Analogies

Music and food have this in common: there is always a taste to satisfy. In music, the equivalent of fast food is the summer hit, a very simple piece of music that plays almost everywhere. It is precisely its simplicity, hammered and endlessly rephrased, that makes it hard to dislike: a good share of the best-known music owes its success to that simplicity, at once a strength and a weakness. It works, for anyone not looking to go deeper.

There is also, in both fields, a depth and more refined tastes, and the comparison between chords and flavours holds up well. A good dish balances its flavours: a little salt, not too much; fat as a carrier of taste; acidity to cut through that fat and keep some lightness, without attacking harshly; a little bitterness for a depth that umami extends. Sweetness often pairs with all the rest, and the best dishes bring it all together, with plays of texture and a relentless length on the palate.

All of that has its equivalent in music. The major chord would be sweetness; the minor, salt. A seventh chord, or a slight dissonance, would be acidity. More complex chords, different key signatures, bring their own flavours and aromas. Tempo, rhythm, timbre play the role of textures. And a piece has an attack, a middle, an end, just as a dish is tasted from the first bite to the aftertaste.

What links refinement in both fields is combining all these parameters with sincerity and precision, until an emotion is felt, whether tasting a dish or a piece of music. Balance is the key in both cases, with the same taste for slight dissonance, discovery, originality. There are surely many other bridges to draw between these fields; this one is only a start.