With the extreme ease of availability of music – thanks largely to the Internet, and to a lesser degree television, commercials, movies and of course MTV and its cronies – it is easy for the average listener to become complacent with what he or she chooses to listen to. Thanks to these easily and frequently traveled avenues to music, to many music is nothing more than background noise for studying, working out, walking to class, parties and the like. This act of taking music for granted is a travesty, and it not only has negative effects on the listener, but also on the health of the industry as a whole.
It is probably difficult to imagine how not really listening to music could negatively impact the listener, but this is a sad truth of what is known as passive listening. Passive listening is a term that is most often associated with verbal communication and may be what some students are familiar with doing during lectures. Sometimes the phrase, “In one ear and out the other” is used to describe the act.
Clearly this activity (or, perhaps more correctly labeled, passivity) is applicable to the act of listening to music. Surely everyone is guilty of this from time to time, perhaps because listeners have something else on their minds. But the unfortunate truth is that passive listening to music happens far more than it should. Passively listening is useless when applied to music because listeners don’t get to truly experience every aspect of the music as the artist intended. In a way, this insults the artist without that artist realizing he or she has been insulted; worse still, the listener misses out on the amazing transformative and life-changing power that music can have. Listening to music should be like putting yourself knee-deep in a great novel.
A great composition of music is incredibly similar to a literary work of art. True literature is crafted with incredible care by the author in order to tell a singular story. However, underneath the initial story there are many more levels to be discovered, be it through symbolism, repetition of images or impressive literary techniques such as alliteration, subtle rhyme or satire. All of these aspects, in addition to plot and writing style, combine to form literary masterpieces that will continue to bear new fruit after each new reading. This is the hallmark of great pieces of literature.
The same aspects that create a standout reading experience also, with a bit of tweaking, apply to great music for those listeners who apply a technique known as active listening (again, typically associated with verbal communication). It is obvious how these literary concepts apply to the lyrics of a great song, since they are essentially a story set to music.
Great lyric writers use exactly the same techniques to craft their stories as great authors do. Unfortunately, due to passive listening, many listeners either don’t go to the trouble of learning the lyrics, or, equally as egregious, don’t bother giving serious (or any) thought to what the singer is trying to say with his or her carefully selected words.
Of course, the rest of the meat of music lies in is the tunes themselves. Actively listening to music, contrary to popular belief, does not require a degree in music theory or any real theory background at all: As redundant as it sounds, actively listening to music is the best way to educate yourself on actively listening to music.
Upon repeated listens, an active listener discovers nuances in the composition, such as harmonies that he or she never noticed that contribute to a certain mood; repeated rhythms or melodies (perhaps in a different key or with different harmonies); polyrhythms; influences from other genres of music that have been applied for a specific reason; interesting juxtapositions of lyrics with certain parts of the composition and more.
The easiest way to actively listen to music is simply to read the lyrics along with the song. It certainly helps to have a stellar sound system/pair of headphones, as higher quality listening devices enhance the listening experience, allowing the listener to hear elements of the music he or she may otherwise not have heard.
Additionally, mp3 files are not the preferred way to listen to music. Though better quality file types such as FLAC, ALAC and WMA take up more memory, their advantages in sound quality make up for the increase in size. The main idea to keep in mind when actively listening is to give music the full and undivided attention that it deserves. The artist worked hard to create the art that the listener is enjoying, and the listener should respect that by actively engaging in the material – again, much like literature.
However contradictory this may sound, not all music necessarily begs to be listened to actively, especially in the sad state that the industry is in today. Much of music these days is created with the express purpose of making money. This music does not need close analysis and repeated listens and should only be enjoyed on a very base “fun” level. The question is: How did the industry get so flooded with music that is all style and no substance? Could it be that it is a direct result of passive listening? Could these two phenomena be linked in some sort of vicious circle? For the sure-to-be-dramatic conclusion, check back Feb. 22.
Regen McCracken ([email protected]) is a junior intending to major in journalism. He has a love for video games, metal, jazz and all things that make one think. He also writes and performs his own music while not writing these ever-interesting columns or studying himself to sleep.
