JTC
PFM Villager...
Without getting all nerdy about it, have any of you ever spent any time thinking about the best way to approach listening to music? Maybe this sounds a little bit like 'musical appreciation' at school but nonetheless I think it's worth giving some thought to.
Maybe we all listen in different ways, I'm intrigued by what parts of the music that you 'zoom in' on, or perhaps you try to swallow the musical 'whole' without concentrating on any individual musical themes and let it wash over you?
For my own part, I always seem to pick up on the bass and drums first, and the texture and timbre of the instruments secondly. It's odd, but on vocal music I rarely pay attention to what the words are saying, mostly prefering to perceive them kind of like another kind of instrument. In sonic terms, I like the contrast between music and space, and always seem to take more readily to songs which show a little 'light' between the sound. I also seem to gravitate toward music which is formed around less normal chords, but still find difficulty with atonal or free tonal music, as I don't think my 'pitch' is sophisticated enough to reconstruct weird chord sequences and modal 'out there' excursions into something resembling an enjoyable ditty.
Maybe I'm odd. However, I would be interested to hear how others listen - and anyone's thoughts on whether spending effort into developing one's listening abilities should be a conscious or subconscious thing (i.e. should be try to train ourselves to be better listeners and how should we go about it, or should we try to develop our listening abilities by a sort of osmotic effect, by just exposing ourselves to more and more music?).
Apologies for philosophical muso navel gazing, it is, after all, Thursday.
jtc
Maybe we all listen in different ways, I'm intrigued by what parts of the music that you 'zoom in' on, or perhaps you try to swallow the musical 'whole' without concentrating on any individual musical themes and let it wash over you?
For my own part, I always seem to pick up on the bass and drums first, and the texture and timbre of the instruments secondly. It's odd, but on vocal music I rarely pay attention to what the words are saying, mostly prefering to perceive them kind of like another kind of instrument. In sonic terms, I like the contrast between music and space, and always seem to take more readily to songs which show a little 'light' between the sound. I also seem to gravitate toward music which is formed around less normal chords, but still find difficulty with atonal or free tonal music, as I don't think my 'pitch' is sophisticated enough to reconstruct weird chord sequences and modal 'out there' excursions into something resembling an enjoyable ditty.
Maybe I'm odd. However, I would be interested to hear how others listen - and anyone's thoughts on whether spending effort into developing one's listening abilities should be a conscious or subconscious thing (i.e. should be try to train ourselves to be better listeners and how should we go about it, or should we try to develop our listening abilities by a sort of osmotic effect, by just exposing ourselves to more and more music?).
Apologies for philosophical muso navel gazing, it is, after all, Thursday.
jtc