We are pattern seekers, we see patterns in all things, our scientists find them, our thinkers find them, our philosophers unravel them, and our mathematicians decode them.

However they are all being processed through the human mind, maybe they do not exist as we believe they do, the very act of thinking makes them exist and even the rationale of science does not escape this trap.

With music we have created scales, chords and timings that are the patterns that we seek however they are all about familiarity and they seem to be real because we have heard them before and that familiarity makes them real as if they are some natural law.

Maybe they do not exist on their own only through the prism of our consciousness in other words we imagine them. In fact the epistemology of the word ‘image’ is telling; because the word image is from the same root that creates the word ‘magic’ and ‘magus’ or ‘magi’. In this era of the iPad and iPhone look again at the word image. We have literally created something or a range of things that have been in our conscious for many years marked by language in fact we have cast a spell and it is in the spelling.

Try this; play something that is familiar, a tune that is famous like Summertime for instance then start to change the notes of the melody but keep to the rhythms of the original tune, after a short while this will be completely acceptable, then include notes that are outside the scale and after a while these will seem acceptable as well, that is how jazz works.

Nothing is true, everything is possible.

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