Listening Techniques?

[m1469]

I actually am not sure where to put this topic.  I am looking to bounce some thoughts and ideas off of people on the subject of "listening techniques."  This is a subject which has actually fascinated me very deeply, though I did not think of it in those two words until minutes ago.  Recently I have been dedicating time and effort, talking with individuals who are non-musicians, about their relationship with music.  I have really been thinking deeply about their points of view, wanting to understand their thoughts, and related subjects.

One person relates especially to the lyrics of 80's music, another is compelled by music especially based on how it makes her feel when she listens, not based so much on the surface of how it sounds, and one of my little students in response to my question to him about why he likes music says "Because it sounds good."

Of course, it's got me pondering, including thoughts I've already had for Centuries.  I respect that music is something unique for each individual and I don't aim to take that away, but I have come to realize that I do not necessarily think of music -at least not these days- in any of the terms described above.  For me, if I relate any of those comments to a vocal language, I kind of feel as though it's actually missing the ultimate point(s).  Speaking a language is not just about making somebody feel something, speaking is not just about a language sounding good, and relating to the words ... well, maybe there's something there, but not all music has words.  

Personally, I think more and more that music is about ideas, and that it's ultimately desirable for ideas to be presented even in music without words - and, if not having a specific idea be communicated, to at least spark a person in some direction that includes their own conscious involvement in ideas.  For me, listening to music is not just about how it sounds on a surface level (oh, did you hear that?  They used a V7 instead of a V, how very interesting  ). And, I do not think (anymore) that music is about making somebody or trying to make somebody feel something ... for me, it would be more about lifting one's consciousness of life to a higher level - perhaps this can happen through feelings, but feelings/emotions are not the ultimate point.

Even many (most?) Classical Music Majors don't necessarily enjoy Aural Skills and the related ideas behind it - it *easily* seems dry and intellectual, and often even irrelevant to why a person is actually a musician in the first place.

So, I am just trying to ponder more deeply, how does a person develop their listening abilities when it comes to music?  Including music without words?  How do you do that?

[thalbergmad]

I think you think too much Foxy.

Just lie back with a large beer and simply listen.

That is all there is to it.

Thal

[m1469]

.

[thalbergmad]

Well, if that is the case, I can only suggest more beers.

Simple really.

Thal

[m1469]

Well, if that is the case, I can only suggest more beers.

Simple really.

Thal

Well, I am thinking even less as a listener (though it includes that) and more as a performer.  As a performer, it is my aim to convey ideas, so I will of course think deeply on it.  As an educator, I also have a deep desire to help individuals develop their relationships with music, to help them individually while also supporting the dedicated craft of music-making in ways that are deeper than the surface.

[dima_76557]

So, I am just trying to ponder more deeply, how does a person develop their listening abilities when it comes to music?  Including music without words?  How do you do that?

At different times, different things get more attention, probably depending on mood and/or purpose of the listening experience. Limiting this to piano music, I can deliberately focus on the following at random, separately or combined:
1 ) listen for timbre and touch - what other instrument does this sound like?
2 ) listen for shape of melody and intonation techniques, phrasing
3 ) listen for articulation
4 ) listen for (changes in) harmonies
5 ) listen for polyphonic lines
6 ) listen for dynamic development
7 ) listen for pulse and rhythmic patterns
8 ) listen for architecture, form
9 ) "listen" (requires a special antenna) for the general mood in both the music and the performer(s)

[coda_colossale]

And, I do not think (anymore) that music is about making somebody or trying to make somebody feel something ... for me, it would be more about lifting one's consciousness of life to a higher level - perhaps this can happen through feelings, but feelings/emotions are not the ultimate point.

I think art is all about an absolute devotion to emotions (or hormones if you're Nihilist), to the point of losing ones conscience, cognitive capabilities or even consciousness. A fake state of ecstasy, that I believe is your -high level- is the ultimate purpose of nearly everything a human being enjoys. Sex, religion, alcohol, drugs, poetry, music, even a movie or football game...

Though practically everyone mostly listens to music for the non "meta-physical" qualities, like the first 8 that are listed above, that is not really listening.

[m1469]

I think art is all about an absolute devotion to emotions (or hormones if you're Nihilist), to the point of losing ones conscience, cognitive capabilities or even consciousness. A fake state of ecstasy, that I believe is your -high level- is the ultimate purpose of nearly everything a human being enjoys. Sex, religion, alcohol, drugs, poetry, music, even a movie or football game...

I agree that people experience it this way for a long time, or for different reasons, but I do not agree that this is its fundamental value in absolute terms and the totality of all that it can ever be.  Yes, art, including music, as we experience it humanly is derived from association with ideas, with cultural experiences, and with whatever we personally associate it with.  But, to relate it back to language, a language is not a devotion strictly to emotions, and the association with anything as that is simply an association -or a crutch, even- because we need to associate it that way for whatever reason we need it for at the time.  It is, in many respects, a symbol but not the thing.

As to your last sentence, I am also not speaking of "metaphysical" or, rather, as I believe you actually mean it, "mystical" qualities.  I am actually talking really practically to core of humanity.  And, I have thought for a time now, about how a piece of music written hundreds of years ago can actually be modernly applicable - and it's not based as much on the sound of it, nor, in some ways, even the precise event that might have been occurring while it was composed.  It remains applicable when it speaks of human nature, or to the nature of living/life.  To write a symphony about the devastation of an entire race being brutally murdered, for example, speaks of devastation (and a disgusting (to me) development in a narrowness of how humans choose to treat each other) and not just about a race being murdered, and humans currently know devastation in various ways.  But, for me, the point is not to stop at the emotion of devastation, nor is it to stop at a possible outcome of the emotion of "comfort" regarding devastation, it is bigger than that and can include an awareness beyond an emotion.

[dima_76557]

it is bigger than that and can include an awareness beyond an emotion.

In this respect and for those with stamina, I highly recommend Leonard Bernstein's so-called "Norton Lectures" ("The Unanswered Question" series) on the philosophy of beauty in music. There are 6 of them on YouTube:
The Unanswered Question 1973 1 Musical Phonology Bernstein Norton
The Unanswered Question 1973 2 Musical Syntax Bernstein Norton
The Unanswered Question 1973 3 Musical Semantics Bernstein Norton
The Unanswered Question 1973 4 The Delights & Dangers of Ambiguity Bernstein Norton
The Unanswered Question 1973 5 The XXth Century Crisis Bernstein Norton
The Unanswered Question 1973 6 The Poetry Of Earth Bernstein Norton

[goldentone]

Since my initiation into discerning specific communication in music, and I speak here of sans words, I don't have any specific technique I've developed, except repeatedly immersing myself in the music in an inner search for its light.  The root of my shift is connected to a soul expansion that began in my early 30s.  I'm not sure if there is any technique for this aside from the affinity of the searching soul.  What you seek you will find.

Listening to music because of "the way it makes us feel" is not the stuff of profundity, but that may just be a less cognizant expression and recognition--a child perspective--of the need for beauty that we can never divorce from as inseparable in music.  Beauty is the breath of music.  The communication of ideas, revelation, and truth we might conceive as the adult realm.  To go from words in music, to music without words, is like music splitting into another art.  In this latter sense there is a transcendence where music alone has become and absorbed language itself.    

[Bob]

The first couple posts are interesting.  I remember mentioning that idea to a principal once.

I wanted the kids to just listen to a piece of music.  That was it.  Not write about it.  And esp. not write about it while it was being played.  The principal wanted them to answer questions about the music as it was being played.  My reasoning?  They're not using their brain for listening.  Their using their brain to think and generate text.  Even if I asked questions later, I didn't want them to know that ahead of time.  And I really didn't want to direct their attention too much.  Whatever they hear is up to them.  If they never experienced a style of music, why am I getting in the way or forcing them not to pay attention to the music?

[gustaaavo]

Bernstein´s lectures are indeed marvelous and relate fundamentally to the topic at hand (indeed, spoiler coming, the "unanswered question" is precisely "Whither Music?").
I have the same "problem" as the OP in that I feel it necessary to be rational about everything. And, since I devote a huge amount of my time to music, I've tried countless times, without success, to explain myself WHY.
If I were to expose my thoughts on the topic, there woud be two possible outcomes: I would simply not post anything, or I'd write a big incoherent ramble.
So why write at all? I want to show you the ideas of some geniuses which I've found useful (in fact, these points of view have been exposed in the thread already):
- Zimerman (from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCzabFlmIlQ): "organizing people's emotions in time".
- Schnabel (from "My Life and Music", Dover): "The only medium by which to establish contact with musical ideas are tones. [...] By the art of music I understand here the comparatively very young art of absolute music, and never applied or auxiliary music. This absolute, autonomous, independent music has developed into what is perhaps the most exclusive medium for the spiritual exaltation of the active individual in an intimate, private sphere of personal experience."
- Bernstein (this will be long but surely worthwhile; from "The Joy of Music", Amadeus Press): "Ultimately one must simply accept the loving fact that people enjoy listening to organized sound (certain organized sounds, anyway); that this enjoyment can take the form of all kinds of responses from animal excitement to spiritual exaltation; and that people who can organize sounds so as to evoke the most exalted responses are commonly called geniuses. These axioms can neither be denied nor explained. But, in the great tradition of man burrowing through the darkness with his mind, hitting his head on cave walls, and sometimes perceiving a pinpoint of light, we can at least try to explain; in fact, there's no stopping us.
[...] has anyone ever successfully "explained" the Eroica? Can anyone explain in mere prose the wonder of one note following or coinciding with another so that we feel that it's exactly how those notes had to be? Of course not. No matter what rationalists we may profess to be, we are stopped cold at the border of this mystic area. It is not too much to say mystic or even magic: no art lover can be agnostic when the chips are down. If you love music, you are a believer, however dialectically you try to wriggle out of it."
- Gould (this quote would be really huge, so if you would've read it, you might as well enjoy the whole thing): https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/glenngould/028010-4020.06-e.html

[m1469]

Thank you for the comments and for the links and quotes, I am taking it all in!  But, this is something I could respond to immediately and helps me remember some things.

The first couple posts are interesting.  I remember mentioning that idea to a principal once.

I wanted the kids to just listen to a piece of music.  That was it.  Not write about it.  And esp. not write about it while it was being played.  The principal wanted them to answer questions about the music as it was being played.  My reasoning?  They're not using their brain for listening.  Their using their brain to think and generate text.  Even if I asked questions later, I didn't want them to know that ahead of time.  And I really didn't want to direct their attention too much.  Whatever they hear is up to them.  If they never experienced a style of music, why am I getting in the way or forcing them not to pay attention to the music?

Teaching children myself, I actually do really understand what you are talking about.  I understand it not just for the sake of the children, but as the idea in general, too.  At the same time, remembering what it was like to sit as an adult in studio class and concerts for the first time, and to hear everybody around me talk about music in a way that I just couldn't and did not actually understand, was really disheartening.  I could understand that they knew something about listening, or identifying and naming sounds, that I simply did not, and I wanted to!  However, I did not truly know how to get there.  It was one thing to be able to do theory and understand concepts, and it was one thing to sit in Aural Skills class and sing solfege or take dictation, etc., but to sit through a performance and somehow link my classes to what I experienced as music was completely something else.

To be honest, I didn't necessarily even hear bigger things like repeats of major sections (which I think would be mind blowing for some of you to try to imagine what that would be like NOT to be able to hear) because I was taking in SO much information and because what I experienced when I listened to music was SO big, that by the time something came around again I was just swimming.  I remember, it was just like a big wash of sound going over/through me, and it wasn't necessarily discernible in the ways I believed it was supposed to be.  The point is, I would've actually appreciated something to anchor me a bit, for there to be something to listen specifically for, to enhance my ability to hear more than a wash of sound and to experience more than "feelings" (and those I turned mega up because I felt the need to turn my antenna on full blast to try to compensate for not having words intellectually).

I don't know.  If there is somebody who does not speak the language you are talking and in some ways never heard it before (I had almost no experience with Classical Music before University), to at least give them one word to listen for within a sentence helps to give perspective to the rest, I think.  Like, "if you can hear it, listen for the word Cat.  CAT.  Cat.  CAT.  Listen for the Cat.  If you don't hear anything else in this sentence, hear the word CAT."

[outin]

For me there are countless of ways to listen to music...some are analytical as those listed by Dima. At the other extreme there's not actually "listening", but just letting the music go right into the deeper (primitive?) parts of the brain. The pleasure of the former is more intellectual one while the latter is more like any physical pleasure. Music for me can act like a drug and sometimes I even get addicted.

[j_menz]

I think you think too much Foxy.

Just lie back with a large beer and simply listen.

That is all there is to it.

Thal

Probably wine for me, but otherwise in complete agreement.

Some of you people make it seem so much like bloody hard work! 

[faulty_damper]

When I listen to music, I'm listening to the ideas that are being communicated.  If the performer(s) fail to communicate those ideas or if the execution/interpretation is poor, then that is not music.  Music is a language and as a musician, I immediately understand and comprehend it even on first hearing.

Non-musicians, on the other hand, focus on listening to the aesthetics - how it sounds - without knowing what the ideas are or understanding them.  How a non-musician becomes a musician is similar to how a non-English speaker becomes an English speaker.  How that process happens, I have only limited ideas.  However, there is a heavy emphasis on emotional response.  Without this emotional response, there doesn't seem to be any other way to feel the music.  And without feeling, there doesn't seem to be any way to understand it.

[ted]

I conjecture that music is completely abstract sound which communicates nothing, and that meaning is imposed on it by the individual listening brain. These meanings vary from person to person, and even from day to day for the same listener. Such meanings as appear to exist collectively do so through conditioned social and historical habit and are neither necessary nor sufficient. I do not see music as a language in the same way as mathematics or English are languages, talking about very specific things, of invariant meaning over all listeners or readers.

Sometimes my imposition of meaning on music is spontaneous, involuntary, mystical and visionary, but it is also possible to consciously impose meanings while listening, and this is a process I have begun to explore more often in late middle-age, principally because it enables me to enjoy music whose traditional, collective association I dislike. It continues to surprise me how many musicians listen analytically. While I can see merit in doing so if one is studying a particular piece, or a particular sort of historical music, to me it is rather like attempting to capture the beauty of a rose by precisely measuring its petals.

I recall you and I had this discussion years ago, m1469, parhaps more than once, and more or less agreed to disagree. As to drink, no, even one drink obliterates my propensity for visionary experience. It's a bit like listening to music while driving, I cannot do that either. Might be just the job for some people though, and good luck to them.

[j_menz]

I conjecture that music is completely abstract sound which communicates nothing, and that meaning is imposed on it by the individual listening brain. These meanings vary from person to person, and even from day to day for the same listener. Such meanings as appear to exist collectively do so through conditioned social and historical habit and are neither necessary nor sufficient. I do not see music as a language in the same way as mathematics or English are languages, talking about very specific things, of invariant meaning over all listeners or readers.

I don't entirely agree here, on two counts. Firstly, whilst the listener certainly imposes their own meaning on music, I still believe that there is some underlying meaning there, or at least a stimulus to meaning.

The other count is that I don't accept that English (or any other human language) has an invariant meaning to all listeners or readers. Partly that comes from explicit training in actually trying to create such usage, in contracts as an example, and seeing the difficulties and impossibilities; but also from the reading of literature - poetry especially - where meaning is fluid, ambiguous and very much akin to music in many respects.

It continues to surprise me how many musicians listen analytically .... to me it is rather like attempting to capture the beauty of a rose by precisely measuring its petals.

  Quite!

[m1469]

Ok, I am better understanding what I am after.  I am currently conducting interviews with individuals, and I am about a handful in and already my mind is expanding in ways I didn't realize it would.  I like it!  I am doing this in part because I want to get to the heart of what makes music meaningful for people, and I am especially interested to potentially bridge individuals who do not listen to Classical music but who seriously love (their kind of) music, to that which is lovable about Classical music, and I just know there is a truth about humankind involved in the equation.

[outin]

The other count is that I don't accept that English (or any other human language) has an invariant meaning to all listeners or readers.

Exactly. Language and the formation of meanings are as complicated to analyse and understand as experiencing music.

[dima_76557]

It continues to surprise me how many musicians listen analytically. While I can see merit in doing so if one is studying a particular piece, or a particular sort of historical music, to me it is rather like attempting to capture the beauty of a rose by precisely measuring its petals.

The last sentence sounds a bit like a misunderstanding of why some people listen analytically because they never intend to "capture the beauty"; they just accept that as it is. Since m1469's query was about techniques, I'd like to point out the following:

Why would people listen analytically?

Even if one is not a professional musician, learning to listen analytically, especially to Classical Music, enhances the lying-on-the-sofa-with-a-beer experience a thousandfold. The Music becomes even more beautiful than it already is. Instead of being a Consumer, you start participating more actively in the Re-creation of what the Composer put down. The peak of the listening experience, IMHO, is when you can listen to it all like a conductor and still enjoy the aspects that make it so appealing for the layman.

An analogy: It's just like being in love with a wonderful person - you don't simply sit back and indulge in watching, listening to, touching that person; you want to find out more and more every day about that person's inner world to enrich your perceptions.

[outin]

An analogy: It's just like being in love with a wonderful person - you don't simply sit back and indulge in watching, listening to, touching that person; you want to find out more and more every day about that person's inner world to enrich your perceptions.

But not all people do, here's one example of individual differences. Intellectual curiosity and willingness to find out more about things does not seem to be a universal feature in humans.

[ted]

I concede that English was a poorer example, j_menz, than mathematics regarding invariance, especially Finnegans Wake and most poetry ! As to your points, Dima, the inclusive "and" always being preferable to the exclusive "or", I must also admit my own lack, knowing little about either theory or classical music. Once again, I appear to have mistakenly generalised from my very peculiar personal stance. Never mind, it gets a few people thinking if nothing else.

[thalbergmad]

Some of you people make it seem so much like bloody hard work! 

Indeed, some on this thread no doubt work up a good sweat just by listening.

No need to go to the gym.

If listening required any effort, I would not do it.

Thal

[swagmaster420x]

Indeed, some on this thread no doubt work up a good sweat just by listening.

No need to go to the gym.

If listening required any effort, I would not do it.

Thal

Doesn't it take, in some cases at least, deliberate involvement, which is effort?