ‘get’ music. After all it was just another form of art. So I explained to her how the two forms weren’t too different. One for the ears, the other for the eyes. Just as there is form and sketching in painting, you have rhythm in music, that defines the form, the flow. And the way you have colours in painting, that give it life and emotion, you have melody and the notes in music that give music emotion and something for the ear to hold on to. Arts, though seemingly different, are surprisingly similar. If nothing else, at least the thrill and the human truth that is revealed in creation of art is common. And that, is after all what art is about.