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How to Learn to Listen to Music

When was the last time you listened to music? The question sounds absurd. To not hear a single note in a day, not only would you have to leave your headphones at home, but also forget about cabs and cafes, plug your ears as soon as someone’s phone rings, skip the credits of all movies and TV shows and don’t turn on your mac. Music is everywhere. And to start listening to it, it’s usually enough to press one button, follow one link, or shout out to your smart speaker.

But as we know, the higher the offer, the lower the price. Music often becomes background, a filler for awkward pauses, an irritant, and is brought to us through the filter of everyday clutter. It doesn’t take much effort to fix this, to start paying more attention to music and understanding it better. In 1982, the American composer Elliott Schwartz wrote a book about this, Music: Ways of Listening, and suggested seven exercises.

Feel the music.
Even where there is no music.

Try to respond to sounds as if they were part of a piece of music. The hum of the refrigerator, the thump of your fingers on the keyboard, the flutter of the window blinds – all sounds are beautiful in their own way and can form into a strange composition if you pay attention. As you develop your sensitivity to sound, you’ll start to notice more nuances in your music.

Keep an eye on the time.
But don’t rush it.

Time is an essential component of any musical experience and one of a musician’s primary tools. Learn to feel its flow. How is its length influenced by context, events, and movements? How long is 30 seconds in silence and in a noisy room?

Develop your musical memory.
Slowly but surely

As you listen to music, try to notice similar pieces and sequences, compare what you hear to previous elements, paying attention to the frequency of repetitions and their positions. It will take time to develop this skill, but once you master it, it will feel like your first bike ride.

Understand the terms.
To talk about what you hear.

You can’t understand what you can’t describe. Yes, the musical experience is hard to put into words. Knowing the terms, however, can help you get closer to that, so you can share your opinion, for example.

An example of musical terms are tempo designations, 25 Italian words that tell you at what speed to play a particular piece. The Frenchman Eric Satie, however, didn’t play with them much and told to play his compositions imbibet (drunkenly) or, for example, corpulentus (corpulentus).

Learn to concentrate
Even on long compositions.

One of the key skills of a musician is to effectively fill any time slot. That’s why, when composing short and long compositions, they use different patterns and techniques. And so that the listener doesn’t get lost in a large piece of music, good composers leave landmarks and clues. By learning to distinguish them, you won’t lose concentration, even while listening to a half-hour Beethoven symphony.

Listen objectively.
And don’t look for what isn’t there.

Try to listen to music as it is, without hoping to hear what you want in it. Try to respond to it sometimes not emotionally, but using mastered terms. This will allow you to evaluate and compare works of different styles, cultures, and eras.

Explore Context.
To know what you’re listening to.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve an absolute objective perception of music. Our musical experience is influenced by our preferences, experiences, and memory. There is nothing wrong with that, but if you want to be more objective, replace unnecessary information with useful information: cultural context, information about the author and his or her creative process.

Example
Many people thought Bryan Adams’ hit Summer of 69 was about the summer of 1969. But Adams wasn’t more than 10 years old then, what does he remember of it? Turns out, the song is about something else.

We love them. They love us.