Searching for good music... tune into classical music radio 90.3 KDFC BY NABIL IRSHAD Staff Reporter Students at Sequoia should give classical music a chance and listen to it. Modern music has beats and tunes but classical music is a whole different plane. Modern music lacks some qualities that classical music has like the timing and synchronization of multiple instruments that make a rhythm of a great song. I’m Nabil and I’m a senior, I like to drive my car even though gas prices are high and I do wrestling. I have always been aware of classical music but never paid attention to it and never gave it a chance until I listened to String Quartet No. 3, “Mishima”: VI. Mishima / Closing - Philip Glass, the Modern String Quintet, and that’s when I realized that there could be so many variations, different ways and new sounds that I have never heard before coming from violins and cellos. I always had an idea of what these instruments sounded like and heard small snippets of them before but never in depth which made me excited to hear more and explore different instruments. It was a great learning experience to listen to many different sounds of one function of an instrument. It was very exciting hearing stuff that I would have never considered before. I was really into rap and R&B but I slowly got distasteful and discovered classical music. Classical music can be listened anywhere,. Mainly, I listen to it in my home and while I do homework or workout. The best time for me is when I’m lying down on my bed or outside with one earphone listening to the wind brush the leaves of trees whilst listening to music. I stare at the ceiling and think about goals and what I have to do. Classical helps me organize my thoughts and dig deep into what I really want to do and why. The roots of my thinking process begin with, “What do I have to do today? Is it homework? What assignment is late and needs to be done first before something else?” Listening to classical has helped me prioritize
38
things and really narrow down the list to one objective and applying myself to complete it. Listening to classical music creates a space for me to stay calm and keep my sanity while being overwhelmed with life. Inside, or outside classical music can be listened to anywhere. The only difference is my cats come to me and I have a buddy. It is a feeling of self awareness. Some days I would listen to rap and other days classical music. It’s like a mood. Something that I do in my playlists is I add almost an interlude, where it’s a break from what I was listening to previously. I call it a musical roller coaster-- I could be listening to Marvin’s Room by Drake and then the next song is a song with more energy like Advantage Point by Chilly Gonzales and there is a sudden change of setting within your ears
“
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Berthold Auerbach
and it causes goosebumps. You never really know what’s going to play next thats what it’s like switching between music styles that makes it fun. I suggest adding classical music to your interludes just as I add rap and R&B to my classical playlists. What’s nice about classical music is it’s longer than three minutes most of the time and it has so many different sounds makes me feel elated and inspired. I like the way how not every song sounds the same, every single song has a different sound, a different feeling. This song may be very fast and transitions between high notes and low notes really well, meanwhile another song has a solid and consistent pattern and fluctuations of notes that sound nice to the ear. It brings a space of nothingness where all you are doing is being in the present to listen
to the intricacies of sound. My piano teacher, Othello Jefferson said, “I remember I was really angry, something had made me really upset at school. I came home and I played [the piano] for an hour. And I felt better. Music was a healing thing, it was a way for me to kind of deal with whatever I had gone through that day and it helped me.” Under stress or even non stressful situations classical music, too, never fails to relieve me of tension. Compared to modern music I could do all of the things I said while listening to it but it’s not the same. It’s difficult to put into words, but it changes the way I process things. I believe that classical music is something that should be more known throughout Sequoia and given a chance. Here are a couple of pieces that I would recommend you listen to, all of which are available on Spotify and can be accessed by scanning the codes below. The pieces vary from composer to composer. Below are all my own reviews of these songs.
My top 20 classical songs
My entire classical music playlist
