Repeated listenings

I’ve been reading What to Listen for in Music by Aaron Copland recently and I wanted to make a post about some ideas from that book.

The book is definitely worth a read if you’ve never read it before.

One thing that he mentions is repeated listenings. It’s really simple, but listening to a song multiple times can teach you a lot about the song.

It’s difficult to get a lot from one single listening. It takes a lot of very focused listening to be able to get much from one single listening. It takes knowing quite a lot about music and takes listening to a whole bunch of music to get much from one single listen.

So what’s the solution?

Simple.

Listen again.

And keep listening until you’ve gotten what you wanted out of the song. You’ll notice more the second time. You’ll notice more the third time. You’ll notice slightly more the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth times as well.

So if you listened to a song once and didn’t really understand it, try listening a few more times.

This becomes difficult if you’re listening to long pieces of music like symphonies, so I suggest using songs or shorter pieces of music to start. Then move on to listening to longer pieces of music if you’re into that.

ISJ