Music Therapy

My latest online concert begins with a little improvisational instrumental music, and me talking about the joy of music a bit.  I thought I'd expand on that theme a little.

As most anyone who hasn't been on Mars for the past couple years knows, rates of anxiety and depression have skyrocketed.  They're pretty bad in "normal" times as well.  There are a lot of good tricks to make life more bearable, and even to improve the lives of those around you at the same time.

Before I expound on this subject, for those who have been wondering about my relative absence online in recent months, particularly compared to latter 2020, when I was livestreaming multiple interviews and performances every week:  you're not mistaken, I have been doing much less stuff online lately.  This is largely because life in what they used to call the real world got a lot busier, with concert tours in Europe starting up again.  But it's also because much of the content I've been creating isn't so much for public consumption yet.

People who know me or and my music know it's mostly very political, and that's true.  Years go by where I'm too immersed in following news developments and editorializing about them that I hardly pick up a guitar unless I'm working on a new song or giving a concert.  But then things happen.  Like a global pandemic, borders shutting down and all the tours getting canceled, and other things, like the internet becoming an increasingly toxic space to be in, regardless of its many assets.  In recent months my tendency has been increasingly to turn off the computer, and the news, and just play music instead.

This has meant that instead of listening to podcasts about the dire state of the world for hours every day in one ear while I'm keeping my small children entertained, I'm playing the mandola.  I'm a bit less informed about the minutiae of the unfolding disasters on the planet, but my skill on the instrument is improving by the day, and as I follow the kids around, if we're outside and there are other people around, I make them happy in the process.

I realize that most people with 9-5 jobs don't have hours every day either to listen to podcasts, play with their children, or play musical instruments, whether they do those things simultaneously or not.  But there are modified versions of this practice, to suit your schedule, hopefully.

There is no need to be a good musician for music to be a very therapeutic daily practice for you, your kids (if you have any), and people around you.  For you or people around you to enjoy whatever you're doing on an instrument, it helps a lot if you have some facility at it.  I find that if people focus for 20 minutes a day on learning how to play an instrument, they can make a hell of a lot of progress within a few months, by which time they can get to the point where it's fun to play, and potentially enjoyable for other people within earshot as well.

If you do have some basic facility with a musical instrument, and you know what a musical scale is, then you can engage in the practice I do lately every day.

While following the kids around in a city park with my mandola, taking in the sights and sounds and tactile sensations of the breeze, the rustling leaves, the barking dogs, the children sliding down the slide and swinging on the swings, etc., I improvise on the mandola within a particular scale (or key).  Very vaguely thinking about the Indian classical music tradition/ritual of the raga, I start an improvisation with a particular note in the scale.  I come up with a simple musical riff of some kind, and return to it frequently, ending the phrase, eventually, on the note I began the improv with.  When it feels like it's over, I pause for a little while, and start with another note, doing an improv with a different vibe, often alternating between faster and slower types of patterns.

I find that having just a little bit of repetitive framework for my musical wanderings in the park each day like that increasingly feels like I'm engaging in a sort of religious practice.  I don't know about everyone else, but for me, even as a fairly accomplished musician with a diverse musical palette, if I'm improvising on a mandola for 3 or 4 hours in a day, I'm going to repeat a lot of musical phrases in that time period -- a whole lot of repetition is involved, in fact, even if each larger phrase might be somehow distinct from each other one.  In any case, repetition is OK!  Not only OK, it's one of the essential elements in how you get better at a lot of things, very much including playing an instrument.  And the repetition, along with the music, generally, can have a lot of therapeutic effects on the player, and folks in the area who might happen to be listening.

Aside from everything else, there is something profoundly therapeutic about playing a musical instrument in a park, or anywhere else, because in doing so you are to some small extent reclaiming the real world, outside of the internet.  Your primary audience is the wind and the squirrels, not your hundreds or thousands of faceless followers out there in the ether.  In the modern age, it almost feels strange to be doing such a thing, with no one following me around with a camera, in order to livestream the event.  I'm absolutely certain if many passersby saw someone filming me, they'd think it less unusual.  

In any case, I recommend the practice.  And if you find yourself in Portland, Oregon, drop by Kenilworth Park sometime and bring an instrument!