Bob Ross, Empowering the Masses, and Fear of Failure

I recently watched a PBS documentary on Bob Ross (no relation), who gained fame as the creator and host of The Joy of Painting, a television program that ran for 12 years on PBS stations in the United States.  On the show, Ross would teach viewers how to create an oil painting from start to finish in just half an hour by following seemingly easy, step-by-step instructions. The blank canvas with which he started would be gradually transformed into an impressive landscape painting by the end, rather like a cooking show that starts with a few ingredients and a stove and ends with a gourmet dish or meal.

According to the documentary, Bob Ross felt that one of his missions in life was to convince ordinary people that they could paint pictures skillfully, even if they had no background in art. He wanted to help people who considered themselves to be untalented and/or lacking in artistic skills to discover that they too could create art by following his (apparently) simple steps.

That is a powerful and beautiful message!

---

Mystery, Complexity, and Drudgery

It seems to me that composers and other creative artists often make the creative process sound far more mysterious or complicated than it really is.  The reality, at least from my perspective, is that developing into an accomplished and mature artist takes years of drudgery.

People who wish to become concert pianists or violinists understand that the process involves years of practicing scales, studies, and progressively more challenging compositions, as well as constantly trying to improve their sound, listening to other artists, studying music theory, history, and ear-training, all the while receiving frequent feedback from teachers and others.  Becoming a skilled composer is no different; you do all these things, plus spend thousands of hours composing music, until you reach a point where you kind of feel like you know what you are doing, although I admit that I never totally know what I'm doing.

When you reach this point, others might tell you, gee, I wish I had that kind of talent, when what they should be saying is, gee, I wish I had spent ten thousand hours developing my skills as a composer!

[Here's a link to another blog I wrote on this topic, in case it interests you: Talent? Skill? What's the difference?]

It can seem as though composers (and other artists) sometimes play up the mysteriousness or complexity of the creative process by offering explanations that are shrouded in mystery, or  seemingly designed to obfuscate. Here are silly examples of both:

Shrouded in Mystery:  This composition came to me fully-formed in a dream, and all I did was write it down when I woke up!

Designed to Obfuscate:  The prime form of [0 2 3] is, as even the simplest child knows, [0 1 3].  This aptly illustrates that, on a Babbittion plane, "major" and "minor" (I herewith mimic dormant terminology with both prudence and shocking insight) trichords are indistinguishable from one another, at least aurally (visually, the difference is notoriously striking!). I manipulated both of these sets employing a cunning derivation of neo-Riemannian theory that I authored while researching North-Indian proto-tablational reductions of integer-centric, sub-sonic impulses in the steppes of central Asia on prestigious Fulbright, Guggenheim, and Getty Grants, employing retrogrades, inversions, graduate students, and, of course, post-modernist regression, with the following results: [0130230203010333333333327(!)7], and so on (I refrain from revealing too many of my secrets here in the interests of protecting my intellectual property; all too often in the past others have marauded my ideas and created works that generated untold millions for their music. I speak here of Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Justin Bieber, among others). It was thus that I genetically engineered my latest chef-d'œuvre, "Mary Had a Little Lamb."  It is contradistinctive from "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," Baa Baa Black Sheep," and "A B C D" in non-trivial ways that defy explanation (I refer readers capable of understanding über-high-level theoretical constructs to Edward Cone's seminal publication, "Beyond Analysis," which MUST be followed immediately by a close reading of David Lewin's "Beyond the Beyond," although it is unlikely that people who love music will be capable of understanding either article or this erudite explanation for that matter).

I made up both examples above, but if the second amused you, I highly recommend a visit to The Contemporary Classical Composer's Bullshit Generator, a clever Perl Script by composer Dominic Irving, that, as its name suggests, generates reams of random rubbish masquerading as composer's program notes.

But I digress… Bob Ross empowered ordinary people to create art by demystifying the process of artistic creation, and explaining his process in a way that made ordinary people feel that they too could paint. This was a noble and tremendous accomplishment.

---

But can anyone compose music?

I believe the answer to this is yes, at least for anyone that is physically capable of doing so. GarageBand, an Apple software application for Mac OS X and iOS, allows users with no musical background to to create music or podcasts.  You don't need much musical knowledge to use music sequencing and notation software either; all you need is a computer, the knowledge of how to use these programs, and the ability to distinguish the musical bits you like from those you don't.  Naturally, as with painting, the more you do it, the more your skills improve.

This is great news for people who love music but did not have instruction in musical instruments as they grew up.  It's also great news for people who did have musical instruction in an instrument, but not in composition. A lot of classical musicians are trained with little or no instruction in composition, but, should they (or anyone else) ever wish to try their hand at composing, there are ways to do this in privacy, in a risk-free environment.

---

Fear of Failure

A recurring theme of Bob Ross's television shows, according to the documentary, was don't fear failure, and this seems good advice for anything else in life as well, but particularly so for music.

Fear of failure can hold us back from achieving our goals. Some awareness of the potential pitfalls associated with any endeavour seems wise — we all know what can happen if you cross a road without looking — but what can go wrong if you compose music?

This calls for a list!

Things that could go wrong if you write music:

1. It might not be good.
2. It might cause a riot when it is premiered.
3. The audience might boo lustily, or shout, "For SHAME!" during the premiere.
4. It might result in your becoming the biggest laughing stock in the history of the human race.
5. It might get bad reviews.
6. The musicians might tell you that the music is unplayable.  
7. The musicians might not play the right notes. Or they might play the right notes, but at the wrong times. Or they might totally disregard dynamics, articulations, and slurs.
8. The musicians, accustomed as they are to playing music by dead people, might resent having to perform music of some upstart composer with the unmitigated gall of being alive.  
9. The musicians might say, "You didn't really want that F sharp in bar 41, did you?" Or worse.
10. Your parents/friends/pets might not like it.
11. You may be branded a formalist, and be called before the Union of Soviet Composers to explain yourself.
12. You might get hit by a bus on the way to the premiere.

Yes; all of the unfortunate events in the above list could happen to composers, but some are not very likely (numbers 2, 3, 4, 5 [because concerts don't get reviewed much these days, and many reviews don't express particularly strong approval or disapproval], 11, and 12), and others are just things you deal with as they arise.

Perhaps the most likely of the above possibilities is the first: It might not be as good as you'd like it to be, at least in the early stages of your development as a composer.

But so what?  If our composition isn't as good as we would wish it to be, then we try again, and keep trying again until we can eventually write music we feel good about.  Sure, the premiere of  Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring caused a riot, but (a) music premieres generally don't, and (b) if your premiere causes a riot, count your blessings (while taking cover), because, as the old show business saying goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

All great composers have had bad reviews, been harshly received by members of the public and/or their family, and many have been told been told their music is unplayable; they went on to achieve greatness in spite of this. If technical issues in your music are causing problems for performers, look closely at them to see if there is a compromise that serves your goals as the composer and makes the music more "user-friendly" for the performers. It's all "stuff" that you can deal with, and, to quote a book I have never read, "Don't sweat the small stuff."

It can sting when your music does not turn out as you had hoped, but, generally, if you work at developing your craft for long enough, you will write music you can feel proud of, and that is the only factor within your control. If you believe in your music, others are likely to believe in it as well.

Compare the things in the above list that actually have some likelihood of going wrong to the things that can go wrong for air traffic controllers, surgeons, or police officers; if they make mistakes, people can die. If we make mistakes, we feel disappointed or even frustrated, but no one dies.  

"Failure" is all relative. If a composer goofs and writes notes that are out of range for a particular instrument, we fix it, and, in the great scheme of things, nothing particularly bad has happened. If a composer tries some crazy new thing that does not end up working very well, the composer may feel unhappy or even embarrassed at the premiere, but there's an good chance that someone will come up to the composer afterwards and say something like, "Dude, that was my favourite part of the whole piece! I really loved that section!"

A composer can (and, I believe must) take chances and try new things, and if they don't work out satisfactorily, we either attempt a fix (go back and keep trying things until we arrive at a solution that satisfies us), or chalk it up to experience and move on to the next piece somewhat wiser, assuming we have understood why it didn't work.

Fear of failure can be paralyzing for an artist; I believe, having experienced it, that it is the primary cause of "writer's block." Try to embrace the risks inherent in writing every new composition, with the knowledge that:

1. Risks are an essential part of the process;
2. If risks "fail" — if something you try does not succeed — the consequences are usually minimal;
3. There is a solution for every compositional problem;
4. The more you solve compositional problems, the more you learn;
5. The solutions to compositional problems can end up being among the strongest sections of a composition; and
6. There is a saying that you learn more from failure than you do from success.   I don't know how true this is — I think there is much to be learned from both, frankly, and here's a link to a Scientific American article that challenges this saying — but I do believe that challenges (a nicer word than "failures," don't you think?) provide opportunities to both (i) learn and grow as artists, and (ii) improve our compositions, so, looking at it this way, they are not to be feared, but embraced!

---

And so, to summarize a ridiculously long blog post…

I am not suggesting we embrace failure, despite any appearance to the contrary in my last point above! ;)  I am suggesting that fear of failure can hold a person back from accomplishing goals, and every composition brings challenges that, if negotiated skillfully, can result in some very fine music!

To return to the point of the first section of this blog, the creative process is sometimes described in mysterious language or perplexing techno-babble/jargon, and this can serve as a kind of barrier between practitioners (e.g., composers, artists) and those interested in developing skills as composers and artists (e.g., students, amateurs).  Like the old joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall (answer: Practice), becoming a good composer is not very mysterious at all: You just practice, a lot, try to get lots of feedback along the way, and aim to make every piece as good as you can make it at that time. And yes, anyone can be an artist!

How to become a more-skilled composer

I ended my March 25 blog with a statement that I hoped would provoke (inspire?) some responses, saying:

Good composers are good by virtue of the fact that they work hard; mediocre composers are not as good because they do not work as hard. If a composition is not considered to be very good, it probably indicates more about the composer's laziness than it does about talent or inspiration.

Do I believe this? Not exactly... Here is what I do believe (stated in a less-provocative way!):

In order to become a good composer, it is necessary to work very hard at it for an extended period, and one must constantly challenge oneself to improve.  Hard work is not the only factor that leads to becoming a good composer, but it is arguably the most essential ingredient; a person with oodles of talent but a poor work ethic will not become a good composer; a person with average talent and a strong work ethic can become a good composer. 

There is something attractively democratic about this, because it suggests that any musically-skilled person is capable of becoming a good composer if they work hard enough.

If this is true, then the argument could be made that one reason that some composers do not write better music is that they have not put sufficient work into becoming better composers, which is essentially the point that my "provocative statement" attempted to make (but if you state things too reasonably, people tend not to feel provoked into responding!).

Is Bill a lazy composer? If Sarah has invested significantly more hours in compositional training than Bill, and, by virtue of that fact, Sarah is the more skilled composer, this in no way suggests that Bill is lazier than Sarah. However, if Bill wishes to become a better composer but is not interested in committing the time necessary to achieve this improvement, then perhaps Bill can be said to be lazy... or just naive.

But let us stop all this talk of laziness and move on to ask what specific things can one work on in order to become a more skilled composer? Below is a list of some of them; as always, feel free to disagree, agree, or add to the list!

1. Write more music (or, the 10,000 hour rule) . Try to write every day, if you can, or try to devote at least a couple of hours a day, four to five days a week, to composition. In order to become better performers, all musicians understand that you need to practice on a regular basis — daily, preferably. Well, the same is true for improvement in any skill, such as writing, sports, surgery, acting, etc., and, of course, composition.
   
   You may have heard of the "10,000 hour rule," a concept mentioned numerous times in "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell, who suggests that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. Using this "rule," you would have to practice composition for four hours a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, for ten years in order to become an expert composer!
   
   Before you throw up your hands in despair (what? You don't have four hours a day for the next ten years to spend on composition???), I will suggest that a lot of the time you have already spent training to be a musician should count in the calculation of the number of hours required to become an expert composer. Your training on an instrument, in aural skills, in music theory, your time spent jamming with friends, your time spent listening actively to music — I would suggest that they all help make you a better composer, so you may be closer to that 10,000 hour goal than you think!
   
   Benefits:
              • The basic principle here is practice makes perfect. Or, if not perfect (is there any such thing in art?), then at least better.
   
   Challenges:
              • Finding the time on a daily basis for anything beyond what we are currently doing is a challenge.
              • Doing something on a daily basis can lead to ruts; it may be necessary to vary one's routine occasionally, and/or to take breaks from the routine.
   
   
2. Find ways to gain perspective on your music. I wrote about this in my 2009-02-05 blog, "Running into a brick wall" (in which I quoted Richard Bach: "Perspective; use it or lose it"), but the basic idea is that we can easily get so wrapped up in our creations that we lose perspective on them, and the numerous ways to gain perspective include taking a break (and possibly engaging in something else for a while, including exercise), which allows us to return to our work with a refreshed mindset, and asking for honest feedback from others (including performers).
   
   I suspect most composers have had the experience of going to bed feeling quite pleased with the musical idea on which they had been working, only to awaken the next day to discover that they really don't like that idea very much at all! Clearly, when this happens to us, our perspective has changed, but which is right? Is it a great idea, a terrible idea, or somewhere in between? The only way to make a good judgement on the merits of a musical idea is to examine it from different perspectives, and ways of doing this are listed in my above-mentioned blog.
   
   Benefits:
              • Getting different perspectives on your work during the composition process will make it more likely that you will be satisfied with the finished product, no matter what your perspective or frame of mind.
              • Inviting honest feedback from others can lead to improvements you might otherwise not have considered.
              • Feedback from performers can help you to write more idiomatically, and notate your musical ideas more clearly.
   
   Challenges:
              • If one is in a highly-stressed or depressed frame of mind, finding ways to alter our perspective can be extremely challenging. Also, this frame of mind can cloud one's judgement to the point where one is unable to make good decisions about the merit of our musical ideas.
              • Soliciting honest feedback from others can result in suggestions that do not actually help your music in any way (and they may even make it worse); you have to be able to sort out the good suggestions from the less good ones.
   
   
3. Develop good musical judgment (i.e., good musical instincts). This relates to the previous point, the basic idea being that while all composers probably experience times when their judgement about their own music is clouded, good composers find ways to work through these periods and end up making decisions that lead to good compositions. Or, put another way, even great composers can have terrible musical ideas (e.g., Late at night: This is GREAT! — Next day: Oof! What was I thinking???), but they somehow manage to sort out the bad ideas from the good ones, which helps lead to good music.
   
   Benefits:
              • Good judgement leads to good music.
   
   Challenges:
              • It's easy to say, "develop good judgement" (yeah, thanks Yoda!), but how do you do this? And what does this word, "good" mean in this context, anyway? Keep reading to find out...
   
   
4. Analyze music. It would be good if at least some of this were in a formal sense, involving comprehensive structural analyses of compositions, but it could also occur in a less-structured way, involving active listening to music while taking note of anything at all that interests you, such as the structure, process, colours, orchestration, the way the composer writes for particular instruments, mood, and how it is achieved, etc. What aspects of the music would you like to try in your own compositions?
   
   Benefits:
              • Analysis helps us to find out how music works, and the knowledge we have on that subject, the better able we are to create the kind of music we would like to hear.
   
   Challenges:
              • Finding time to engage in analysis can be a challenge, but beyond that, the only potential pitfall might be that a person enjoys analysis so much that they become less interested in composing music than they are in analyzing it. As pitfalls go, that's not such a bad one, however...
   
   
5. Be curious. This is basically an extension or reinforcement of the previous point; when you play music, or hear it, or look at scores, ask yourself questions: What makes this work, or not work? How does it work? What makes audiences respond (positively or negatively) to this music? How do you respond to the music, and what is it about the music that elicits that response? How is a particular sonic colour created? How detailed is the score? What notation conventions are used, and are there any there that you could use, or even be inspired by?
   
   Benefits:
              • Perhaps the most famous adage about curiosity, sadly, is that it "killed the cat," but nothing could be farther from the truth, at least for composers (and I'm pretty sure for cats too). The benefits are, I think, self-evident, so rather than pedantically listing them all, I thought I would provide a few quotes on the topic that you might find interesting:
   
              • It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. (Albert Einstein)
              • The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. (Anatole France)
              • It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. (Aristotle)
              • The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. (Ellen Parr, also attributed to Dorothy Parker)
              • Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly. (Arnold Edinborough)
              • Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance. (William Wirt)
              • Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. (Mark Twain)
   
   Challenges:
              • It's easy to fall into ruts where we don't question things very much, so the challenge is to avoid doing so.
              • I suppose that the reason the adage about curiosity and the cat came about is that there can be such a thing as too much curiosity (although perhaps it is more a case of too much foolishness), and this may lead a person or beloved house pet (for I am a cat lover) to do nutty things, such as, Hmm... What would happen if I put my finger in that electrical socket? or They say it is not wise to stroll in a leisurely fashion across eight lanes of the Trans-Canada Highway during rush hour close to a major urban center, but is it really true? I am going to find out for myself, thank you very much! But for the most part, curiosity, combined with a dash of common sense, is a good thing.
   
   
6. Be open. This is related to curiosity, but being open isn't quite the same as being curious. Being willing to try new approaches to writing music, even when you're pretty sure you're not going to like them, is a bit like trying on new clothes that you're pretty sure you won't like; sometimes you will be surprised to discover that you do like them! Ditto for food, which is the basis for "Green Eggs and Ham," by Dr. Seuss, Sam-I-Am.
   
   Benefits:
              • Some times, when we try something (food, clothes, a musical technique) that we do not expect to like, we surprise ourselves by discovering that we do like it! If we remain closed to these possibilities, we never make these new and often rewarding discoveries.
   
   Challenges:
              • Again, as with the unfortunate cat who met his/her untimely demise, some judgement must be shown. There are many more things to try than there is time in one's lifetime to try them, so at a certain point you have to move forward with the task at hand, which in our case, is composing.
   
   
7. Be decisive. Being curious and open are great attributes, but when it comes to actually composing your piece, you need to be able to make decisions. Is this idea/section too short, or too long? Does this idea need more development? Should I have an introduction? Should the music have a climax? Something about this is not working; what is it? etc. Clearly, some decisions are better than others, but just as clearly, the inability to make decisions will lead to an inability to complete the composition; sometimes, even a bad decision is better than no decision at all, if it helps complete the the work. Besides, you can always go back later and change it. It's not like being a surgeon or an air traffic controller, where bad decisions can lead to loss of life!
   
   Benefits:
              • Being decisive helps the composition process go more smoothly.
   
   Challenges:
              • Being decisive doesn't necessarily mean you make good decisions, but even here hard work helps; the more experienced you are as a composer, the more likely you are to make better decisions.
   
   
8. Have the courage of your convictions. Again related to the previous point: Remember that nothing catastrophic can happen if you try something new as a composer and it proves to be unsuccessful. Schoenberg was reviled and ridiculed by many for coming up with his "Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Which are Related Only with One Another," but if he had lost his confidence in the method and decided to scrap it before it was published, or decided against writing any music using this method, it seems unlikely that he would have achieved his position in history as arguably the most influential composer of the twentieth century.
   
   Benefits:
              • Having the courage of your convictions can lead to greatness.
   
   Challenges:
              • Having the courage of your convictions can also lead to being ostracized, if your convictions are radically out of step with prevailing norms.
              • Belief in one's own convictions may actually be a case of hubris, and I'm not sure hubris actually helps make you a better composer...
   
   
9. Strive to improve. The opposite to a desire to improve is complacency, and complacency is never to be a good thing for an artist.
   
   Benefits:
              • Striving to improve generally leads to improvement (another statement of Yoda-like profundity, I know), and while we must reach a point of satisfaction with whatever piece we are working on in order to feel it is finished, in order for it to be good we must constantly seek ways to make it better.
   
   Challenges:
              • Constantly striving to improve can become an unhealthy obsession. As mentioned above, you can only finish a composition if you reach a point of relative satisfaction with it, but no art is ever perfect, so you could theoretically spend your entire life trying to perfect a single composition because you know it could always be better. That's a pretty extreme example, but a more common example is one kind of writer's block, where a person recognizes (or at least believes) that their work needs to be better, but experiences creative paralysis when they cannot find a way to make it so.
   
   
10. Develop your people/networking skills. Composers mostly depend on others to perform and programme their music. Some composers perform their own music, and some composers compose electronic music that is not dependent on performers for its realization, but even in both these cases, composers often depend on others to programme their works. Good people skills can help create performance opportunities for your music, and the more opportunities you have, the more you improve as a composer
    
    Benefits:
               • You mean, besides untold wealth? The better your people/networking skills, the easier it is for people who can help your career (performers, music programmers) to think of you when they make decisions about the music they want to programme. I believe that all successful composers are good composers, but not all good composers are successful, where "success" is measured by the number and kinds of commissions, performances, and public exposure a composer has. I suspect that the main reason for this difference is the disparity in people/networking skills among good composers.
    
    Challenges:
               • One of the things that attracted me to composition was that you could practice it in private, without anyone knowing what you are up to until you actually finish a piece and get it performed. If you are shy by nature, the privacy and solitary nature of composition may be comforting. It is a challenge for naturally shy people develop better social skills (and yes, I speak from my own experience). However, it is possible, with concerted effort.
    
    But even so, I still hate having to make a "cold call" (telephone someone I don't know); it makes me so profoundly uncomfortable that, for the most part, I avoid it altogether.
    
    E-mail is a bit safer, though. Every now and then I will E-mail someone about the possibility of performing my music, and, while I don't enjoy doing this at all, it pains me considerably less than making phone calls, and it actually leads to positive results at times. Sometimes it doesn't result in a performance, but the person is nice enough to respond with complementary comments about my music, and, since we composers often do not receive very much positive feedback about our music (but this is why having the courage of your convictions is important; you have to believe in what you do, and not rely on others to validate our music for us), occasional encouragement is a good thing.
    

What about talent? Where does that fit in the makeup of a good composer?

"Talent" is an interesting and difficult-to-pinpoint concept, and, since this is already very possibly my longest blog entry ever, I will answer that question at greater length in a separate blog entry.

But briefly, I never speculate as to the relative talent levels of my students; I think every student I have had has sufficient talent to become a good composer if they are willing to work at it, hence my emphasis on the value of the work ethic.

Finally, in their comments to the deliberately-provocative concluding statement from my Inspiration, Perspiration, and Perspicacity blog post, Kim and Kate both suggested that the subjectivity of the term "good" in connection to composition makes it problematic to label a composer as lazy.

I agree. There are many compositions that some people consider to be "good" and others don't, and given the inherent subjectivity in the evaluation of artistic quality, it is unfair and harsh to classify composers as "lazy" just because they write music you don't like.

But, that said, it strikes me that the best student composers I have taught — and by "best," I mean those that composed works that I thought best demonstrated the values I stress when I teach (cohesiveness, development, imagination, finding the right balance between the expected and unexpected, and many, many more!), AND whose work seemed most highly regarded by classmates (deduced from comments class members make when critiquing each other's work every week), tend, almost without exception, to be the students who are the least complacent about their compositions. Simply put, some students seem to be more easily satisfied with their music than others, but students who strive the most diligently to improve their music generally succeed in doing so.

So, while I agree that it is a unnecessarily harsh to classify anyone as lazy, I will say that complacency stands in the way of our development as artists (point 9 above).

Also — on the point of subjectivity when it comes to evaluating art — I don't believe the evaluation process for art is completely (or even mostly) subjective. The degree to which there is consensus on what constitutes "greatness" in works of art over many centuries would suggest that there is something objective about it too, although it is culture-specific as well (another interesting topic, but for a different day!).

There is indisputably some subjectivity involved in evaluating art; many knowledgeable people agree that Beethoven wrote numerous masterpieces, but some may feel otherwise. I consider the Beatles to be the greatest pop artists ever (and Rolling Stone agrees with me), but some people can't stand them. Greatness in art, like beauty, is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.

Some have even suggested that The Emperor's New Clothes effect — in which disreputable artistic "authorities" attempt to fleece the public into believing that crap is actually art —is in play. A Google search for "emperor's new clothes in art" generated 4.76 million hits for me.

I don't doubt that this effect exists, and I have had this reaction several times in my life while listening to music or looking at art.

However, it seems to me that the evaluation process for musical art is actually more objective than subjective, at least within cultures; this explains the degree to which there is agreement on the "greatness" of particular artworks. It also may explain why, when students perform their compositions-in-progress for one another in our classes, it is common for several people to pick up on the same thing in critiquing each other's work.