In high school, I won an essay contest for arguing that uncertainty and hope were two sides of the same coin. I'm not sure I agree theologically since I now understand hope as the anticipation of things assured in faith. Still, it was a darn good essay for a 17-year-old, and something in its essence…
Furthermore, we must be careful that we do not perpetuate the assumption that those particular songs represent the genre as a whole. Kanye's conversion is not only revealing deep-seated hypocrisy within our hearts as believers but prejudice toward an entire artistic genre. However, the release of Jesus is King offers the remedy to both biases, for it demonstrates the possibility, through Christ, of a transformed person, as well as a transfigured genre: the secular restored to the sacred through the power of the Gospel.
Scotland is a beautiful place and its music never fails to hit me right in the feels. (I mean, who doesn't shed a tiny tear at "Parting Glass" or "Wild Mountain Thyme"?) And when I fall in love with a particular type of music, I tend to want to make it my own through songwriting.…
9 October 2019 Los Angeles, California Nearing the middle of October, spooky season is in full swing and Halloween celebrants across the nation are gathering their pumpkins, brooms, and ominous soundtracks in preparation for their night of revelry. Halloween has long been a time of community, of neighbors sharing chili on the front porch, children…
Not long ago (though it seems a lifetime), I wrote about modulations. The idea that the dissonance of post-college life would eventually resolve into normalcy was comforting; considering the modulations in music were consoling to me as I felt keenly the sudden transitions I experienced after four years of relatively little change. Several months later,…
It is my conviction that one must fall in love to play Schumann well. I did not at first enjoy practicing his Arabeske, Op. 18; while I understood the piece theoretically, I did not truly understand it emotionally or spiritually until I, like the composer, fell in love. Then, all at once, its nuances and…
A modulation is a "change from one key to another in a piece of music." Seems simple enough. Often they are, and, being a rather lazy songwriter, I'm a huge fan of a common-tone modulation, where a single note is sufficient to transpose one key into another, often in a single beat. Right now, though,…
In my "Redeeming Culture through Music" class, we were asked the following question: "Which is most important in music: the composer, the performer, or the listener?" The class more or less unanimously expressed that the three persons are equally important. After all, if there is no composer, there is nothing to perform and if there…
As I was practicing piano the other day, I wrote a series of three questions to ask myself as I worked on each detail: Is it clean? Is it beautiful? Does it mean something? First, I work technically, listening even to exercises to discern if they are played with clarity and precision. Are they clean?…
In reading the poetry of Robert Frost for my honors college curriculum, I found myself hit by a wave of nostalgia. (Not to be confused with a "wave of nausea"- I'm not reading Nausea quite yet...) Throughout the formative years of my adolescent life, Frost provided guidance and comfort. I did not read his work extensively, but…
