Sing A Song

I remember, a few years ago, that I was reading an interview with a musical artist who stated that when he was stuck for ideas, that he would often listen to some classical music. He said that it acted like a reset button, or better yet, it cleansed his sonic pallet.

In my own personal experience, I bought some music by Mozart. The pieces were adagios which contained mostly strings. A couple of weeks after listening to the music, I remember that I was trying to write a bass line for a song that I was working on. To my amazement, I managed to write a bass line that modulated through several keys before returning to the root. But, nothing was as amazing as when I tried to keep up with myself on keyboard, I couldn't do it. It was just too complex. Eventually I was able to come up with something that was much simpler.

What happened to me is what's been called,"the Mozart Effect." This is said to happen after 10 minutes of listening to Mozart or other pieces of classical music. But, my point in bringing up that aspect of listening to classical music is just to highlight the benefits of listening to it.

Much of the music of the 70s remains popular to this day and I think that it's due in part to the influence of classical music and a strong sense of composition. This was the era when artists were given more artistic freedom. With that freedom, music artist began to add to their music, everything but the kitchen sink. Artist combined their skills as songwriters with a good amount of composition and arranging. And while strings and horns have been around since the beginning of recorded music, in the 70s they became a larger part of an artist's musical vision.

Artist across just about every genre were combining their favorite musical styles and writing songs within the 3:30 format that radio airplay required. The result was an awesome amount of music that often defied classification. At any given time, the pop chart might have contained a song from Aerosmith, Stevie Wonder, Charlie Rich, Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, and Earth Wind & Fire, all in the top 10.

Isaac Hayes became know for his skills as a composer when he scored big with the soundtrack to the motion picture "Shaft." At the time he had be writing songs with his partner David Porter. As a solo artist, he gained a reputation for taking standards like Burt Bacharach's "Close To You," and arranging it into a sprawling 8:58 opus. While some music critics at the time criticized him for what they called, "excess," many other artists followed his lead into success. One such artist was Barry White, who was known for doing the same with his original compositions.

Movies and TV shows may also have a score as well as a soundtrack. The score being the music that is composed for placement within the film at a particular moment to accentuate or highlight that scene or moment, while the soundtrack will usually contain music or songs that are written for the film. Scores, when they are well written, often go unnoticed, as they may have such an impact that the scene that they're included in becomes a highlight of the movie.

While classical music might not be everyone's cup of tea, there's still a good chance that a song that was or may still be popular, contains either some horns and/or strings, or a touch of classical influence.