Music, A Great Love Of My Life

Reflections on one of the things I love best

Jul 18, 2025

Hi everyone, I’ve been under the weather recently and I’ve not been feeling terribly creative as a result. I thought I’d sit down and just see what happens so here are some reflections about music, one of the great loves of my life. It may sound strange to say, but I don’t know where I’d be without music. In a way it’s the soundtrack of my life. I always have some sort of song playing in my head. The song itself can vary a lot. It can be anything from the more extreme end of metal all the way to binaural beats and drumming, it all has a place in my life. Most of it, anyway. I’m not a fan of pop music, that kind of music isn’t made to be listened to, just consumed, and therefore has no substance. I consider the average pop song to be like the McDonalds of the music world. I’m also not really a fan of mainstream rap music, it’s just never resonated with me.

When you think about what music is it’s basically a load of different sounds played in a certain way that sounds good with other sounds. So utterly simple yet so magical at the same time. In fact, some of the best loved songs of all time are quite straightforward and simple in their execution. In a way you could say that music is a language, or a collection of languages, in its own right. Different pieces of music and songs written in different ways make sense to different people at different times. I first listened to Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette when I was 16. It didn’t really make sense to me back then, now I don’t think it could be more relevant if I tried. At 16 I would’ve thought binaural beats was a load of crap, I certainly didn’t think Linkin Park were at all depressing, and if you didn’t like My Chemical Romance then there was something very wrong with you… How times change. These days as much as I like Linkin Park I think they’re bloody depressing and a tad overrated, My Chemical Romance are still cool but only for a specific generation (mine), and 432hz is a valid frequency with which to play music at. Did I mention my modest yet much treasured record collection? At 16 I couldn’t wait to get an iPod…

432hz and streaming, those are two big topics. Streaming will be the one to have more mainstream attention. Hands up if you have a paid for Spotify account? I do. I love being able to access an almost infinite amount of music at my fingertips for a specific amount of money per month. I’ve found so many new artists like it that I otherwise would never have known about. Spotify, let’s face it, it’s great for the consumer. On the flip side, unless you’re one of the biggest artists in the world, Spotify is a joke. I believe the going rate of royalties to an artist for every song played is something like 0.004 cents. It’s almost like collectively speaking while we value the arts we don’t really value it financially. I for one believe that statement to be true. There are very simple things one can do to support their favourite artists if they’re so inclined to. Maybe buy their music on a physical format, buy the digital download from Bandcamp even, go to their gigs and actually buy the tickets through a ticket site instead of from a tout, by some merch. Small things, some easier to do than others admittedly.

Speaking of touts I’m all for dynamic pricing. Yes, shoot me. I don’t care. What people are forgetting is that if a ticket to a gig costs £60 plus booking fees and a tout snaps up a couple hundred tickets and sells them at a markup for £150 each, none of the extra £90 that the tout makes goes to the artist. In fact, in a £60 gig ticket not much of it goes to the artist anyway. By the time you factor in venue hire, equipment hire, travel, accommodation, food, roadies, and so on, it leaves only a small amount to pay the artist. So, dynamic pricing? Yes. Definitely. If you’ll pay a tout something like £1000 for a ticket you might as well pay that to the ticket company knowing that more of it will hopefully go towards supporting the artist. As a side note I find it odd how everyone kicked off about Oasis and dynamic pricing, but not Taylor Swift. Personally I don’t think Taylor Swift is worth the plastic cups off the floor when everyone’s gone home, let alone a ticket costing a four-figure sum. That’s just my opinion though.

432hz, I think it’s also right to throw 528hz in there too. I’m guessing the more spiritually inclined of you will be familiar with 432hz and 528hz compared to 440hz. 440hz is the standard frequency for which the vast majority of music is played at and instruments are tuned to. 432hz is thought to be the frequency of the root chakra and 528hz is thought to be the frequency of the heart chakra. The conspiracy theory is that music was deliberately standardised to 440hz in the 1930s because of what it does to the listener. 440hz is thought to induce anxiety and promote conflict whereas 432hz and 528hz are thought to promote a sense of relaxation, a feeling of being grounded, and calm. To that end I decided to do an experiment. I tuned my guitar (electric by the way) to E standard at 432hz as opposed to 440hz and played it for a bit like that. To be honest I was blown away by it. I felt the licks and riffs I was playing sounded much more uplifting, the vibration of the guitar against my body felt more soothing than normal, even the cat didn’t mind as badly and my cat hates it when I play the guitar. The guitar itself seemed to hold its tune a lot better, this may sound silly but it seemed to be a lot happier tuned at that frequency. What we must remember about guitars is that they’re made of wood and wood moves. When I played in front of my boyfriend, I didn’t tell him about the change of frequency, he noted how much brighter and happier the guitar sounded in a very surprised way. While I’m not going to sit here and say that 440hz is out to get us, I will say that it does seem quite jarring compared to 432hz. As for 528hz? I can’t test it on my guitar because the necks were never designed to hold that kind of tension but there’s plenty of singing bowls set at 528hz and loads of ambient music you check can out at that frequency too. I feel with such a debate it’s best to test things for yourself.

When it comes to how music makes you feel I believe it can be used for better and for worse. At one point all I’d really listen to was heavy metal, usually on the more extreme end of things at that. Looking back on it that’s just where I was at at that particular time. I found that music because that’s how I felt. It put me in touch with the deep rage and hatred that I had, it lifted me out of complete despair. Whether or not it was necessarily the right thing to listen to it the way I did for as long as I did is another thing. Yes, and no. Both at the same time. I’ve never met anyone who only really listens to extreme metal because everything is all ok in their lives, usually there’s a burning sense of rejection and a feeling of not belonging. Metalheads are actually very nice people. All this being said, tethering yourself to one genre of music, especially one with the potential for being so fraught like extreme metal, can have a negative outcome in many ways. Every piece of music has its own message behind it and too much of something can be a bad thing. The real question to ask is what come first? The music or the way the listener felt? I’m not one of these people who can listen to music to make myself feel positive, it makes me want to throw my phone out of the upstairs window. I listen to music that reflects my mood. I listen to angry music when I’m angry, I listen to sad music when I’m sad, I listen to happy music when I’m happy, I listen to comforting music when I want comfort. My recently played list on Spotify can tell you a lot about where I’m at… In my world music is the message of my soul.

Sometimes I wonder if perhaps we underestimate how important music is. Have any of you read The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien? It’s my favourite book. It takes place before The Lord of the Rings, it’s about the creation and first age of middle earth and the coming of the Elves. I highly recommend it, it’s not the easiest book to read, but it’s beautiful almost beyond measure in some places and Sauron has nothing on just how ridiculously evil Melkor/Morgoth is. That and Aragorn could only wish he was the elves of the first age. That aside it’s the first part of the book, Ainulindalë, and the second part, Valaquenta, that I’m trying to get at in this paragraph. DON’T READ THIS PART IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS!!!!!!!!! You have been warned… In the first two parts of The Silmarillion, especially Ainulindalë, Tolkien writes about how the Universe was created by music and how it brought all things into being. I believe there’s several religious scriptures out there that talk about something similar. I’m not at all versed in Hinduism but something about Shiva and Shakti dancing, please correct me if needed. I’m almost certain there’s many more incidences elsewhere, let me know in the comments. Music being what brought the Universe into being makes a lot of sense when you consider that it’s all vibration.

I hope you enjoyed this post today. Please feel free to share your own thoughts and reflections on music in the comments. Have a nice weekend!

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