How Music Understands You Before You Do

The feeling with no name

Some emotions arrive like thunderstorms—demanding, impossible to ignore. Others slip in quietly, settling into the spaces between thoughts like morning mist. And then there are those that exist beyond language entirely, feelings so subtle they live in the realm between instinct and awareness, unnamed yet achingly familiar.

These are the emotions that music finds first.

That quiet moment of recognition—when a melody suddenly gives voice to something you didn't even know you were feeling—is where my deepest relationship with music began.

When a simple etude changed everything

I was thirteen, fingers stumbling through a basic étude by Carcassi. The tablature was modest, unremarkable. I couldn't even read sheet music yet, still preparing for my entrance exam to music high school.

My guitar experience until then had been campfire simple—basic chords, nothing that reached very deep. But that day, something shifted.

As I worked through that humble piece, something stirred inside me that I hadn't known was waiting there. It felt like recognition, as if I'd been unconsciously preparing for this moment without realizing it.

The étude wasn't brilliant or complex. It moved me because it saw me. It reflected a part of myself I hadn't yet learned to name.

In that moment, one thought struck me with startling clarity:

Music understands me before I understand myself.

When technique fades and presence remains

This recognition has returned to me countless times over the years, always following the same pattern. It happens after I've spent enough time with a piece that my hands move without thinking, when technique dissolves into background and I'm simply present—fully present—listening even as I play.

In these moments, the music begins to speak back. It gives voice to sadness I hadn't acknowledged, soothes fears I hadn't named, lifts doubts I didn't know were weighing on me. It doesn't demand clarity; instead, it offers it freely.

The most powerful drug I know

We all crave intensity in our emotional lives. Some people chase it through risk, through chaos, through substances—anything that promises to awaken what feels dormant inside.

For me, music is the strongest drug there is.

Especially when you're not just listening but interpreting, becoming the conduit between composer and moment. You don't simply experience emotion—you become the emotion. When flow takes over, ego dissolves, overthinking quiets, and doubt disappears. All that remains is breath, pulse, and the resonance between your hands and something larger than yourself.

A lifelong love affair with melancholy

Of all the emotions music has helped me understand, I keep returning to melancholy. Not depression—that's different, heavier. I mean that bittersweet tenderness that doesn't need to announce itself, that simply rests and breathes and waits.

The classical guitar seems made for this feeling. Its warmth, its intimate voice, the way it cradles silence without rushing to fill it. The sound itself—wood and string and breath—feels like a sigh you've been holding for years finally finding its way home.

The video: when music does the talking

In my latest video, I've gathered some of the most melancholic guitar pieces I've ever encountered. Each one carries its own shade of that unnamed feeling, its own way of understanding what words cannot touch.

🎥 Watch: https://youtu.be/N0c_n4ugJdE

Nights with Elegie: a seventeen-year-old's companion

One piece in the collection holds particular significance: Johann Kaspar Mertz's Elegie.

I discovered it at seventeen, during a period when uncertainty felt like my constant companion. Every night, I'd play it past midnight, sometimes until I fell asleep with the guitar still in my arms.

I felt displaced then, like I existed somehow outside the world around me. No one in my life seemed to understand the sound I loved so deeply—the voice of the classical guitar. The thought that haunted me was simple and devastating: "Maybe there's no place in the world for me."

Looking back, I can see it was just the fear that comes with youth, the overthinking that happens before experience builds confidence. But at seventeen, those feelings were my entire reality.

Elegie was there every night, understanding without judgment.

The same piece, a decade later

Ten years have passed, and I still play Elegie. But now it brings something different—not pain, but a gentle tenderness that holds space for who I was and who I've become.

When I play it now, I feel both versions of myself present: the girl who was searching, afraid but already in love with something invisible and profound, and the woman who's still searching but with softer hands and a quieter heart.

The piece has become a bridge between these selves, a reminder that our deepest loves often find us long before we understand them.

The paradox of melancholic music

People often assume that melancholic music deepens sadness. For me, it does precisely the opposite.

It grounds me. It clarifies something essential. It makes me feel fully alive in a quiet, reflective, expansive way—as if the music isn't just expressing emotion but actively transforming it.

Perhaps that's the real magic: melancholy, when given proper voice, becomes something else entirely. Not sadness, but a kind of beautiful awareness. A way of being present with the full spectrum of human experience.

Before you know

Maybe this is what makes music uniquely powerful among all art forms. It doesn't wait for you to make sense of what you're feeling. It doesn't require you to have the right words or clear understanding.

It simply meets you exactly where you are—confused, seeking, overwhelmed, or quietly hopeful—and offers something that feels like recognition:

"I know this feeling. I know you."

Before you know yourself.

Thank you for reading, and for allowing music to speak to you wherever you are in your own journey of understanding.

If one of these pieces finds you the way music has found me, I'd love to hear your story.

With love and deep listening, Roberta