Music is patterns

I like writing about listening to music because it’s how music is consumed, but it’s also accessible to more people. Not everyone can play an instrument. Not everyone can produce music or write music. Many more people can listen to music.

So music is patterns.

The analogy of music as a language is tired and old and boring, but it does apply here. In the same way that certain words are reused and sentences have a structure, music has different pieces that are reused and songs have structures. This is something you can listen for.

To put it simply you’re listening for anything that you’ve heard before. Maybe that means you’re trying to see if you can recognize instruments. Maybe that means you’re listening for any repeated material within a song. Maybe you’re listening for if there’s any musical material you’ve heard in other songs. All of those apply here.

All you’re doing is listening for repetition. I often find this helps songs become much more easy to follow. Especially if it’s a genre of music that you don’t listen to often.

This alone can make a lot of classical music more approachable. Sometimes it can sound a little complicated, especially music written after the 1900s, but this idea should help. Music has repetition. At least most music does.

Try to hear that repetition. It might not be super easy at first, but eventually it’ll get easier.

You might not even need to really listen all that hard to hear repetition because of how often music has repetitive ideas.

That’s how I’ve been listening to Paul Hindemith’s string quartets.

They’re often harsh and have a lot of counterpoint, but if I go into listening to them with the idea of, “I’m just listening for if anything repeats”, then I’ll be able to much more easily follow them.

ISJ