Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Does being a musican change how you listen?

I have never raised this point before (or seen it raised, though I am sure it must have been).

Do you think that becuase you are a musician you listen to music in an entirely different way to non-musicians?

What I mean is this. Most people I know just listen to a piece of music, let it flow over them. They absorb it (or are indifferent to it) as a whole. A simple pleasure.

Not for me. Oh no. I cannot listen to a piece of music without mentally picking it apart. Wondering how that bit was played. Recognising every variation on a theme. Noting the melody, harmonies, ornamentation. Hearing the mistakes. Imagining the score sometimes. (I do not have perfect pitch unfortunately, so I also find myslef wondering about the key...)

And quite often, especially with modern music, I will filter out other instruments and just listen to one of them.

My girlfriend (and past partners) all think that this analytical approach spoils enjoyment of the music.

Am I in a minority here?

Adrian

I do this as well. All my friends think it spoils the enjoyment of the music to, but I find I enjoy listening to it more when I pick it apart. I do all the things you do such as picking out harmonies, mistakes, imagining the score etc. I especially do it with modern music. Sometimes when a friend tells me to listen to a piece of music. I often filter out lyrics and focus on specific instruments, melody, etc. So I would say that you aren't in the minority, but hey, I could be wrong.

I think most musicians listen completely differently.

Many non-musicians listen like musicians, though. I suspect they're the real "music buffs" with large record collections and season tickets to everything.

It makes sense that musicians would develop an analytical ear from practice. It's how we learn! by picking apart the music we hear, we can reconstruct it for ourselves.

Sometimes I get stuck in this analytical listening though, and I don't like that. It really does begin to affect my enjoyment of the music, after too much analytical listening it begins to lose emotional meaning - the music becomes just a clever collection of notes.

I would agree that analytical listening can wreck the enjoyment of simple, pure listening. There's a balance to be had.

But I think background listening is even worse (for classical music, there's a lot of pop music designed to be background). It cheapens the whole experience to have classical running in the background while spreading attention to other things... Think of how much more special a symphony would have been before recordings, how much more people would have savored each note.

I would think that analyzing music would actually enhance the experience of music. Certainly some music is meant to be viscerally enjoyed and sometimes our brain should be in neutral and swept along, but understanding what is going on generally enhances any experience.

An example is using the audio guided tours at a museum. For many spectators, hints at technique and symbolism can turn an otherwise foreign experience into something meaningful and absorbing. It also potentially gives the spectator tools to look at other art with more understanding.

Another example would be to listen to the director's commentary on a movie. Now I haven't had the stomach to really do this-as in watch the movie 2x, I did do it once and it was fascinating.

I agree that having someone try to pick apart art while you are trying to enjoy it can be incredibly aggravating and people have limits to how much they can be told what to listen for. On the other hand they might enjoy more once they know what to look for.

Yup, I do that too. I know an organist who is really extremely good at improvising: trying to pick apart what he's doing is really interesting and educational!

Yes. You listen more enviously.

FTP says:
I would think that analyzing music would actually enhance the experience of music. Certainly some music is meant to be viscerally enjoyed and sometimes our brain should be in neutral and swept along, but understanding what is going on generally enhances any experience.

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I agree that analyzing while listening enhances the musical experience. I find it hard 'not' to listen with my intellect. In fact, I think I am constantly 'listening' to music. I could be on the witness stand (or other nonappropriate place !) and if a piece of music came on, that is where my head would go. So, it sometimes becomes a descipline 'not to listen'.

Partner when I was in college had us listen to symphony recordings before going to Boston Symphony Hall so that I could understand and enjoy the pieces better. Couldn't do that rereading a book, or seeing a movie 10 times, but with music, the more I learn about it, the better I enjoy it.

Also, having learned a piano piece, I can hear it better being played. I know what to listen for. I know the counter melodies, the bass lines, the mirror images, the chord progressions, etc. If it is a regular piece that I have taught, I hear even more critically (different from criticing).

I never nick pick someones playing though. I just try to listen for their interpretation and any mistakes just fall through the cracks.

I often wonder how non musicians listen.

LL

Here's a closeup of the feet.

As I was taught to sightread classically, I find it great fun to hear a song and then figure out how to improvise it "live" if you just figure out which is the melody, harmony and rhythm.

Watch the two hands and feet and see how layers, tone combinations and parts can seem like a 10-piece band but still be played in three parts with a drum track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn45cRMONzA

i start to care about sound and details more when listening to music now than a few years ago. maybe because i play piano myself now, and maybe it's my teacher's influence, as he told me that he'd ususally focus on technical or acoustic details when listening to recordings or everything. sometimes, he'd say, when heard someone playing, he'd rather play it little differently here or there, or mention some interpretation details. so, i sort of pay attention to those sort of things little bit more now, although i'm still enjoy music!

Some time ago, I played a piece of a piece of music to my friend a couple of times (1st mov., Mozart A minor piano sonata, the sequence, with only 16th-note stuff in the right hand, that quickly visits the D minor tonality a few times (from A minor)).

I asked him what mood it created, and he came up with an intricate explanation that just completely missed the heart of the piece. I thought that he must have been missing the left-hand part, and concentrating only on the right hand, and I told him as much.

So I played the piece again, and this time he concentrated on the left-hand part. And this time he perceived the melancholy of the piece, and also said that this time he had perceived the piece more fully. Although he tried to concentrate on the left hand, the right-hand part was so dominant that it came through too.

And how is this story relevant to this thread? Well, the story tells of one of the many experiences I've had which prove that people don't appreciate classical music, because they are missing layers of it when listening to it. It does require *some* analytical approach to even begin to appreciate this kind of music. Even more so when the structure and development are important parts of the piece and of the enjoyement that can and should be derived from it.

Non-analytical listeners, if they do listen to the whole piece, nevertheless often just wait for the few nice moments that give them the goose-pumps or some such. It's undeniable that the more sophisticated listener can derive more pleasure, on the whole, from listening to sophisticated music (with development, etc.).

I'm not a musican, but I listen the music in a different way, when I listen, I don't want anything to disturb, I would sit still, closer and concentrated on each note. So, most time I listen the music at night.
When I listen a piece, for example a piano concerto, the first time I listen to the melody, imaging how does the right hand move; the second time I concentrated on the left hand; then I would pay attention to the orchestra; after that, when I listen again, I'd like to notice some details, small parts, such as the ending, the trill, scale and when the piano come in, etc.

I think the difference between how musicians and non-musicians hear is one of the reasons some people don't like to practice slow.

Musicians often like practicing slow because it makes it easier to *hear* all the notes going by. It helps us coordinate our hands and ears. People who hate slow practice dislike it (I think) because they're not interested in all the notes. They only listen to the "big picture" and have no patience for the parts that make up the whole.

It's similar in the visual arts. A non-artist looks at a person and sees a person. An artist looks at a person and sees a collection of colors, lines, shapes, and textures. They're interested in all of the different elements, and they're able to reproduce those elements on a canvas. (This is actually a part of how visual artists are trained.)

Taking that analogy back to music. The non-musician hears the rattle noise of the trill. The musician hears the two notes going back and forth. (This is why many people attempt to play trills too fast. They're trying to create the big picture and have no patience or interest in the little back-and-forth that creates the sound.)

For me it depends on the music and on the situation. I concentrate more on classical music than I do on pop. I concentrate more listening to a late Beethoven sonata than I would, say, listening to something by John Field. And I concentrate more on music that is familiar to me than with music that is new. (I find I understand new music better - especially if the piece is long and/or complex - if I let it seep into my consciousness almost unawares. The time for analysis comes when you are aware of the architecture of the work). I don't really see any contradiction, anyway, between the analytical and the non-analytical way of listening. Surely they are both necessary - to return to Kreisler's analogy with visual arts you need to see the big picture from afar AND to study the details close-up. Don't you?

i see the point of Kreisler's, because that's how my teacher would listen to music: concentrate on every detail of the music, which usually takes extreme focus and analysis of mind, while i or other non-musician can listen to music without such focus or concentration, as if it's background music while doing other things.

that's why my teacher often says that he doesn't have time to listen to music unless he has to study some music for his performance, while i can just put my headphones on all day at work listening to music (without too much focusing).

You don't have the perfect pitch FORTUNATELY. recent surveys revealed people with perfect pitch (1/100 in western society if I can recall...) tend to be "non-musical" rather than "musical" beings. they are, nevertheless, great piano tuners. Musicians (particularly from string sections) can develop a kind of "fake-perfect pitch" through years of tuning nad rehearsing. (e.g: "this sounds like D major...")

I believe its called a paradime (a word i learned in science)...its a lense in which people view the world in different ways. Such as when someone goes...EWWW CLASSICAL MUSIC!!! or Oh My Goodness shut that annoying beepy music you call rap off!

Kreisler has certainly got his lines crossed ...
in suggesting that by definition NON-ARTISTS only listen to the “big picture” ... and the corollary ... that those who feed on intricate
details (fine art and music) are therefore ARTISTS.

The truth is that the “BIG PICTURE ” boys and girls are the real artists and the detail brigade are the plodding also-rans.

The two sides of the brain allow us to go into intuitive (impressionist) or detail mode ... the slow-moving RH side can add up a row of digits and give an exact answer ... but how boring ... it is the racy intuitive LH side that snaps up the vital essence in a micro-second ... without realising it the artist goes into LH flying overdrive and is almost unaware his action
until the reverie is ended ... a brief moment communing with the gods.

Listen to the ladies ... they might not appear as bright as us chauvinistic brutes ... but they more often than not use their intuitive acumen to outgun us. “There ain’t nothin’ like a dame ....”

on a side note...

A paradigm is more than just a bias; it is a whole system of beliefs about how you go about looking at something. For example, a current paradigm in music is the notion of classical music having to be formal and artful and, pardon the phrase, "stuffy" while popular music is fun and relaxed and entertaining. This is a paradigm, because it affects the totality of how we look at each genre: in light of our concept of classical music, the audience must not talk or interrupt the performance in any way; the performer should not do stage acrobatics but should rather sit as still as possible and focus only on the music for music's sake; the piano must be solid black, and not green with pink sparkles; a concert performer should dress very formally, with all men in the orchestra donning the same formal uniform. It's hard for society to break that mold -- see the strong reactions to Lang Lang and Liberace? On the other hand, we have a conception of popular music -- a paradigm through which we live it -- which suggests that it would be absurd to have the audience sit quietly and listen to a rock concert; the performer should bounce around and dance on stage and do all sorts of party tricks; it's ok to show up drunk to a rock concert, but it's totally unacceptable to do that at a classical concert.

Paradigms shift over time, but it takes something big to make them change. During the 1700s, people played card games and smoked and chit-chatted at the opera, only paying attention to the music part of the time, and this was not considered rude. The composers had very little artistic power -- the real stars were the performers. They could completely remove songs from the opera on a whim ("I don't do sad songs") and add in other songs that they simply liked, even if the new songs had absolutely nothing to do with the plot. On concert programs, the composer's name was often not even mentioned at all -- only the performer's name was given for this particular sonata or that particular symphony.

Seems strange? Of course. Would that fly today? Of course not. Different paradigm.