Note by Note!

We were talking music. You can go all the way back to Pythagoras.  A note, one note, no matter what it is A, B-flat, D# - play one note, and it is perfect. It is the next note that determines what you're doing, where you're going. It is about relationships. Do the notes sound good together? Is there an ease, or a tension? We teach our ears. We decide whether the sound of those two notes plucked together, or one after the other, sounds like music or like noise.

And we have learned to like or at least tolerate "noise," in our music. Maybe it's because we live in a technological, machine age. We have learned to live with the sound of machines, and have incorporated that sound into our music. So dissonance can sound good to us. Sometimes harmony can be too sweet.

But then again, coming out of dissonance, harmony can sweep us off our feet. So yes, relationships. 

It turns out that's what makes a group or band fly or fall too. Do the musicians listen to each other? Do they have a sympathy, empathy for the work? Can they be in the moment and respond to the demands of the song? It happens note by note, sound by sound.