How do you listen to music?

[Vaderbait1 1]

I'm a little of both, but mostly analytical. Not in the sense that I am thinking in technical terms, but instead of thinking images, I think of how it would be or feel to play that, or how amazing certain parts of pieces sound. This is a really good thread idea, and I unfortunately can't contribute much more than this.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,110]

So now that someone else bumped the Pittsburgh interview with Williams it reminded me.

CONGRATULATIONS PEOPLE WHO LISTEN ANALYTICALLY! YOU WIN! JOHN WILLIAMS LISTENS LIKE YOU!

[Edit] On that note, looking back at this thread, it's clear the quality of my thread-making since this has taken a turn for the path of our music industry.

[Rachael Foley 10,164]

I listen to my music Spatilytically

[Melange 448]

How do you listen to music?

I "play my steering wheel" on the drive to work each day, as music plays .

Very much like this............

[Naïve Old Fart 13,025]

Probably spatially, but for me, music - some music, at least - goes far, far deeper than that. The best way I can describe the way I listen to music, is that I feel it.

I am a fan of prog-rock, and Yes, in particular, and there are several pictures of Rick Wakeman with his hands on the keyboard, and him standing (usually looking upward) with his eyes closed. It is as if he is in communion with the music; it's like he is somehow inside it, and that, somehow, it is inside him. THAT'S how I listen to music, and THAT'S how I feel when I listen to it - rapture.

I know nothing of the technicalities of music, although, somehow, I can tune a six-string guitar form memory, getting both the bottom E, and the intervals correct, so go figure. I know absolutely sod-all about the diminished 4th., or the 9th. extension. What I do know is that listening to music awakens my senses in a way that no other activity does, or even can. Music moves my soul.

[Uni 307]

I'm glad you did bump this back up, Blum. I missed it the first time around.

I'm definitely a spanalytical listener. I've always had the spatial thing going on, but over the years the analytical thing crept in. As a matter of fact, I can remember just when it happened: once, while listening to E.T. in my younger years, I heard the emergence of a theme I recognized from another movie--and in just the right place, too! It was, of course, Yoda's Theme rendered during "The Magic of Halloween." I wondered what other treasures I might find hidden amongst my favorite scores. Williams was a good starting point for that approach, a natural source of thematic interplay.

The analysis can be fun, but it's nice that it isn't always necessary. Often the easiest thing is just to let go and follow where the music leads.

An interesting analogy could be drawn with reading. Here, for instance, I definitely am analytical, due to my majoring in literature probably. Hence perhaps our intellectual "frame of mind" determines our type of reading/listening ; yet I don't think spatial and analytical experiencing can really be entirely separated. As in literature, music has formal (how things are expressed) and "material" (what is being said) aspects ; perhaps the difference between analytical and spatial boils down to this dichotomy. If one changes a word in a poem (or at lest a good one...), i.e. a formal modification, one changes the meaning of the work, inevitably. Likewise for notes.

Another expression of the same perspective is how we (as writers and readers) deal with our "inner editor." The more you study writing and hone your craft, the less "spatial" and more "analytical" you become when you're reading the work of others. This is an inevitable trade-off, the literary equivalent of Williams's inability to listen to music without dissecting it on an almost unconscious level.

Of course, there are ways of dealing with our inner editor. One great way to drown out the little bastard is by reading good writing. When the quality's there and authentic, you're so caught up in the richness of the prose you no longer have the urge to nitpick for mistakes. I have to think the same is true in music. The better the composition, the easier it is--even for the most analytical of musical minds--to go spatial with it.

I would suggest - and please don't jump down my throat for this, it is purely a personal point of view - that anyuone who listens from a predominantly Analytical stand-point is missing the entire point of the music. Music is pure 100% communication - I don't analyse how people vocalise things, I just listen to the way it is said and what is said in the first place....I don't think "Wow - that vowel-sound was nice" or "I don't like the way that person pronounces their "K's".....so why is music any different?

Well, writing is 100% communication too, but when people don't communicate well you tend to notice it. I have a particular pet peeve against lazy writing . . . and I think the same goes for lazily composed music as well. It's an annoyance when people don't put effort into their craft. I don't think the vocalization illustration is apt in this case, because people's verbal communications are prone to shortcuts, colloquialisms, and a lifetime of cultivated habits people are (usually) used to hearing. I expect more from a writer; and, I suppose, from a musical artist as well. It might sound arrogant, I suppose, but I hold myself to no lesser standard in my own work.

- Uni

[Koray Savas 2,260]

Spatially.

[indy4 160]

I voted analytically, but it's very close. I definitely do both.