11 Incredible Ways to Change the Way We Approach Music in Our Lives
If people who lived in the early twentieth century could see the technological advances that we enjoy in terms of musical reproduction today, they would be amazed. To many of them, it would seem a miracle the simple possibility of listening to music at home by pressing a simple button, let alone the quality of reproduction of current formats (even a 96kbps mp3 offers a fidelity far superior to what they were used to). Yes, we hear better, but during all this time, we have lost the ability to listen.
Today, music plays everywhere. In the background music of stores, in the car, at home, in bars, even at your workplace. This has caused it to end up being a regular part of the sound panorama, such as that of a fan or the noise of work, one more present in which we rarely stop.
We can already count on all the possible technology and spend thousands of euros on reproduction devices or vinyl records, that if we do not learn to listen (in the same way that we learn to read or watch a movie), our relationship with music will not go beyond the superficial.
This does not necessarily happen by sitting in an armchair to immerse ourselves, with our eyes closed, in what comes from our speakers, or by learning harmony and music theory (although there will be someone to help him), but to introduce small customs that focus, before everything, to alter our perception of the sounds that enter through our auditory pavilions. Here we compile some of the proposals of the most faithful psychologists and musicians.
1. Read the letters
When we are teenagers, we look for the lyrics of the songs in other languages of our idols. At that time, music has a strong identity character, so understanding what they tell us is an essential part of musical training. However, as time passes, and we have other occupations, it seems somewhat banal to us. For psychologist Kimberly Sena Moore, listening to the lyrics of a song is an essential part of enjoying music, as she explains in Psychology Today. It is not enough to hum the chorus but reading the lyrics of the stanzas and stopping at their meaning is important.
Music at low volume serves to set a room and not interfere with conversations, but it does not serve to hear all the nuances of a musical composition.
The reason this happens is that, as research published in Plos One suggested, the neural system that is activated when you look at the lyrics of a song is different from the one that works when you listen to a melody. When processing the letter, the same areas of the brain that serve to recognize words and process visual images are activated. In short, attending to both the melody and the lyrics provides a complete experience.
2. Turn up the music
Discs such as David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust or Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, about The Band’s last concert, warn on their cover that they must be played at a high volume. It is not trivial: music at a low volume serves to set a room well and not interfere in the conversations that take place there, but it does not serve to listen to all the nuances of a musical composition. Can you imagine a concert at the Paris Opera where the main voice was less than a subtle murmur? Of course, we should not overdo it: an excessively high volume can distort the music. However, we should never forget about the physical effects Looking for certain styles that use basses, such as dub or some electronic music, may have an important factor in the community character of music in listeners.
3. Dance
The logic seems to dictate that the best way to stay focused on music is to be still, to be able to be, at ease at home, sitting on the couch, fully relaxed. But that does not have to be true; As research such as that published in Acta Psychologica has shown, there is a close relationship between dance and various cognitive processes that involve the visual. After all, when are we going to pay more attention to the rhythm of a song than at the moment when we are forced to move our bodies accordingly so as not to be ridiculed?
4. Use your sight
Bob Dylan claimed that the fact that many people did not travel by car, bus, or train had caused great composers to be lost. Such a cryptic sentence suggests that inspiration may come from the visual stimuli we receive through the window of a moving vehicle. Something similar occurs when we listen to music when we can activate our synaesthetic capacity. More and more groups tend to introduce projections or other visual cues at their concerts to break the visual monotony of the stage and reinforce (or counterpoint) to the music being performed, as is the case with Portishead in this video:
5. Eat (and drink)
In the same way that happens with sight, taste, and smell, they can also complete our musical experience. As you recall in a study published in Chemosensory Perception, the consumption of food and drink is one of the most multisensory experiences in which humans can participate. Although this research focused on the influence that sounds can have on the taste of what we eat or drink, it can also work in the opposite direction. So it’s a good time to have a glass of champagne if we listen to lounge, a glass of wine if we put on Sinatra, a bourbon to listen to John Lee Hookeror a glass of Evian water if ours is indie.
6. Not just listen
People who listen to music often, and especially professionals, are used to isolating certain elements of the musical mix and asking questions about what they listen to. The poorly trained ear usually gives the Play button and forgets, but there are a series of tests that we can consider to sharpen our ears: what kind of rhythm does the song have? What is the soloist playing? Would you be able to sing the melody? Does the harmonic progression sound to you from other songs (think that in popular music such progressions are very limited)? What instruments do they sound? What elements are repeated throughout the song? At what moments do the dynamics of the song decrease? Is the song you are listening to making you short or long?
7. Let it sit
A South African musician, Quincy Megas recommends listening to something three times before forming an opinion, although other journalists would surely raise that threshold. He has repeatedly recommended, “to let the disks rest to form a real opinion about them: what is a moment of sadness might seem banal and simplistic, two weeks later, when you are on vacation, and your problems are have vanished, it may sound like a heavenly melody to our ears. Good music stands the test of time, and, above all, it sounds just as good in very different life situations.”
8. Develop your memory
In 1982, composer Elliott Schwartz published Music: Ways of Listening, in which he provided some tricks to improve our musical understanding. Although many of them were aimed at classical musicians, others can be adopted by any listener, as is the case with the development of musical memory. Schwartz says that this can be improved by remembering familiar patterns, relating new events in a song with old ones (for example, a new guitar solo with another that has already been heard), and asking us for the duration of each section of the total.
A good way to understand how a song works, especially its rhythmic system and arrangements, is to compare it with other versions of the same theme.
9. Context is everything
Our mood and attention span varies throughout the day. Therefore, if we want to understand a record, we should try to fit it into various aspects of our lives: in the morning as soon as we get up or late at night, driving the car or in bed with helmets, on a rainy day while we cover ourselves with a blanket or enjoying the summer sun in the park, the music can sound different depending on the context in which we find ourselves.
10. Listen to live records, remixes, and covers of other artists
A good way to understand how a song works, especially its rhythmic system and arrangements, is to compare it to other versions of the same theme. What is preserved, and what is different? Why has a certain group decided to change some things to live and keep others? Why have James Murphy or Timbaland gained a great reputation for its remixes? A simple test: try to compare the swilling version o Unchained Melody of Brothers Righteous with the fast-paced review of Vito & the Salutations.
11. Put the shuffle button
It is another way of saying that significant coincidences must be forced. The Surrealists used methods that favored the union of disparate concepts among themselves; It is the famous definition of movement as “the fortuitous encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.” Sometimes we get used to listening to records in order, from start to finish, or putting a list of songs in the same order. If we force casual encounters, we may realize that some Irish music is more like Kraftwerk than we think. Something similar can be done with the playlists that applications like Spotify allow. If you make a playlist song on cakes, for example, you can get together Drake with Marilyn Manson or Bob Dylan.
