Last week weekend went into Vancouver to experience some of the Olympic vibes - was so much fun despite the pouring rain. We managed to catch some of the free music at one of the stages and it was the first time that I had seen Wilco perform live. They were incredible.

I know that I shouldn’t have been surprised by the fact that three of the main band members were in their late 40s/early 50s, but I was. I haven’t listened to a lot of Wilco, so the thing that struck me the most about them aside from their great lyrics, excellent musicianship, tight synergy and inspiring creativity, was their ability to create tension in their music.

A piece of music often manages to represent so much of my journey through life. One strong pattern that my ear picks up in music is this pattern of equilibrium, tension and release - that idea of some note or chord becoming unresolved (loosing its equilibrium), creating tension that needs to be released or resolved. A life application of this would be its seven in the morning - you are deep in a dream - the alarm goes off, and your head explodes - after much desperate fumbling, you manage to get your sleepy hand on the right button - a tension is resolved. This pattern is all around us in our lives whether it be waiting for traffic lights to change, to nerves before a job interview to the relief of getting the job etc.

Western music does this a lot. There is a story of one of the great composers (Mozart, Beethoven or Bach) who was up in bed and heard someone play an unresolved dominant chord on a piano, all as a ploy to get the composer up and about. Sure enough, the composer got out of bed, came downstairs, played the tonic chord resolution on the piano and then returned to bed.

Wilco did this so masterfully in their performance of ‘Mis-understood’ last Saturday as they held onto repeating the word ‘Nothing’ for a good 3 min!!! it was insane - the crowd was going crazy! I found myself getting so wound up at times longing for them to resolve the tension they were building - sometimes that resolve happened and at other times they just left you hanging there. Man it messes with your emotions, feelings and just shows how powerful the medium of music is.

equilibrium - tension - release

An observation that I don’t need to unpack - you go figure . . . .

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 6:25 pm and is filed under creativity, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.