Blumenkohl's Rules for Good Listening

[BLUMENKOHL 1,081]

1. Listen to good music again and again. Truly good music will only get better with repeated listens. 
2. Don't listen to music all the time, you'll go numb. 
3. Don't listen to good music while doing other things. Listen to it when you can really listen to it. 
4. Don't listen to dark music on sunny days and don't listen to cheery music on rainy days. Heighten the experience by matching music to the weather. It'll take you to another level. 
5. Listen to pre-17th century music from time to time, there's something magical there. 
6. Fuhget about sound quality, sometimes the best recordings really are the older recordings with the terrible fidelity. 
7. The rainier the weather, the older the music you need to listen to. 
8. Save the pop, electronic, and new-fangled stuff for when you want to listen to music and do other stuff (work, exercise, etc.) 
9. "Turn-down" music at home is awesome before bed. Find something relaxing, set a low volume, turn off the screens and enjoy. 
10. For the ultimate listening experience: wait till night, preferably a little before you get tired. Grab your best headphones, turn out the lights, close your eyes, lie down and listen to one album of your choice. No rewind, no fast forward, just listen.  A glass of red wine before hand heightens the experience. 
11. Don't get too analytical listening to the music. You'll ruin music for yourself. 
12. Quietly humming along to music (especially the basses/lower end instruments) heightens your "feel" for the music. 
13. Never listen to music before having a serious listening session. Let the silence drive you mad with anticipation. Nothing tastes as good as water after being in the desert, and no music sounds as good as what you listen to after abstaining. 
14. Decently performed live music  > amazingly performed recording. 
15. Angry music will make you angry, dark music will make you dark, and optimistic music will make you optimistic. 
16. Own a musical instrument of some kind, and fiddle around with it from time to time. 
17. Older music is better for the soul: there is an optimism, even in its darkest moments, that propels you in your life. Newer music is too real for its own good. 
18. Take your streaming playlists, shuffle mode, etc. and flush them down the internet toilet. 
19. Make a deliberate choice about what music you listen to and why, however broad or specific your goal, don't let some playlist make that choice for you. 
20. Don't carry around more than a dozen albums. 
21. One album listened to intensely for a week is better than 12 albums hopping from album to album and with half your attention. 
22. If you really need to work and listen to music, loop a single track until you're done. That way you don't lose the zone. 
23. Do not let music become your proxy for feeling emotions. Real experiences > music. 
24. Good speakers will always beat the best headphones. Music hits different when it’s propagating through the room. 
25. There’s music you can listen to with other people, and there’s music that will deflate and go flaccid when someone else is in the room with you. 
26. Don’t be a computer with the rules, bend and break to your heart’s content but if you take nothing else away: temper your musical consumption and you will enjoy the fewer moments of deliberate music listening a lot more. 
27. If you want to heighten your experience of music, a cup of coffee or strong tea about 15 minutes before will do the trick. 
28. Let the music flow, don’t keep pressing the rewind button on your favorite part…trust me on this. 
29. While listening to something you’ve listened to a million times, scan the spectrum. Pay attention to just the low end. Or the mids. Or the highs. See if you hear something you never noticed before. 
30. Music + sex only work if you can keep physical rhythm. But even so, eventually the music and the rhythm you want will be mismatched. Like shower sex, best to avoid it. More glamorous than it sounds. 

[Nick Parker 3,047]

24 minutes ago, Blumenkohl said:

Never listen to music before having a serious listening session. Let the silence drive you mad with anticipation. Nothing tastes as good as water after being in the desert, and no music sounds as good as what you listen to after abstaining. 

 

Some of these rules seem a little wonky or specific, but I really wish venues would adhere to this one. Especially when there's multiple bands that are playing after one another, I get irritated when the venue has music playing over the PA between sets. C'mon, give us room to breathe! The presence of music from the performers is so much more powerful when there isn't constant musical stimulation happening.

[Wojo 2,456]

Weirdo. 

[Code 000. Destruct. 0. 4,260]

I agree with most of these, Cauliflower.  

[John Dutton 7,378]

Nice font.

[Sharkissimo 1,974]

Quote

Don't listen to good music while doing other things. Listen to it when you can really listen to it.

 

I really can't abide by that sort of precious, ritualized approach to listening. I find the altered level of perception while dividing one's attention between music and another task (provided that it's not too cognitively demanding) can create its own unique frisson.

 

Good music should be listened to however the hell you want to listen to it. If you want to work out to Mahler 3 (as I did the other day), go ahead!

 

Quote

Don't listen to dark music on sunny days and don't listen to cheery music on rainy days. Heighten the experience by matching music to the weather. It'll take you to another level. 

 

Why not? Perhaps the apparent mishmash between the two could provide an arresting sensual counterpoint.
 

Quote

Older music is better for the soul: there is an optimism, even in its darkest moments, that propels you in your life. Newer music is too real for its own good. 

 

 

Could you possibly be more vague?

 

Quote

Don't get too analytical listening to the music. You'll ruin music for yourself. 

 

Musical analysis of any variety only affords you an additional perceptual layer, further enriching the listening experience.

 

Quote

Angry music will make you angry, dark music will make you dark, and optimistic music will make you optimistic. 

 

Would that it were so simple!

 

Quote

Decently performed live music  > amazingly performed recording. 

 

Depends entirely on the type of music, and more specifically, the role studio production played in the composition process.

 

[The Train Station 8,673]

Music should only be heard on a hi-fi system and listened to with no distractions. I bet ya'll usually don't have movies casually playing in the background while you do other stuff.

[John Dutton 7,378]

The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland is best enjoyed alone 30 times in a row.

[A24 4,565]

7 hours ago, Blumenkohl said:

1. Listen to good music again and again. Truly good music will only get better with repeated listens. 
2. Don't listen to music all the time, you'll go numb. 

 

Those two are valuable tips. 

[The Train Station 8,673]

8 hours ago, Blumenkohl said:

 

1. Fuhget about sound quality, sometimes the best recordings really are the older recordings with the terrible fidelity. 
2. Take your streaming playlists, shuffle mode, etc. and flush them down the internet toilet. 

 

These two points contradict each other!

 

8 hours ago, Blumenkohl said:

 

1. Older music is better for the soul: there is an optimism, even in its darkest moments, that propels you in your life. Newer music is too real for its own good. 

 

As opposed to fake older music?

[Nick1Ø66 5,971]

Some of these are spot on, some are off, some are inspired, some are rubbish, some are repetitious while others contradictory. All are interesting.

 

A good effort Guv'ner. But perhaps better titled "How I live my musical life."  

 

And rules? Where music takes me doesn't need "rules"!

 

Carry on.

[Quintus 5,449]

This must be the expanded release list. I preferred the OST version with half the items. It was a much tighter and wasn't reliant on filler just to hit the shiny twenty number on the sleeve.

[Score 772]

I agree with some of these rules. However, the only situation in which you can get "too analytical" to enjoy music... is when you are composing the piece! The distinction should be made between "useful" and "useless" analysis (= over-analysis, or trying to see/hear things that are not there). 

[BLUMENKOHL 1,081]

Sharky, humans have had access to “always-on” music for less than the lifespan of an average human. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. You’re looking at the rule very naively.  There are more benefits than just ritual and preciousness. 

 

Anyways, we can catch up in a few years when you can’t hear anything and have fucked up your dopaminergic system and developed a crippling inability to focus!

 

[Jay 39,428]

3 hours ago, Blumenkohl said:

humans have had access to “always-on” music for less than the lifespan of an average human.

 

What?

[Sharkissimo 1,974]

10 hours ago, Blumenkohl said:

Just because you can do it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. You’re looking at the rule very naively.  There are more benefits than just ritual and preciousness. 

 

Just because some cultural phenomenon is relatively young, that doesn't mean it's necessarily harmful.

 

You might be able to convince me if you were to present me with a metastudy on the supposed benefits of this mode of listening, or inversely the detrimental effects of divided attention.

 

[BLUMENKOHL 1,081]

16 minutes ago, Sharky said:

 

Just because some cultural phenomenon is relatively young, that doesn't mean it's necessarily harmful.

 

You might be able to convince me if you were to present me with a metastudy on the supposed benefits of this mode of listening, or inversely the detrimental effects of divided listening.

 

Burden of proof is on that which is newly introduced.  We'll see in a decade or two! 

[Marian Schedenig 9,042]

19 hours ago, Nick Parker said:

Some of these rules seem a little wonky or specific, but I really wish venues would adhere to this one. Especially when there's multiple bands that are playing after one another, I get irritated when the venue has music playing over the PA between sets. C'mon, give us room to breathe! The presence of music from the performers is so much more powerful when there isn't constant musical stimulation happening.

 

I agree with some of these, less so with others, and several come down to personal preference more than anything. However, this particular rule reminds me of something else: I've always felt that the way DVDs (and now Blu-rays & Co) present a film to be seriously wrong. There shouldn't be music in the menus! Take your typical Star Wars DVD/BD, for example. The first thing you hear when setting up your play options, before the film ever starts, is the main title in a loop. Where's the spine tingling anticipation of sitting in a darkened room in total silence, seeing the Lucasfilm logo, and waiting for the sudden blast of the main title theme when the SW logo bursts on the screen?

 

(Granted, there are discs that don't *have* a menu and start the film right away. I hate those, because you don't get a chance to configure your playback and settle down before starting the film; you usually don't even know if it's the film that's starting or just some commercial stuff before the menu)

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,415]

2 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

I agree with some of these, less so with others, and several come down to personal preference more than anything. However, this particular rule reminds me of something else: I've always felt that the way DVDs (and now Blu-rays & Co) present a film to be seriously wrong. There shouldn't be music in the menus! Take your typical Star Wars DVD/BD, for example. The first thing you hear when setting up your play options, before the film ever starts, is the main title in a loop. Where's the spine tingling anticipation of sitting in a darkened room in total silence, seeing the Lucasfilm logo, and waiting for the sudden blast of the main title theme when the SW logo bursts on the screen?

 

(Granted, there are discs that don't *have* a menu and start the film right away. I hate those, because you don't get a chance to configure your playback and settle down before starting the film; you usually don't even know if it's the film that's starting or just some commercial stuff before the menu)

 

First world problems!

[BLUMENKOHL 1,081]

3 hours ago, Sharky said:

 

Just because some cultural phenomenon is relatively young, that doesn't mean it's necessarily harmful.

 

You might be able to convince me if you were to present me with a metastudy on the supposed benefits of this mode of listening, or inversely the detrimental effects of divided listening.

 

 

 

 

Oh and hearing loss is cumulative, and above 75 decibels, you start to get accumulation over time. 

[Kasey Kockroach 2,362]

I dig these guidelines. I'm heeding one of them by avoiding music for the next few days until Powell's Solo is out.

[Nick1Ø66 5,971]

4 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Where's the spine tingling anticipation of sitting in a darkened room in total silence

 

Are you sure it's "spine tingling"? Not "hair raising" or "pulse pounding"?

[Sharkissimo 1,974]

While many of Blume's dicta are frankly bromidic, reading like excerpts from a muso edition of Joan Crawford's My Way of Life, a few of the less dogmatic rules are spot on. Humming along as a method of ear training and strengthening audiation, listening to good music over and over, exploring music of the pre-Common Practice era, and most of all--just listening to less music.

 

We're now saturated with music left, right and center, to the point where it's sapped of all meaning and significance, and become objectified in the Marxian-Adornian sense of commodity fetishism. For that reason I can't stand background music in stores, DVD menus, phone muzak, adverts and royalty-free music in Youtube vlogs. It's truly soul destroying.

[Doo_liss 6,421]

So basically, if Life was a movie, it should be sparsely spotted, not wall-to-wall.

[Disco Stu 15,501]

I think the move in modern blockbuster filmmaking to wall-to-wall is very much a symptom of the cheapening of music

[Sharkissimo 1,974]

Life should be an American New Wave film.

[Disco Stu 15,501]

Life should be a Jim Jarmusch movie?  Dibs on Broken Flowers.  I wanna smoke weed with the Ethiopian dude next door who's chill as hell, listening to Marvin Gaye and Mulatu Astatke.

[Sharkissimo 1,974]

Meh, I was thinking more Hal Ashby.

[Disco Stu 15,501]

Ah yes, the 70s group.  American New Wave for some reason immediately calls to mind 80s indie filmmakers for me.

 

Not a Jarmusch fan?  He's brilliant!

[Sharkissimo 1,974]

29 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

Not a Jarmusch fan?  He's brilliant!

 

I find him very hit and miss, although I liked Only Lovers Left Alive.

[Disco Stu 15,501]

1 minute ago, Sharky said:

 

I find him very hit and miss, although I liked Only Lovers Left Alive.

 

One of the few of his I've been able to see in a movie theater (since they usually get extremely limited releases).  It was a joy and a pleasure.  His movies are unique sensory experiences.  John Hurt as wise literary vampire was brilliant casting.

[Brundlefly 2,393]

On 22.5.2018 at 12:02 AM, Blumenkohl said:

1. Listen to good music again and again. Truly good music will only get better with repeated listens. 
2. Don't listen to music all the time, you'll go numb. 
3. Don't listen to good music while doing other things. Listen to it when you can really listen to it. 
4. Don't listen to dark music on sunny days and don't listen to cheery music on rainy days. Heighten the experience by matching music to the weather. It'll take you to another level. 
5. One album listened to intensely for a week is better than 12 albums hopping from album to album and with half your attention. 

These are 5 great tips to bring the best out of the music you're listening to!

[Glóin the Dark 1,307]

2 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

Life should be a Jim Jarmusch movie?  Dibs on Broken Flowers.  I wanna smoke weed with the Ethiopian dude next door who's chill as hell

 

I wanna be a bus poet.

[John Dutton 7,378]

The @Blumenkohl thread for JWFans who can't listen good.

[Sharkissimo 1,974]

What is this?

 

A THREAD for ANTS?!

 

How can we be expected to teach JWFans to learn how to listen, if they can't even fit inside the thread?

[BLUMENKOHL 1,081]

Friends, if you are so inclined, please join me tomorrow, Sunday January 5th, for a 30 day fast from all music written after 1900. We can listen to modern music again on February 4th. 

 

On 5/21/2018 at 6:02 PM, Blumenkohl said:

17. Older music is better for the soul: there is an optimism, even in its darkest moments, that propels you in your life. Newer music is too real for its own good. 

 

I guarantee your spirit will thank you for it in this dark world of ours! 

 

@Stefancos I challenge you in particular! 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,415]

Fuck that!

[BLUMENKOHL 1,081]

Much anger and darkness I sense in you. 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,415]

I'm seeing John Williams conduct in Vienna in 2 weeks. I really don't have time for this.

[John Dutton 7,378]

I'm sorry! I didn't mean to interrupt your little quest!

[The Train Station 8,673]

I've fasted from music for the last eight months!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,415]

And political discourse!

[The Train Station 8,673]

Has it been eight months??

[Datameister 2,279]

I wish I could bring myself to join right now! I was thinking about musical fasting the other day. But I've got several musical projects that I'm deep into right now and the timing doesn't feel right. But yes, music after a time without it is glorious. I wish you well on your quest, @Blumenkohl.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,081]

Updated with rules 24-30. 

[Bellosh 3,912]

8 minutes ago, BLUMENKOHL said:

Updated with rules 24-30. 

 

Rule 27 essentially describes any "favorite short musical moments" posts I've ever made here.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,081]

1 minute ago, Bellosh said:

 

Rule 27 essentially describes any "favorite short musical moments" posts I've ever made here.

 

Yep, when you go back, you’re like…hmmm…it’s good…but not that good! Caffeine has tricked me too many times. But still it’s fun! 

[Brundlefly 2,393]

On 22/05/2018 at 12:02 AM, BLUMENKOHL said:

Don't listen to dark music on sunny days and don't listen to cheery music on rainy days. Heighten the experience by matching music to the weather. It'll take you to another level. 

I don't entirely agree on that one. In general, it makes sense, but the music you choose doesn't necessarily have to be straightout supportive of the situation the listener is surounded by. The opposite strategy, for example, can also lead to high intensity.

[GerateWohl 5,040]

If I decide to follow these rules, I could probably start listening to music after my retirement.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,081]

29 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

If I decide to follow these rules, I could probably start listening to music after my retirement.

People who DON’T follow these rules don’t retire. They work to the bone and lose their savings the day after they retire!