on rhtyhm !!

 i've been uninterested in melody recently or not uninterested but found myself less concerned with melody while playing. this is in part mastery, it becomes more subconscious as i move on i find. and i was kind of stoned sitting here like that feels weird. and what feels weird is the difference between how i process melody while playing and rhythm

 i feel like i have deprioritized melody to make room for more thinking about rhythm while i play. melody is a higher level thought than rhythm. You have 12 notes but every moment is an infinitely small point on a line to hit that note, as in our system of harmony is more of a path that you follow but rhythm are the individual steps you take. melody is usually a second order thought rhythm a first

 as in

 when i play there are some things that happen automatically, without language, but melody happens at the exact moment those things become legible, rhythm is almost always an impulse to me, i never count, but i do think what do i harmonize next. i nod my head to the rhythm in the pocket, never the melody.

 when people talk about music i think of it often as layers of dialectics almost

it starts with you. your internal self and body

then it manifests in the physicality of the instrument

then those manifest a series of higher order layers for you to merge thought yourself and the instrument

and in that layer you have melody, rhythm, dissonance, whatever, all these components

and they stack too

but the very first layer beyond the body and instrument is rhythm and without that the link to your self and feeling is gone, it doesn't matter how beautiful the harmonies you have are, the music becomes sterile

 not that melody can't be beautiful, it's just not the bedrock ykwim