You can learn a lot from listening

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about listening to music. I always think about music, and because of the public health crisis I’ve been thinking more about music than usual. But I’ve mainly been thinking about listening to music recently. How to better follow music. How to better notice what’s going on in a piece of music. How to listen with more detail.

I think a lot of those things can be improved simply from listening. Listening with some intent and purpose, as well as listening to notice things. Trying to pay attention to different things in music, and listening to pieces of music multiple times to really make sure you can follow them, can improve those things.

It’s a bit of an experiment I’m doing with myself. I’m going to take different pieces of music and listen to them multiple times and see what I can pick up simply from listening.

But the catch is that I’m not listening to analyze them in the exact same way I’d analyze the sheet music. I’m trying to listen simply as a listener. As someone that enjoys music. Not as someone that writes music. That’s going to be a struggle, but I think it’ll help me better appreciate certain types of music because I won’t be thinking, “oh yeah okay that’s a pentatonic riff. The song’s in 4/4. There are all of these instruments and the singer is mostly singing the first, second, and third scale degrees.”

I’m trying to turn that off, but still pay attention to where the music goes; to listen more broadly.

What I’m guessing will happen is I’ll start to listen to the form of the song more. I’ll listen for sections and big changes, motifs, and how different ideas are changed and varied.

Those are all things any listener of music can pick up. And those are things that are present in all forms of music.

I’ll post results in a later post. I think you can pick up a lot simply from listening.

ISJ