Formats spin, notes bend.
I know nothing—but still hear
the world in rhythm.
(DATELINE: Somewhere? in Norway) When I write my music memoir, this could be the fattest chapter. What don’t I know about music? Practically everything. What I don’t know could fill volumes—box sets even. Forget liner notes; this would need a multi-disc retrospective. Because frankly, I know squat. I’m musically illiterate.
I never played an instrument, can’t read a note of sheet music, was never in a band or a roadie crew, aside from grade-school choirs, I’ve never willingly sung in public—unless you count my shower performances, which have been widely panned for “having no meter.” (Whatever meter is. Apparently, I don’t have it.)
And the closest I’ve ever been to the music business has probably my serial memberships to the Columbia Record Club in the 80s. But that hardly counts.
Don’t get me wrong: I love music. I am a lifelong aficionado, though definitely not a connoisseur. I don’t know the difference between a Moog synthesizer and a microwave (and my wife will agree to that), a major chord from a minor chord, or a Les Paul from…well, whoever Les Paul is? Wah-wah pedal? Drum machine? Auto-tune? Could all be IKEA shelving units for all I know.
And yet, music is stitched into my DNA. Yet maybe my ignorance is liberating. Because there’s a certain joy of not knowing, I think. My ears are truly democratic: if it sounds good, I like it. If it doesn’t, I don’t. I don’t need to understand why. Do I?
I’ve attended hundreds of concerts, I know when to sing-along and when to walk. I’ve bought music in every format: 45s, LPs, cassettes, CDs, and now digital. I’ve owned stereos galore—big living-room hi-fi cabinets that doubled as furniture, dual tape decks, Bose towers loud enough to scare neighbors, even a 100-CD changer that had so many blinking lights it looked like NORAD was tracking incoming missiles. But I never crossed the line into the sacred order of audiophiles. Fidelity and frequency ranges? Not my department. My criteria has always been simpler: Does the music make me feel something?
Lyrics, chord progressions, riffs, bridges—these all remain mysteries in my world. I never grabbed a mic or banged drums all day. One confession however: I do own a saxophone. It sits in the corner of my office looking at me accusingly. My shiny, judgmental roommate: dusty, silent and waiting to communicate with me. I never went on a quest to master it, though I often imagine how fun it would be to play in a group. Playing music seems the most joyful of hobbies—half self-expression, half social glue. I am envious of anyone who can pull off even a half-decent riff.
So, no, I never contracted what Steely Dan’s Walter Becker once diagnosed as G.A.S.—Guitar Acquisition Syndrome. My buddy Andy has it. Bad. My old Sonoma neighbor Jesse has it too. Worse. His basement looks like a Guitar Center clearance rack—bass guitars everywhere, multiplying like invasive species.
The nearest I ever got to the music business, was when I let the neighborhood garage band practice in my backyard—Langan, Sprague (RIP), D’Amore, Carlone. My only contribution? Getting neighbors to not call the cops. I suppose that counts as talent development. Maybe I’m an A&R man by omission.
And yet, over the years, I’ve been lucky to have personally engaged with giants: Wayne Shorter, Quincy Jones, Elton John, Pete Townshend, Exene, Suzanne Vega, Bill Siddons, Keb Mo, Bonnie Raitt, Stephen Stills, Rick Davies, Jackson Browne, Barbra Streisand, Henry Mancini, even Moon Zappa (who, along with my talented wife, were the OG Valley Girls!) A ridiculous list, I know, especially for someone who knows nothing about music. None of those conversations unlocked any cosmic mysteries or made me more musically knowledgeable. Because frankly, talking music with Quincy Jones is like talking physics with Einstein—you nod a lot and pray you don’t get asked what E equals. But they deepened my appreciation, my awe—and gave me a few good dinner-party anecdotes. (Maybe this whole piece is really musical name dropping in disguise. Maybe it is, Petra!)
Over the years I’ve picked up scraps of theory. Lyrics are the words; melody is the tune. Verses tell the story and choruses are the earworms you can’t get out of your head. The riff is the hook (think “Smoke on the Water”). The bridge is the surprise middle part that keeps you from changing stations. But arpeggio? Still lost. Is that a pasta shape?
Voices? Sure, maybe: bass, baritone, tenor, alto, soprano. Plus, falsetto for the Bee Gees, mezzo-soprano for Adele. Call and response: gospel choirs answering the preacher. Scat singing? Louis and Ella turning syllables into jazz rollercoasters.
But that’s the extent of my music theory education. So please, don’t ask me to explain a pentatonic scale.
Once, a friend playing piano told me every song ever written—or that ever will be—is already in those keys. She played me the twelve notes. Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do, repeating across octaves. That’s it. And yet, Beethoven strung four together—da-da-da-dah—and changed music history. Imagine: 479 million possible combinations, and Ludwig chose the one that would still terrify doorbells centuries later.
And just think about it: twelve notes, millions of possible combinations. It’s absurd. And glorious. But awe doesn’t require a degree. Sometimes you just hear it.
But now ask me the difference between a diminished seventh and a minor sixth, and I’ll give you the same look my dog Bodhi gives me when I show him a card trick.
I promised myself I wouldn't burden my children with their father’s sins of musical omission. And indeed, my kids know more about music than I do, and I was delighted to hear them both perform—one playing piano and trumpet, the other on guitar. But despite winning every individual battle along the way, I seem to have lost the overall war. But hey, I tried.
Science piles on the wonder. Neuroscientists now say music lights up our pleasure centers—dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. It hard-wires our memories, syncing sound with our biggest life moments. Daniel Levitin, in This Is Your Brain on Music, wrote that every song we love is filed in our hippocampus like a diary entry. Which explains why I can forget my online banking password but remember every lyric to “Magic Carpet Ride.”
When I learned this in the late 90s, I started fulfilling my strict West LA zip code requirements, by developing a screenplay—working title MixTape. It was about a lost warehoused Alzheimer’s patient rediscovering his life (his first love, his college pals, the pain of war, the joy of his wedding, his kids) through old songs played by a young music school night nurse. Memories, emotions, whole identities triggered by music. It was sentimental, sure, but true. Music is a time machine we can all afford.
Of course, pop also has its math. Catchy songs are just formulas—repetition, predictability and surprise. Basically, emotional slot machines—you keep pulling the lever hoping dopamine pays out before the chorus ends. Music is math. Pythagoras knew it millennia ago. (Of course, leave it to a man in a toga to prove harmonics are just physics trying to seduce us.) Which makes it hilarious that the “most mathematically perfect” pop song, according to one 2023 study, was Toto’s “Africa.” Imagine telling Mozart that.
But I sell myself short.
I do know a few things about music. For instance, I know the difference between mono and stereo. I know how to DJ a party and make a killer mixtape. I know liner notes mattered, album covers mattered, and that music used to feel like something you owned, not borrowed from the cloud. Whatever the cloud is. And I know that today’s lyrics are simpler, more repetitive, angrier, more self-obsessed and less joyful too. A mirror of society, I’d say. Sounds about right for 2025.
I also know that I don’t need to know the intimate language of birds to enjoy their song, just as I can enjoy the soothing singing of César Évora, Caetano Veloso, Cheb Mami or Pavarotti.
Music has always been more than just entertainment for me. Music has been the soundtrack to my entire life. Sure, Pythagoras said it was math, Gibran called it the language of the spirit, Confucius said human nature can’t do without it, Eric Dolphy said it was breath moving through him and then gone forever. Stravinsky, bless him, confessed: “I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.”
And I’m taking Igor’s side. Because if Stravinsky admitted he never understood a bar of music, the rest of us are off the hook—ignorance suddenly feels like genius by association.
Because honestly, I still don’t know what multitracking is, or echo-delay, or polyrhythms, or distortion. I barely know a chorus from a bridge. And while I may not understand an arpeggio, I do understand the chills when Sam Cooke sings “A Change Is Gonna Come.” And even though I may not know a pentatonic scale, I do know the euphoria of a crowd shouting the chorus together at a Springsteen show. And that, I think, in the end is the only knowledge that matters.
Maybe that’s the point. I don’t have to know the mechanics. I just have to feel it.
So what do I really know about music? Not much. I guess I’m an écouteur—a listener, an audio voyeur. Someone who stands at the edge of the stage, ears wide and heart open. The music never belonged to me anyway. It just passed through, left its mark and moved on.
And maybe that’s enough. Because if ignorance is bliss, then music makes me the happiest idiot alive.
Thanks for the privilege of your time, it is the most precious thing we have, and I appreciate it. Be well.
William D. Chalmers © 2025 All Rights Reserved.