With everything covered in this chapter you might be feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the possibilities!
Here is a simple plan you can follow for your first seven days practicing Active Listening, to get you into the habit and open up some avenues to explore further.
We’ll use writing things down as a way to help you keep track of what you’re discovering, but keep in mind that this is optional and just to help you learn as you get started. It’s the time spent during the listening itself which constitutes the actual Active Listening.
Day 1
Choose three music tracks from your collection, ideally from a variety of styles and genres, and a mix of tracks you feel you know well and ones you are familiar with but don’t know so well.
Listen to each track twice and think about the Form.
Try to write down the overall structure of the track, and use the other example questions in the section above on Form to add as much detail as you can.
You can start to cross-compare the three tracks and see what is similar and what is different.
Day 2
Using the same three tracks, listen again to each one two or three times, now thinking about instrumentation and Timbre.
Try to add to your notes about the form with what you can hear about the instruments and timbres present. Again, use the example questions to prompt you on what to explore, and once you’re done try comparing across the three tracks to see if that reveals any other interesting points.
Start writing down any other interesting questions or angles that occur to you to explore with Active Listening.
Day 3
Next explore Dynamics. Listen again to the three tracks in turn, now paying attention to the volume. The overall level and how it changes over time, and also carrying this analysis to particular instruments or groups of instruments.
How do the dynamics relate to the form? Is that different or the same for each of your three tracks?
Again, jot down any observations and points of interest!
Day 4
Moving on to the slightly more challenging musical aspects to analyse by ear, this time listen to your three tracks thinking about the Pitch.
What’s the overall pitch range? How does it vary by instrument? What Pitch Contours are used in the phrases of the main melody, and of other parts?
Write down your notes in whatever level of detail you’re able to discern.
Day 5
Next up, it’s Rhythm. Building on all your observations so far, how does Rhythm fit into the picture for each of your three tracks and each of their sections?
This is a good time to start thinking in terms of genre, too. Do the rhythms used help convey the genre of these three tracks? What about the other aspects you’ve been listening for—as far as you know, are they in keeping with what’s normal in that genre?
Day 6
The final aspect to listen for is Audio Frequencies and Effects. For many musicians this will be the least familiar so remember to start simple.
You can begin by just asking yourself “how bassy or treble-y is the overall sound?” and then carry that a bit further, asking what instruments are prominent in the low frequency range and which are prominent in the high frequency range. Remember that you can learn a lot by playing around with the EQ dials on your playback device or software!
On the effects side you can begin with the broad questions about the apparent musical environment, such as the size of the room it sounds like the musicians are playing in. Are there any really obvious effects like a strong distortion on one instrument, or auto-tune on the vocals?
Always keep in mind it’s fine to recognise things even if you don’t know the “official” name for them. So as you write notes on the three tracks feel free to use whatever words and descriptive phrases are meaningful to you. The most important thing is the listening and mental analysis. Correct terminology can come later.
Day 7
Having explored these three tracks in such detail it’s nice to do two activities to wrap things up:
- The first is to try writing a description of the track. You should have plenty of raw material now to draw from, so see if you can turn it into a coherent description of what’s most distinctive and interesting about the track. This might be a few lines, or it might be a few pages!
- Then, as a final step, simply listen one more time, now not consciously asking a question. See how your ears and your brain respond to the music now—and just take a moment to recognise how your appreciation of the track has been transformed.
That’s just the beginning!
This is a simple 7-day plan designed to get you up and running with Active Listening. If you enjoy it, by all means you can continue in just this way with new tracks and new explorations.
Normally though, Active Listening will be done more loosely than this. You might find a particular track interesting and so listen to it several times, digging into it in various ways. Or you might choose to pay attention to just one aspect of every song you hear for a few days, to really hone your awareness of, say, Rhythm, or to skill up on the Audio side of things.
Active Listening can and should be a flexible and ongoing part of your musical life, so find the ways to practice it which best suit you—and enjoy!