different ears?

[anda]

this has happened to me for like a thousand times already! i listen to a certain recording, i love it, i decide to play the work in question. so, as i always do, once i start studying, i stop listening to any recordings of that work. weeks later, once the work is learned and i have a pretty clear image of the work, i listen again to the recording that made me wanna play this - and I HATE IT! how is this possible - have i listened with different ears? how can i now absolutely hate a recording i once loved?

has this happened to any of you?

[m1469]

Yes this happens to me in pretty much every case where I spend so much personal time with a piece of music.  I am initially most inspired by the music itself I would suppose, as well as the "strong points" of a performer's expression of it.  But, after I have put in deep thoughts of my own, digested information, it becomes something of it's own to me.  I  become much more sensitive to how I want to hear it and experience it as well as how I do not want to hear and experience it.  As I become ever more familiar with the details, suddenly things just stand out to me more than before.

It is this way with a single piece, but also on a large scale- music in general.  One is not listening with different ears but rather, different expectations and desires and a different understanding altogether .  One's perception of what is taking place and one's reaction to it (really, this is basically all that hearing is in the first place) has changed and evolved.

m1469

[lenny]

also - if you end up still loving the piece after working for hours and hours on it - it proves how great a piece it is.

on the other hand, it can also reveal how empty some pieces are.

[richard w]

I also think you should ask 'Are you ever satisfied with your own playing?' I'm pretty sure that any conscientious pianist would feel they wanted to clean up a bit of detail, bring an inner voice out more, control the pedal better or any number of other things. Seldom, if ever, does anything ever seem perfect. I think this arises from the fact that to learn a piece we have to deconstruct it on a massive scale. Each part of the final musical texture is heard on its own and we create our own understanding of how it should sound when the parts are brought together. Often the complexity of the task makes it difficult to achieve this 'understanding of how it should sound', but sometimes it simply is impossible, in any event.

So, whether we play or somebody else plays, I think we are always listening for our 'understanding' of the piece. So if you want to enjoy again a great recording the solution would have to be to pay less attention. Do not listen to the detail, but to the whole.


I'd be interested to know if listening again to the recording, but perhaps whilst partly engaged in another task, helps you to regain some of your early enthusiasm for it.



Richard.

[anda]

I also think you should ask 'Are you ever satisfied with your own playing?'

no, of course not. and, after all these years, i can honestly say i have only one recording i am proud of (please don't get me wrong, of course it's not flawless, i even had some technical messed-up passages, but overall, i am proud of myself for playing that work the way i did).

So, whether we play or somebody else plays, I think we are always listening for our 'understanding' of the piece. So if you want to enjoy again a great recording the solution would have to be to pay less attention. Do not listen to the detail, but to the whole.

yes, this makes sense. but i'm even worse - i dont' like especially the whole
usually, i still like this or that detail (very few), but not the whole

I'd be interested to know if listening again to the recording, but perhaps whilst partly engaged in another task, helps you to regain some of your early enthusiasm for it.

no, if the recording is not to my taste, it'll never be.

however, i can still enjoy different versions of the work.
for instance, during the last couple of years i have heard live 3 different versions of the  schumann concerto (3 different pianists) - all very different from mine, and i still enjoyed it.

[anda]

thank you all for your answers, it's good to know i'm not the only one experiencing this.

best luck everybody

[lostinidlewonder]

Usually it would be a good idea when recording to overdo your dynamics and expresive ideas. Then you can bring it down and tweak from there. Like Liszt use to say, when you approach a cresendo start softer than you normally would then get louder, descresendo you would start louder and get softer use that idea for everything else, increase the boundary for contrast, if it says soft play super soft if it says loud make your sounds big. Mucking around with over doing things can sometimes affect how we play the piece automatically and naturally it will cause us to make better effect with the sound.

Everyone can play the first note of a peice perfectly and unbeatable by any single pianist in the world. It is when we start playing the second and third and so on where we start becoming unique. So start recording the first note of a piece and you will be satisfied. Then go on from there, one bar at a time, thats the only way to make good understanding on what you are actually playing to what it sounds like. Take care of how you record yourself as well, sometimes no matter what you do it will always sound crap, all depends on the piano, recording stuff and room.

[Muzakian]

I find my initial love for a recording ALWAYS diminishes with repeated listenings anyway. Do you know that the food that tastes the best to us is the food we swallow fastest? I'd imagine the same applies to music - the recordings/pieces we like the most are the ones we will tire of fastest (because we listen to them all the time!).
The first time you hear a recording, especially of a new work, I think many new associations are being made in your brain on a neurological level - the music is changing forever your understanding and perception of music. But once this adaptation phase has ceased (or at least slowed down), that recording we fell in love with becomes more predictable and less exciting, and the emotional attachment fades. This is why I think playing music and hearing it live is so much better than owning recordings (though I'm becoming an avid collector anyway), because the music never sounds exactly the same way twice.
Well I know this isn't exactly what the original poster was referring to but I think it's relevant.

[anda]

Usually it would be a good idea when recording to overdo your dynamics and expresive ideas. Then you can bring it down and tweak from there. Like Liszt use to say, when you approach a cresendo start softer than you normally would then get louder, descresendo you would start louder and get softer use that idea for everything else, increase the boundary for contrast, if it says soft play super soft if it says loud make your sounds big. Mucking around with over doing things can sometimes affect how we play the piece automatically and naturally it will cause us to make better effect with the sound.

Everyone can play the first note of a peice perfectly and unbeatable by any single pianist in the world. It is when we start playing the second and third and so on where we start becoming unique. So start recording the first note of a piece and you will be satisfied. Then go on from there, one bar at a time, thats the only way to make good understanding on what you are actually playing to what it sounds like. Take care of how you record yourself as well, sometimes no matter what you do it will always sound crap, all depends on the piano, recording stuff and room.

that's good advice, thanks - though i wasn't talking about my own recordings

i'll keep in mind what you said, and maybe even try recording myself in private (so far, i only recorded my public performances).

best luck to you too

[anda]

I find my initial love for a recording ALWAYS diminishes with repeated listenings anyway. Do you know that the food that tastes the best to us is the food we swallow fastest? I'd imagine the same applies to music - the recordings/pieces we like the most are the ones we will tire of fastest (because we listen to them all the time!).
The first time you hear a recording, especially of a new work, I think many new associations are being made in your brain on a neurological level - the music is changing forever your understanding and perception of music. But once this adaptation phase has ceased (or at least slowed down), that recording we fell in love with becomes more predictable and less exciting, and the emotional attachment fades. This is why I think playing music and hearing it live is so much better than owning recordings (though I'm becoming an avid collector anyway), because the music never sounds exactly the same way twice.
Well I know this isn't exactly what the original poster was referring to but I think it's relevant.

i never thought of it this way! hmm, this could be a (partial) explanation - though i do believe that my main problem is that once i have a detailed personal image of that particular work, this tends to function as a procust's bed... for which (obviously) i have only myself to blame for