How to Listen to a Song
1. Press the button
2. Listen
Sure, that sounds easy enough. Unfortunately, most people get Step 2 wrong. And god forbid I’ve met people who get Step 1 wrong as well, but that’s a different story.
Listening to music isn’t as easy as you might think. We listen to music while cleaning the house, driving a car, or sitting in the bus (for our more environmentally friendly readers). We often forget that you can just sit down and listen, putting all your concentration and resources to the music.
Learning about music and it’s intricate details is a long process. By regularly listening to real examples of published music, we can learn a lot. So here’s the secret:
Start having listening sessions.
And how does that look, exactly? Simple, sit down with your CD player, iTunes library, tapes or vinyl records — wherever you have most of your music. A great place for discovering music to listen to is MusicIP, they have some great discovery tools.
Now, pick any artist, album and start listening. Today we want to just scratch the surface o what you can learn this way, but try asking yourself the following questions:
- What instruments are prevalent?
- How many “parts” does the song/piece have?
- Are there unidentified sounds I’m missing? Synthesizers are often “overheard”.
- Could I play a part of this song myself?
Start slicing the song up, look at each member of the orchestra or band and his part in the piece. Ask yourself “How did they do that!?” and try to find out what makes these songs “cool”. What is it that I could use myself to be a good musician?
Soon enough, we will explore harmonic and rhythmic aspects, and delve deeper into the anatomy of music. Until then, stay tuned by subscribing today!
4 Comments
Well said Arjun! To add to what you have said, I listen to music while I sleep also…. crazy! Anyway I like to listen to serene music at times at night for the few sleepy-aware moments.
Arjun, can you write something on the relation between the track title and the music track. I feel this is largely ignored by listeners. I dont see these titles as mere labels to call out the tracks. I feel meditating upon the track title, its meaning and its expression in the track will greatly increase the way one enjoys music.
For e.g., in the album YES TO THE RIVER, all track titles needs to be meditated upon…. Chopping Wood, Footsteps of silence, Garden of the beloved (to name some). I’d like you to write upon this, if you feel this worth writing.
All the best! your topic is unique and deserves much attention. Something like as important and similar to music critiques…
Arjun, I loved this post! It reminded me of my introduction to musicianship classes at school. You definitely listen to music in a different way after you’re asked to take it apart, and while I don’t always like to do it in this fashion when I’m just listening for pleasure, it’s good to have this skill as well. Very nice post!
-Sammi (www.52bands.com)
Wow, very cool post. No way on earth it’ll teach unmusical me to play an instrument, but I actually can see where it would be a very handy assessment tool for writing a music review (something I could be better at and should practice). I don’t think I’d do this when me and the tunes are just kickin’ back but I’m absolutely going to try it next time I need to write about a particular song or album — I’ll mention you if I do. Oooo, in fact that just gave me a stellar idea for a post.
Cool, thanks.
Hey guys, thanks for your nice responses. I have a post in the pipeline about song titles and albums already, lostinmusic.
Sammi, glad you enjoyed the post, I’ll try making more of this kind
.
Jennifer, I’m looking forward to any posts you create, and it’s an added bonus for me to know I could help in some way.