"What is Time?"

Musical time is very technical. A composer has to decide whether he wants to follow regular rules for creating a song or whether he wants to make up a new arrangement. Tempo is one choice that affects our perception of time within a song. The composer can change the tempo within a song or keep the same tempo throughout the whole song.

A composer has to decide what tempo he wants to use to decide what speed or pace he wants the piece of work to go. This tempo can therefore either make the song seem like time is passing quicker than it actually is or slower than it actually is. There are many different tempos that a composer can use to complete a song. He can use adagio (very slow), moderato (medium), allegro (fast), or presto (very fast). Depending upon the tempo chosen, the song will sound and feel different. If the composer chooses a faster tempo, the song will seem faster. This would cause an actual minute of musical arrangement to seem as if it were only forty-five seconds. If he chooses a slower tempo then it may seem like the song lasts forever: a minute may seem like a minute and a half.

Therefore, musical time is relevant to the person listening as to whether or not it is fast or slow. This perception of fast or slow relates to the perception of time as well. Depending upon how you feel and perceive the tempo will change your perception of time for those few minutes. This plays a part into why when you are driving a regular route it may seem like sometimes the drive was faster or slower: depending on what songs you are listening to.

To me, musical time is different than the normal time.  It is a time to listen rather than converse, a time to reflect rather than act, it is a time to sit and relax rather than to progress.  With such an abstract concept such as musical time, a concrete definition or explanation cannot do it justice.  I have been in music classes before so I know there are formal ways to develop a meaning for this concept.  But I feel that in my personal abstract interpretation of the phrase “musical time” that people act differently than they do in other points in their life when not listening to, creating, or dealing with music.  This may not be the same musical time that many choose to blog about, but to me it is more interesting.  It is a time of creativity and expression and a time of acceptance and understanding all in one; a simply unique abstract concept unlike anything else in the realm of time.

When asked the question of what musical time is and what it entails, many might use ‘tempo’ as a contributing word to aid the definition. They may give the traditional definition of tempo as being the pace or speed of any given music. I too, will use the word tempo, however I do not refer to it in the conventional sense of measuring the pace of a song, but rather how it measures the pace that our lives seem to continue at while we listen to music. Different songs have the ability to generate distinctive emotions. In return, these emotions have the power to seemingly alter ones sense of time. For example, fast paced music conveys energy that can cause our brains to, in a sense, lose track of time and therefore cause time to fly by. Similarly, music that triggers extreme emotion such as loss and heartbreak can prompt our thought process to slow down and dwell on the song at hand. This can give our minds the impression that time is passing at a much slower rate.  Through these examples, it becomes clear that music has an innate ability to influence our minds regarding how we process periods of time.

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You may delay, but time will not.

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