Listen for rhythms that line up

When listening to music, one thing you can listen for is whether or not rhythms line up. Rhythm is notes organized in time. I’ve got a YouTube video On Listening | Episode #2 – Rhythm if you’d like to learn more about listening to rhythms.

Some pieces of music will have rhythms that line up with each other. That has one type of sound. It might sound square and even because each instrument is playing the same thing.

Some pieces of music will have many different rhythms that don’t always align. That’ll often sound busier. The texture will be different. It’ll sound a little more chaotic because there’s lots of different things going on at the same time and lots of things that don’t line up. Texture is the combination of different parts being played together.

Listening for this can be difficult, but one thing that’s helped me is trying to listen “vertically.” Imagine that you’re listening to what lines up at one specific moment of time in the music.

ISJ