Listening vertically vs. listening horizontally

There are kind of two different ways to pay attention to music. You can listen for the vertical structures and how different instruments interact as one group of notes, or you can listen to each different instrument as it’s own unique line. You can think of this as listening either to the harmony of a song (vertical) or the melody (or melodies plural) of a song (horizontally).

They can help you pay attention to what’s happening in a song.

This works especially well with contrapuntal music (like classical music and jazz) where there are multiple lines going on. For example, if you’re listening to a symphony you can listen to the specific violin line or you can listen to what the harmonies are and how that violin line contributes to them.

Listening for specific instruments can be thought of as listening horizontally because you’re following one specific instrument as it plays. Listening to the specific chord being played would be listening vertically to how everything that’s being played at the same time interacts.

The main difference is where you’re focus is. If you’re normally used to paying attention to just the singer, you’re used to listening horizontally to that specific instrument. What if you tried listening the same way to the guitar part? Or the bass part?

To switch to vertical listening, what if you tried to imagine one beat of a song played by the whole band over and over and over again. One single beat of a song. How would that sound if it was repeated? Then compare that beat to the next beat. Do they sound the same? That’s listening horizontally.

ISJ