Paint With Music

Music is art, but when people hear the word "art," they think of paintings, sculpture, photography, or other art forms. Yes, music is played by musicians, but the musicians consider themselves artists. There is also the term "folk art" and then there is folk music. The point being made is that confining the act of creation to mental images is limited thinking.

 

Think about the lyrics of a song and they will conjure up different images for different people. Then when the music is put on a television in the form of a music video, the music is played out in a different format. When a movie is played on the big screen it is now an art form. Music has form and shape, sound, and yes, even color. A music video tells a story like a movie, thus to be perfectly candid, music is art.

 

What if you were to listen to music and imagine the colors, listening to only instrumental music? Could a person paint what they hear or see in their mind what they hear? Could sound be an actual image transformed into a two-dimensional picture on a piece of paper based on what the mind creates when the sound travels through the airwaves and stimulates neurons and translates that into images? Yes, it could be, but people don’t traditionally think of music as art or art as music. 

 

When you go to an art gallery, a person doesn’t stand around and listen to music, they go in an look at art. A street performer is doing sidewalk art, or is the only art on the sidewalk done with chalk and a keen mind. No, a persons mind is complex and art can be in many forms. Nude art is an art form. Paintings another art form. Why not music as a form of art, played by artists that use the medium of notes, rhythm, and sound as their brush, the microphone as their easel and your ears as the canvas.

 

It is funny when a paradigm shift occurs, altering a standard concept and framing it differently. Music is art and music as art in the non logical assumption happens if we let it. For fun, find some folk music and see if you can’t find the art in it. Listen with your ears, shut your eyes and imagine the canvas in your mind. If a determined person had a mind too, they could paint music as art.