Do you ever sing in the shower, whistle a tune while you work, or hum bits of a melody while walking on the beach? It could be any melody you’ve heard somewhere, sometime, that somehow seeped into your memory.

If your answer is yes, chances are that you enjoy music and have the makings of a true music lover. Maybe you can’t read a note of music, have never had a music lesson or attended a music appreciation class. Maybe you’ve never attended a concert or an opera performance.

It doesn’t matter. If you hum, whistle, or tap your feet to a tune – Christmas or otherwise – you probably take to music instinctively.

Leonard Bernstein, America’s most famous symphony conductor, used to tell his audiences of young people that listening to music was like a ride on a roller coaster, full of laughter and good humor, making us have a good time and making us smile.

Back in the 1950s and ’60s, Bernsteine told his CBS TV audiences and readers that music was more than mere notes. You have to “put clothes on them” – dress them up appropriately to give them meaning. Otherwise, it’s like wearing a sweater to go swimming, he said.

It’s all about making choices, Bernstein advised. A composer chooses a plan to move the notes, blending and mixing them with the proper instrumentation. A composer can choose to tell stories, paint pictures or portray emotions. It doesn’t matter what the intent is. “The meaning of music,” said Bernstein, is all in “the way it makes you feel when you hear it.”

Think about jazz music for a moment. Jazz musicians I know tell stories, testify, preach, or just fool around with notes. Playing with melodic inventiveness and rhythmic force, they shower me with enormous energy. Their notes synchronize with rich rhythms and heavenly harmonies, offering mellifluous textures of sound and wonderful variations.

A fellow jazz musician from Port Townsend, guitarist Chuck Easton, recently told me that when he teaches young children, he always advises them that all good music must have four elements – good tempo, good tone, good ideas and good notes.

The right beat (tempo) is essential, he tells them, or the song dies. Good tone adds the color good music needs and requires a proper blending of distinctive “voices” – like the muted whispers of trumpeter Miles Davis against the haunting refrains of alto saxophonist Charlie Parker or the airiness of tenor saxophonist Lester Young.

And a song must “go somewhere” to mean much to a listener or induce a magical moment. So good ideas are important to the performer or composer.

Of course, good notes are essential. Wrong notes jar the ear and reduce the enjoyment.

Put those four elements together properly and you have magical moments of listening pleasure. I think Duke Ellington said it well, in just 11 words – “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing.”

Now, think about how those four elements of good music – good tempo, tone, ideas, and notes – can carry over into other aspects of our lives. Good tempo reminds me how important it is for all of us to manage our time properly at work, at home, and at play – how we all need to focus our energy properly to achieve our personal goals.

Good tone reminds me of the importance of quality of life, the value of warmth in our relationships and the texture of our experiences. Good ideas give us purpose, help us set and drive personal goals and generate important personal qualities like spirituality and religious conviction.

And good notes are those little things in our lives that may not mean much, but collectively affect everything else. Specific behaviors like a well-constructed sentence, or the use of silence while others talk, or the smile we display when interacting with others, or the particulars of a business plan, or the individual ingredients we choose for a recipe, or specific courses we take to build an education and career.

Chuck’s musical metaphor works for me. Perhaps it can work for you. Think of life as comparable to good music. We all need good tempo, tone, ideas, and the right “notes” to live well.

Like Leonard Bernstein said: “Life without music is unthinkable. Music without life is academic.” Enjoy music – year-round. And don’t forget Shakespeare’s wise words: “If music be the food of love, play on.”

Columnist Robert Brake believes that music is one of our great healers. Reach him at oobear@pacifier.com