Out of nowhere: Really?

I believe we have all heard this expression regarding how most musicians write music: "...and it's like this song came out of nowhere." Really? Out of nowhere? I beg to differ! For one thing nowhere is just that. How can a something be yanked out of nothing? This is preposterous! Order in the court!

Well, not really. Nowhere is a loose term we all use when we can't wrap our heads around something we can't hear, see, taste, or feel. We are all guilty of using this popular word: "It just came out of nowhere, he's going nowhere fast", or "we're on a road to nowhere".

Songwriting is no exception. A melody from "out of the blue" comes into your head, your hands tap out a rhythm you may have never heard before, or you begin humming what you thought was a familiar tune only to find out later it came from....well.....nowhere. Why is this? Who's really the orchestrator behind all this?

For me personally, I feel that it is a combination of spirit and human experience which leads to human emotion which leads to in some - melody, rhythm, and lyrics. Spirit's definition is not an easy one. I personally feel there exists an invisible connection to and from everything. If you are made up of atoms you are part of this (yes, even a brick has its part!)


A song comes to me in pieces. I grab a melody out of "nowhere" by striking non-thought out, random chords on my keyboard. Once I get two or more chords working in my head and that "feeling" of what I call "spiritual emotion" kicks in; the beginning of a song is born. So is the initial spark of the song truly coming from nowhere? No! I have answered this question in the second and third sentence of this paragraph: ("by striking non-thought out, random chords on my keyboard. Once I get two or more chords working in my head and that "feeling" of what I call "spiritual emotion" kicks in; the beginning of a song is born.") Ah, hah! Nowhere no longer exists!

But what about this "spiritual emotion"? What the hell is it? Is this somehow different from emotion? The answer to this is simply - Yes. I define spiritual emotion as an emotion which lies at the epicenter of emotion. Spiritual emotion has tendrils connecting anger to glee, elation to depression and sadness to sassy. From where is it derived? My belief is that it is derived from a human-to-sound vibration that we all posses. If your spiritual vibrations within lay between a couple vibrating chords your body will resonate, thus a feeling will arise (any feeling....I unconsciously gravitate towards the positive in my music).

I really have no proof of what my previous paragraph describes. I only know what I personally feel when I listen to someone's music, or my own. That feeling of oneness with the song, the ebb and flow of aliveness within, the pain, the pleasure, how I can relate to it. Nowhere is attainable. Nowhere comes from somewhere after all!