The human form has been the basis of art since art’s beginnings.  Artistic expression through the human body has consistently been used by artists to help us understand ourselves and the world around us—from the prehistoric paintings in the Lascaux caves, the beautiful sculptures of ancient Greece and Rome, the massive frescos of the high renaissance, to the contemporary paintings of the twentieth century.  The ancient Greeks even used the human form as a basis for their architecture—a technique that continued up to and through the high renaissance.  Religion led mankind to believe that an almighty God created us in his image.  This made mankind believe it was the most important species on the planet, as it was just one step from the perfection that created it.  Equipped with this “God complex”, it stands to reason that everything mankind creates will be created in the image of mankind.  “Like father, like son”, so to speak.  In coming to understand this, I was finally able to understand my fascination with music.
My entire life, ever since I was capable of hearing, music has had an overwhelming effect on my feelings—every note, chord, beat, harmony, and lyric impacting my thoughts and actions.  It has always been able to bring out in me the deepest and truest of my emotions.  I’d always wondered how this phenomenon be explained; how music can always lead me to my rawest feelings, and help me to experience the very essence of my being—the deepest, darkest parts of who I am.  I’ve come to find the answer exists not only in the music or the musician, but also in the instruments themselves.  In both their aesthetic beauty, and their functional design. 
	The instruments are the middleman between the musician and the music; the gateway to expression.  These instruments seem to posses an expressive quality equally powerful to that of the body manipulating them.  Every element of it—key, string, valve, space, line, curve—designed in the image of the body that created it.  Each piece working together to fill the air with endless combinations of sound—vibrations that connect our instinct to our intellect, and seem to make sense out of the random chaos that is our existence.