How to Harness the Power of Silence
- May 6
- 2 min read
Measuring Emptiness in Music
Sitting on the porch of this café, children scrambling up and down the steps screaming at each other, the concept of silence is top of mind. But I wonder—did I even notice the silence before it was disrupted? Do we take quiet moments for granted, treating them as the absence of something rather than the presence of nothing? If only these children would stop screaming, maybe I would be able to come up with a workable answer to these questions.
In music education, we teach students to understand and work with sound. We outline the physics, technique, and theory that operate behind the scenes, teaching them to wield sound as a blacksmith wields a hammer. Yet, we don’t always prioritize teaching the use of negative space—the strategic manipulation of silence.
If we could ever claim to teach about silence in the standard pedagogical approach, it would be when we introduce rests. Even then, the most popular way of doing so involves teaching students to fill the silence in order to count it. We tell them to say “sh” aloud for each quarter rest in an attempt to keep them feeling the beat. In science, we know that filling a vessel with a liquid is the best way to measure its volume. But music isn’t just science; music is the marriage between science and art. An artist knows that only a fool fills something to try to understand its emptiness. Emptiness is completely separate from fullness; where one is the other cannot be. So too with silence and sound.
Admittedly, the “sh” method has its merit, especially with younger children who can’t readily conceptualize the abstract concept of silence or emptiness. But after the pulse of a steady tempo is instilled in one’s playing, a silence-based approach can chisel metronomic roboticism into a beautifully carved work of art.
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Consider for a moment the impact of reframing our understanding of music around silence rather than sound. “You came in too soon” becomes “you left silence too quickly.” This small shift enables us to recognize that music is not about arriving, it’s about traveling —about patience, not eagerness. So as I finish my cup of coffee and watch as something full becomes empty, I encourage you to listen carefully as you go about your week. Don’t listen for moments when sound isn’t; listen for when silence is. Recognize that silence is not the air around the flower, but the soil in which the garden grows. And then we can begin planting our musical seeds.
Thank you for reading!
Luke
Songhorse Founder
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