Active vs Passive Listening

mgavin

mgavin

Experienced
To be honest, I'm fairly aware of when I'm enjoying music passively, and when I am actively, critically listening.

I think everyone has different natural traits as an active listener depending on their training and musical experiences.

For example:
A guitar player might lean towards hearing intricacies of a melody or harmony (definitely not rhythm ;p).
A drummer might instantly connect with a song's rhythm.
An audio engineer might connect with the tone and blend of musical elements.
As you train your ears and brain to be acutely aware of specific elements and relationships within music, you can almost never turn back. Once you initially become aware, it's hard to go back to being unaware.

Personally, I get equal joy out of both passive and active listening. It gives me renewed mileage out of my favorite songs.

Sometimes I'm just enjoying them as songs, but sometimes I'm actively listening and learning. Learning what the musicians did to make it feel and sound a certain way. Learning how an engineer enhanced the vibe of a song with various techniques.

So, as musicians do you guys actively or passively listen to music? Has being a musician hindered your listening experience forever to come?
 
This really gets me when I cover a tune. After I learn a song to play it with a group, I can never hear it the same way I heard it before I sat down and broke it all out into parts. To me, it is really cool to hear the song after you break it down, but some times, I wish I could go back. Achtung Baby will never sound the same way it did when I was 13 and played it 100 times front to back, completely bewildered by all the guitar sounds.

-Phil
 
Philip said:
This really gets me when I cover a tune. After I learn a song to play it with a group, I can never hear it the same way I heard it before I sat down and broke it all out into parts. To me, it is really cool to hear the song after you break it down, but some times, I wish I could go back. Achtung Baby will never sound the same way it did when I was 13 and played it 100 times front to back, completely bewildered by all the guitar sounds.

-Phil
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Absolutely... +1000% and once you have "actively" broken down how a song is put together, it loses that "mystique" that made it the sum of its parts. I NEVER passively listen to songs (for enjoyment) that I've learnt how to play as they no longer "hold" me as a listener the way they once did. If I listen to them at all, it's to revisit the structure of the leads and realize how sloppy I've gotten in playing them.. . sad, but true.
 
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After producing and engineering my band's CD I actually find that it 'holds' me every time I listen to it. I've probably listened to each song a couple hundred times too lol.
 
I like to do both, first passively then revisit a song to analyze the parts, passages, musicians techniques and mixing. Listing to some of the 70's rock it still amazes me given the technologythey had available to them at the time how well everything sounded. Boston and Queen to name a few, the musicianship and mixing on some of those recordings are simply incredible.
 
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