Listening

[Wyllys]

This is sort of a spin-off of the practice thread.

How many folks out there incorporate listening time into your schedule?

I'm talking just listening: no instrument, no multi-tasking distractions...with the possible exception of transcribing...and no distractions. That's it.

Go.

[paulp1960]

I relax and listen to music - does that count?

[Kerbie]

Yes, I definitely do, although sometimes life gets in the way and limits the amount of time I have available for it. I enjoy listening for lots of reasons... sometimes to understand guitar parts, drum parts and sometimes separating the components of an orchestral piece. I think listening skills can be enhanced or diminished... they get better with practice.

[rick-slo]

Listen to a variety of music most every week, though more in the past than presently due to time constraints.
I think being a good listener is way up on the enabler list of what it takes to be a good musician.

[Wyllys]

Originally Posted by paulp1960

I relax and listen to music - does that count?

Perhaps.

I'm talkng about concious, focused listening, listening FOR something rather than just TO something as opposed to recreational/background.

[Wyllys]

Originally Posted by Kerbie

I think listening skills can be enhanced or diminished... they get better with practice.

Agreed regarding enhancement. The more/closer you listen, the more you hear...even if "more" means the silnces between the notes.

[Kerbie]

Originally Posted by Wyllys

The more/closer you listen, the more you hear...even if "more" means the silnces between the notes.

Agree. Sometimes those are the best parts...

[Toby Walker]

I really need to do that more, as I tend to do most of my listening when I'm on the road driving.

[Pitar]

I trained my ears before my hands could catch them. Countless hours were spent moving a stylus on a turntable back to riffs and pieces of melodies on vinyl with a guitar in my lap. That's how I learned to play.

I can hear a song I don't know now at a public place away from home, go home and have the progression worked out in a couple minutes and the melody worked out soon thereafter. Most songs are simple things of few chords and basic phrasings. More complex stuff takes me longer but it's all doable now. I don't think I could have done that early on had I subscribed to formal lessons.

The ear is the single most important aspect of developing as a musician. The hands need to be guided and tabs and scores are not the best first choice for that.

[min7b5]

For sure. When I'm most serious about it, headphones for sure.
Also, in case this interesting to anyone, in my my Thirty Day Challenge series I got into this a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlssxzZLfJo

[Bob Womack]

I first learned to listen in the '70s, when listening was an immersive experience that you did with no other distractions. When you got a new album you just listened. Oh, sometimes perhaps you also read the record jacket, but if it was a deliberate immersie album like YES' Close to the Edge, you just closed your eyes and listened.

When I went to music school in college my music history professor, George Divine, closed his eyes and felt the music every time he listened, even to pieces he'd heard hundreds of times. He would ball up his fists and scrunch up his face as the music tensed and loosen his hands and face as the music relaxed. He experienced the music. I decided I wanted to be like him.

So yes, I listen to music as part of my routine. I've discovered that I can't really learn the structure of the music and the structure of recordings without it. Especially ensemble recordings.

Bob

[Wyllys]

The first person to open my ears and focus me totally on the sound of music:

https://youtu.be/FSAz0p8fvo8

I got my first Monk album in '61. Changed my life, I suspect. Prior to hearing him I played many instruments from paper:
trombone, baritone, tuba, piano, autoharp, upright bass, drums, flute and sax as well as singing in the church choir. After hearing him I started playing from the sound, moving from playing the notes to playing the music.

[Gmountain]

Rarely.

In the car, it's usually NPR, or during the day in car, classical in the background. At home, if I'm not playing with my guitar, I usually don't have any noise- tv, stereo, etc. I like it quiet.

[dkstott]

Listening is how I get to the point of having a song I want to play imbedded into my head... Timing, nuances, etc.. I'll have a song on replay in the house over and over again.

I also just spent the past weekend transcribing an semi classical arrangement from a YouTube video. That required significant time replaying the video, listening to notes when the fingering wasn't apparent and grabbing my nearby guitar to confirm notes and then documenting it.

[fazool]

There is some psycho-acoustic phenomenon, but I don't know if it has a name.

If you play a sequence of notes such as F,G,A#,C then you play F,G, A#, A#

That last note sounds "low". That last A# is the same as the prior A# but because you are expecting it to go A# and C, you are expecting something higher and it sounds too low.

Anyway, there is some phenomenon there that fools your ear and brain.

Mine is very vulnerable to this and I get fooled very easily. So listening for me is very important and I have to work very hard, especially when working out a song by ear.