How to Listen to Music (2015)
by Francis Kayali (Fine Arts Department - Saint Anselm College)

1. Why you should expand your playlist, and how to do it [3:34]
View the first part as a video on YouTube
(Only the audio is available for the following sections.)

2. Using unfocused and focused listening [6:05]

3. How learning about the music can help [2:03]

4. What if it is too boring? [3:03]

5. Musical parameters [4:15]

6. Trust others [2:24]

7. Overcoming cultural prejudices [5:16]

8. Unfamiliar stylistic conventions are not shortcomings [4:19]

9. Look beyond the technical [4:30]

10. Get involved: perform the music yourself! [3:02]

Download All Total Running Time [38:31]

Playlists

Transcript

1. Why you should expand your playlist, and how to do it

When we listen to the same radio station a lot, or we listen to our playlist continuously - and it doesn't matter if it contains thousands of tracks - there gets to be a point when we start to feel as though we're going around in circles. We crave something different, something new. Varying our listening diet, keeping things fresh, requires time and energy. And yet, expanding our musical taste is important. Just think of your five favorite musicians, or your five favorite songs or pieces of music, and imagine how different your life would be if you had not discovered them. You owe it to yourself to take the time once in a while to branch out and listen to what's out there. It may take hearing a lot of music that you don't care for, but don't let that scare you. Think of that as part of the adventure. From time to time, pick a few tracks you've never heard and know absolutely nothing about and just listen. Exploring is actually fun! The more music you listen to, the more you will automatically develop an understanding for the general means of expression used in various styles. If you multiply these reference points, you will have an increasingly easy time appreciating new music.

People travel to other countries in order to experience new climates, natural landscapes, and cultures. They escape their regular surroundings in order to put their own lives in context, to discover new ideas, and to refresh and transform themselves. But it is not always necessary to travel far and wide in order to achieve some of this. Vast amounts of music, from all cultures and styles are now very easily accessible to us, at little or no cost, via the internet.

Mining through this trove can be difficult. Fortunately, we can also rely on others to do this for us. We can listen to online radios and podcasts. There are websites and apps that help us find new music, although they often try to base this on our current tastes - we may well like what is proposed, but we probably aren't going to discover anything radically different, in terms of style. Reviews can be helpful. We can also read books or take a class. More simply, talking about music with friends can open up unsuspected repertoires.

2. Unfocused and focused listening

When people talk about music, they often feel compelled to give a quality judgment, using words like "good" and "bad." This presumes that there are universal truths when it comes to esthetics, which is highly debatable.

If I look at my iTunes playlist, I can give my songs a rating between zero and five stars, but that's still a one-dimensional measure of what's going on. What if I like the beginning of a piece but not the end? What if I like the singer, but not the saxophone part in the background? What if I like the music when I listen to it in the middle of the night, but when I listen to it in the morning, it seems unbearably slow and boring? What if I find a song dreadfully sappy, but it comforts me when I am sad? It's a lot more complicated than "good" and "bad."

Deciding what you think about the quality is the last thing you want to worry about. In fact, many people suggest that you listen to a piece (or a track) at least three times, preferably on different days, before even attempting to make up your mind on the matter.

All right, so let's assume you have found some new music and let's say you landed on something that's radically different from what you are used to hearing. But instead of being enthralled or fascinated by what you are hearing, you are having a really, really hard time. You find it ugly, nonsensical, or perhaps you think it's boring, or you are repelled for some other reason, which you can't immediately pinpoint. Should you just skip it? Well, you're free to do so, of course. But here are a few ideas that you can try as well and a few things that you could think about first.

As you know, we all spend a lot of time listening to music in the background, without paying close attention. One can, however, make a point of focusing very carefully on what one is listening to. Both ways are useful in developing an appreciation for music. Research shows that people who hear a song repetitively piped in at the supermarket or on the radio and become familiar with it this way, will tend to react more positively to it, than to another song they do not know. The music industry uses this brainwashing technique on us all the time, but we can also harness its power for our own purposes, when we are trying to overcome some kind of barrier in our appreciation of music. It's rather effortless: all you need to do is play the same music over and over again, without really paying attention! One way to make sure your attention is somewhat distracted is simply to lower the volume of the music so that it isn't particularly obtrusive. Another great way of distracting your attention is to give yourself something visual to focus on instead. Watch a music video for instance, or go to a performance. The other advantage of the video or the performance is that you will likely get visual clues regarding what the music is about and what it is trying to express. And you will find that, soon enough, the grammar of the sound, as it were, becomes clearer. Your ears will adapt to the new sound universe, it will no longer seems so strange, and you will be able to start paying closer attention to the music.

You won't necessarily need to start with this more distracted approach; often, you will be able to dive in deeply right from the get go. To do this, try to remove distractions. You can't really pay careful attention to music if you're working, reading, or having a conversation. Listening to music while driving often works very well, but even that can sometimes be distracting, not to mention noisy. If you are feeling rushed, or if you're too tired, you'll have a hard time being receptive. Put some time aside specifically to listen.

Open yourself to the music. You need to be in it for the adventure, for the experience, and you need to expect that anything can happen, just like when you're about to start watching a new show or reading a new book that you know nothing about.

A great way to get into the right place, physically, mentally, and even auditorily, is to go to a concert. But you can also do very well by listening to a recording in an otherwise quiet place, where you feel comfortable and can relax. It helps if you have a good recording and a good sound system, so you can easily hear the detail in the music. And this time, play the music loud enough, but beware: no matter how great the music, long or repeated exposure to sounds above eighty-five decibels can cause hearing loss. And headphones can go up to over one hundred decibels. Keep the volume controls near so as to adjust if needed.

All this setup for focused listening may seem a little intense. Don't fret! The purpose of it is give your brain space to appreciate the music. That doesn't mean that you should approach your listening session as though it's going to be particularly complicated. It's more a matter of making sure you don't have anything getting in the way.

3. Learn about the music

There's no harm in jumping into the music directly. But if you find that you are having a hard time "getting it," as it were, it can be helpful to learn a little bit about the music first. Figure out what people have said about it, what they like about it, and what it means to them. Learn the back-story, learn about the lives of the composers, the performers, and the people who listened to this music and enjoyed it.

If you're going to a concert, see if you can listen to recordings and become familiar with the music ahead of time. Read a little about it. Give yourself some guideposts.

You will find that some music is not even designed to be immediately pleasing to the ear, and there are many possible reasons for that. It could be that the music is trying to evoke something unpleasant. It could also be that making the music "pretty" was never the goal in the first place, or that this took a backseat to a host of other considerations, which, again, you can learn about. Even if the surface of the music isn't "pretty," the music can still be interesting, and even pleasing aesthetically, on other levels.

We don't always "get" music automatically. Some music requires a little more effort. Just like you can't expect to understand what a person speaking in a foreign language is telling you, or just like you may not have the best experience reading an advanced textbook in a subject you have little background in, sometimes you first need to learn a few things about the music and what it's trying to do, before it starts to make sense.

4. What if it's too boring?

Now, if you find that the music you're listening to is too "boring," it probably means you're over-focusing on one aspect at the expense of another or you are looking for something that isn't there. If you get overly hung up on the fact that the chord progression in a piece is predictable, you might miss the singer's elegant inflection of the melody. If you're expecting a big drum solo in the middle of a Mozart symphony, you're going to be waiting for a long time.

Sometimes the music is indeed very long and it can be difficult to stay focused throughout. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Mahler's Third Symphony both last for over an hour. It's okay to let your attention ebb and flow. Simply bathing in the music, without constantly trying to analyze and dissect every little bit of it, is a very common way to experience it. You may not want to have that as your default way of listening, but there's no harm in lapsing into that mode from time to time. In fact, by letting go of the more minute details, you may become more attuned to the large-scale narrative of the piece. And there are actually many styles of music where a less focused way of listening is the preferred mode of listening.

5. Musical Parameters

Music is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. Knowing what the various parameters are, is thought to help listeners stay focused, leading them to a greater appreciation of what they are listening to. In any given piece, there's so much to listen to that it would be really quite difficult to pay careful attention to all the aspects in one listening.

Let me just list and define several of these parameters. There are parameters having to do with the organization of music in time, starting with pulse (the presence or absence of a regular beat underlying the music) and tempo (which is the speed of the pulse). If we find that some beats are emphasized and others not, and that this recurs in a predictable way, for instance if every second or every third beat is emphasized, the music is said to be metered. And finally we have the rhythm of a given part itself, which is the specific placement of each of the musical events in time.

We then move on to other parameters such as timbre (what makes it so that we know, just from hearing it, that a sound has been produced by a trumpet and not by a clarinet, for instance, or by one person and not another), pitch (which is the height of a given sound), scales (the collection of pitches used in a piece of music), and melodies (the tune itself). You can listen to the harmony, how different pitches sound when played together, forming chords. Dynamics - how loud a sound is - add a layer of expressivity. Music is sometimes made up of different layers of activity which interact in different ways. You may hear that there is a foreground and a background layer, for instance. This is the textural aspect. You can pay attention to the way the piece is constructed, whether sections are repeated, and, if they do come back, whether they are varied and how.

Live performances have a theatrical component. They take place on a stage. The performers usually choose the way they dress carefully. The way they enter the stage and how they behave throughout the performance is usually planned out, following certain conventions. The performers' facial expressions and the gestures they make while playing, conveying intensity and emotion, add to the theatrical element. Virtuosity - the ability to play technically difficult music - can be highlighted by making visible demonstrations of effort and by exaggerating the necessary motions. Performers can, conversely, highlight their virtuosity in a more subtle way, by making passages that are audibly difficult, look as though they flow out effortlessly. The mood of the music often dictates which approach is most suitable.

Finally, a lot of music comes with words. Songs, of course, can be thought of as poems set to music, but an evocative title alone can do a great deal to prompt the listener's imagination.

Each parameter of the music has an effect on how we perceive it, such that, even when we have no explanation, no context, we still subconsciously derive meaning from what we hear. For example, a fast tempo can evoke excitement, and low notes can depict gloom, and so forth. Music can evoke anything - an image, a sensation, or a mood - and it can quickly move from one to the next. It's not in the least important for you to be able to generate a coherent story out of all that is evoked. Nor should you be surprised if what the music evokes to you is different from what it evokes to someone else. Far from being a limitation, abstraction is what gives music its unique appeal.

6. Trust others

I find it very helpful to remember that, for any given song or piece of music, there are many people who genuinely believe that it is good music. It's important to trust the judgment of our fellow humans. We are sometimes quick to dismiss those we don't immediately agree with - in this case, the listeners and the creators of music we do not enjoy, understand, or simply like - as suffering from some kind of impaired judgment. We may, more or less consciously, accuse them of being immature, primitive, unrefined, or uncultured. In other cases, we may think of them as snobbish, arrogant, or willfully esoteric. Finally, we may view them as out-of-touch, confused, overly cerebral, or too obsessed with one aspect of the music at the expense of many others.

But these strategies ultimately have only one goal in mind, to give us an excuse to ignore what we do not understand. Why do we need this excuse? Most likely, because we often do not have the time or the energy to give everything we encounter a fair shake. Yet, instead of modestly accepting the fact that we routinely operate a kind of emergency triage based on a very superficial understanding of the music, many of us - particularly those of us who feel as though they are expected to have strong opinions about cultural matters - unfortunately prefer to use these damning rationales to justify our choices. And that, of course, is very unfair.

We would be well advised, instead, to try to discover what others find so compelling about the music they cherish. If someone else likes the music, there's a pretty good chance that there is, indeed, something to appreciate in it. I truly think that a humble and respectful outlook is the key to a greater and better understanding of the world.

7. Overcoming cultural prejudices

If you do not like an entire style of music, try to figure out why, and see if you can work your way beyond this. You probably know people who hate rap, others who hate country music, others who can't stand classical music, and so forth. Often, the problem is connected with negative associations having to do with the people who created the music, their culture, as well as the narratives that are conveyed by the music. One should keep in mind that it is risky to discount an entire group of humans and entire cultures based on little more than stereotypes.

Sometimes we find that there is a certain uniformity within a given style of music and we rail in exasperation that it "all sounds the same." Most likely, though, we are failing to catch the details that give each piece its individuality, in the eyes of those who do appreciate the music.

Here's one fairly easy way of turning negative associations into positive ones. Movies about a particular group of people will often use these people's music in the soundtrack. If we feel a sense of connection or perhaps even admiration toward them and the struggles they deal with - movies need plots and plots usually involve struggles -, we will map these positive feelings onto the music and transcend our initial block.

Some listeners have allergies, as it were, to particular timbres. You may know people who hate the accordion, the harpsichord, synthesizers, operatic voices, and the list goes on and on. Some people dislike certain melodic gestures. The dislike can affect any of the musical parameters.

Often, these dislikes have more to do, once again, with associations than with anything having to do with the sound itself. For instance, some people may look down on the accordion because they associate the accordion with certain folk traditions that they perceive as unsophisticated. They may also see it as an instrument for street performers, a context that is perceived as low prestige. As an experiment, the acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell famously went, unannounced and anonymously, to play the violin in a Washington DC subway station. And he found that no one stopped to listen to his playing. People who are going through a subway station are usually in a hurry and have other things on their mind, but it could also be that they simply have low expectations of street musicians and don't see the point of stopping to listen.

8. Unfamiliar stylistic conventions are not shortcomings

Customs are different throughout the world and throughout history. A criteria that is all-important in one style of music could be unimportant in the next. Each musical parameter is likely to be thought of, and to be treated differently, across different cultures and across different styles of music. Here are a few examples of this.

In many musical traditions, performers encourage or expect their audience to participate, by applauding or by showing audible signs of appreciation while the music is going on, or even joining the performance by singing along, for instance. This is thought to be more engaging to the audience, providing it with a closer and more authentic connection with the music. However, in concerts of Western classical music, the audience is expected to remain perfectly silent during the performance. The thinking is that this preserves the integrity of the performer's sound, providing, once again, but in a completely different way, a more authentic experience.

Those who come to opera for the first time are sometimes taken aback by what they perceive as egregious breaks with realism. For instance, in opera, it would not be seen as particularly problematic for a 56-year old vocalist to sing the role of a teenager. What matters most in the choice is how singers sound, not how they look. The fact that Mimì, the lead character in Puccini's opera La Bohème, still manages to sing beautifully just minutes before dying of tuberculosis, isn't perceived as a contradiction. In opera, what is sung can represent what would be, in a novel, regular speech, dialogue, or even unspoken thought.

Here is a final example, this time concerning a non-Western musical tradition. Once, a Middle-Eastern violinist was playing for a European master. He started his set with a few Western classical pieces and ended with some Middle-Eastern traditional music. The master expressed surprise: "I liked how you played Beethoven and Mozart, but you suddenly went horribly out-of-tune when you started playing the Turkish music!" So what happened here? Well, as it turns out, Middle-Eastern melodies use different scales and a different tuning system than the ones commonly used in Western classical music. The master did not know this and simply interpreted the difference as a technical deficiency.

There are hundreds of examples like this, having to do with any of the musical parameters - tuning, timbre, coordination between parts, harmony, rhythm, and so forth. These deviations from our expectations, which, if we aren't careful, we may perceive as mistakes, may be in fact a great deal more sophisticated than we anticipated at first.

If we want to gain an appreciation for the music of other traditions, we cannot get bogged down by such matters, particularly if they are pervasive within the style. It would be a little bit like complaining that books in English have the horrible habit of using the word "the" all the time. Conventions of a different time and place may seem sometimes ridiculous, when perceived through our own very specific cultural lens, but it's important to be able to get over this quickly and to look beyond so we can enjoy what it does have to offer.

9. Look beyond the technical

Imagine you went to hear a concert put on by children or amateurs, and they aren't in tune, and they aren't together. Should that get in the way of your enjoyment? Many would agree that technical flawlessness is not the primary goal of that particular venture, and that, instead, it's about the educational or the communal experience, and you make that possible by playing the role of the listener at the end of the year.

But is that to say that there is truly nothing valuable in the performance itself? Even in the case of very rocky and unskilled performances, there is still a great deal to be gotten from the concert. Since the early twentieth century, the availability of recordings has spoiled us with a glut of highly polished, professional performances, and this has changed our expectations. The marketing of records of classical music during the second half of the twentieth century promoted the idea that certain recordings represented a "definitive" performance, a gold-standard of sorts, which all other performances would be measured against. But many bemoaned this new way of looking at things, because it encouraged a kind of standardization which transformed what was once a living, flexible tradition into one where so much is codified that the tradition is at risk of becoming fossilized, losing its expressive appeal, as well as its relevance to new generations. Rather, these commentators argued, a musical composition is a shape that is meant to be occupied by different individuals, who are to instill it with their own particular voice and personality.

Whether instilling this unique voice is done in a calculated way or unintentionally, the unique, inimitable and unrepeatable nature of the live performance is what makes it so interesting. And consequently, that particular rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" is in fact a great deal more interesting, unique, and "special," than a professional recording, because of the particular sound that this particular child imparts on the song. However hard she may have worked to align her performance with accepted musical norms, she did not completely erase her particular vocal timbre, her individual way of phrasing, the way she sometimes needs breath in the middle of a phrase, and so forth. These elements, like her speaking voice, like her appearance, are inherent to our perception of her identity. W e should relish the fact that we were able to hear something that represents her, much better than we can hear anything personal coming out of the trained, cookie-cutter performance of the professional. Precisely because the child's performance deviated so much from the standard, polished performance, so easily found in recordings, you have been treated to a far more singular and special experience. You may in fact find that the so-called errors themselves can shed a new light on the work far better than yet another polished performance.

Ideally, there is a balance to be found between the two extremes presented here. One where basic technical aspects are in place, but there is room remaining for variation and individual expression. But unless you are expected to give critical, technical feedback at the end of the performance, don't over-focus on the technical shortcomings. It's not about the mistakes and the mishaps or whether the music is out-of-tune. Think of that as the authenticity and the charm of the experience.

10. Get involved: perform the music yourself!

Finally, one of the best ways of enjoying music is, very simply, to play or sing it oneself. Some music is very reliant, for its full effect, on being experienced by the performer. For instance, playing certain types of percussion music can generate a kind of trance. Singing as part of a choir is a much stronger and more immersive feeling than simply sitting and hearing it. So sing in the shower, play with friends, join a chorus or play in a band!

There is, obviously, no one way to listen to music. And no, you don't have to like everything! But give new music a chance. Don't rush to judge. Open yourself to it, be receptive to it. It's there for you.