I’m of the opinion that good music is good music, wherever you find it. It’s hard to put your finger on what makes it good, but I’m convinced it’s the little things. There’s not some magic formula. There’s no overarching structural device that makes one piece of music good or bad (sorry Schenker!).

For me, good music happens when all of the details come together and those details were lovingly crafted by their creator(s) to work in harmony (small H) and achieve the desired effect. Achieving the desired effect also requires a listener who is open. This doesn’t mean that the listener drives out all other distractions and sits ritualistically silent in a concert hall while trained performers convey their interpretation of the music to the listener’s passive ears. This does mean that the listener is empathetic to the music. That is, the confluence of life events, internal and external, has placed the listener into a state where the music will move those gears inside that trigger emotional and intellectual responses.

Early years

I demonstrated aptitude and interest in music at an early age. At age 5, my parents bought me a tiny electronic keyboard which I would play with constantly, plucking out tunes I heard in church or at school or on the radio. Since the beginning, my talent has been dictation (the memorizing or transcribing of pitch/rhythm patterns), although I did not learn to write notes on paper until much later. My ability to recognize and reproduce patterns accurately has assisted me in the areas of language, mathematics, and computer science.