How to Listen to Music
It's a ridiculous title, I know. When you actually consider it, it takes on new dimensions, much like the music we enjoy.
You control what goes into your ears. That is a simple statement you can absorb. You control what you hear. You can tune out things. You can ignore things when you're a bystander in traffic. That phrase every exhausted mother has used, selective hearing, is quite real. You also determine what comes pumping through your headphones and what you chose to focus on. My first piece of advice requires a Zen approach. Listen with no expectation. I don't care if it's "Stairway to Heaven," "99 Problems," or Beethoven's 9th. Listen without expectation. When you do this you will hear things you didn't hear before.
Hours and hours have gone into producing, engineering, and playing the music to which you're listening. It's foolish to assume you'll catch it all on first listen. That's just not real. This requires active participation on your part. By listening without expectation you'll catch the flute on Lauryn Hill's tracks that sound like a bird in the trees. You'll catch the sound of Steve Cropper's fingers sliding up and down the fretboard on Otis' "Dock of the Bay." You'll hear the echo and sustain of John Bonham's drumkit on Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks." Listen privately with a good pair of headphones or floor speakers and you'll hear things you didn't know were there in the first place.
Listen with the intent of hearing only one instrument at a time. This can be a large undertaking if you're listening to an orchestra or big band jazz. Let's just assume you're listening to a quartet. Focus on just the bass. Listen to the player's feel for it. Does the player have a unique phrasing? A unique way of playing certain notes together? The vocals. Does this singer do something interesting? Growls, yee hees, barks, screams, falsettos.. all of this makes a group part of what it is in totality. What do the instrumentalists do when they're not playing? What about solos... do they play behind the beat, slower time? Do they move quickly through? Are they calling back to the initial melody or going in a different direction? All of these are important questions.
If you're into hip hop, a few good questions might concern how the MC compiles verses. Early rap records had a simple rhyme scheme. Later on, MCs could pile rhymes on top of rhymes, or link words together in the same sentence. Truly gifted MCs could call back in the middle of a sentence then come back to a refrain, not unlike a jazz soloist.
And then the beat. Early boom bap is much different from sample-heavy G-Funk. Does the artist sample? Is the band playing live instruments? Isolate those sounds in your ear. Pay attention to the impact those particular sounds have.
Does a particular track require good headphones to absorb in totality? Sometimes that is the case. I've built an entire playlist around this.
Another important thing is to listen to music you don't normally dig on. This is good for your emotional development and creativity. I understand if you don't want to. Curated playlists pull us away from this, but it's a fine idea if you want to grow. So...
You control what goes into your ears. That is a simple statement you can absorb. You control what you hear. You can tune out things. You can ignore things when you're a bystander in traffic. That phrase every exhausted mother has used, selective hearing, is quite real. You also determine what comes pumping through your headphones and what you chose to focus on. My first piece of advice requires a Zen approach. Listen with no expectation. I don't care if it's "Stairway to Heaven," "99 Problems," or Beethoven's 9th. Listen without expectation. When you do this you will hear things you didn't hear before.
Hours and hours have gone into producing, engineering, and playing the music to which you're listening. It's foolish to assume you'll catch it all on first listen. That's just not real. This requires active participation on your part. By listening without expectation you'll catch the flute on Lauryn Hill's tracks that sound like a bird in the trees. You'll catch the sound of Steve Cropper's fingers sliding up and down the fretboard on Otis' "Dock of the Bay." You'll hear the echo and sustain of John Bonham's drumkit on Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks." Listen privately with a good pair of headphones or floor speakers and you'll hear things you didn't know were there in the first place.
Listen with the intent of hearing only one instrument at a time. This can be a large undertaking if you're listening to an orchestra or big band jazz. Let's just assume you're listening to a quartet. Focus on just the bass. Listen to the player's feel for it. Does the player have a unique phrasing? A unique way of playing certain notes together? The vocals. Does this singer do something interesting? Growls, yee hees, barks, screams, falsettos.. all of this makes a group part of what it is in totality. What do the instrumentalists do when they're not playing? What about solos... do they play behind the beat, slower time? Do they move quickly through? Are they calling back to the initial melody or going in a different direction? All of these are important questions.
If you're into hip hop, a few good questions might concern how the MC compiles verses. Early rap records had a simple rhyme scheme. Later on, MCs could pile rhymes on top of rhymes, or link words together in the same sentence. Truly gifted MCs could call back in the middle of a sentence then come back to a refrain, not unlike a jazz soloist.
And then the beat. Early boom bap is much different from sample-heavy G-Funk. Does the artist sample? Is the band playing live instruments? Isolate those sounds in your ear. Pay attention to the impact those particular sounds have.
Does a particular track require good headphones to absorb in totality? Sometimes that is the case. I've built an entire playlist around this.
Another important thing is to listen to music you don't normally dig on. This is good for your emotional development and creativity. I understand if you don't want to. Curated playlists pull us away from this, but it's a fine idea if you want to grow. So...
- Listen with no expectation.
- Listen to isolate instruments. Listen to what's played and not played.
- Does the track demand headphones?
- Listen to music you don't like.
Do this and you'll appreciate and absorb more than you ever thought you could.
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