Listening and hearing music
Photo courtesy: Science Photo Library
of mankind, and more of it continues to be made every day. Whether it’s friendly palaver or a TV show, music has made itself a central part of human life.
But how much music is really being listened to? Sure, sound waves of music can enter an ear, but is that really listening to music? Here, there is an important distinction to be made–hearing and listening, or passive listening and active listening.
There have been many distinctions and definitions made on active and passive listening. One such distinction by French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy in his book, Listening, suggests that hearing is taking in sounds, while listening is placing those sounds in context. For example, one could hear a series of beeps and understand that there is a beeping noise, but another could listen to the sequence of beeps and realize that it means SOS in Morse code.
The same concept can be applied to music. When one simply hears music, they are only conscious of its volume, tempo, and its overall presence. Listening to music, however, may involve feeling the mood of the music, appreciating various layers of instrumentation, and interpreting the overall story the music relates.
Most music today is heard passively primarily because of two reasons: music accessibility and human busyness.
Before the invention of recording devices during the latter half of the 19th century, music was only played live, making music much more inaccessible and expensive than today. Technology has advanced greatly since the 19th century, and 63% of the world can listen to virtually any recording of anything from their fingertips. Whereas people couldn’t afford to listen to a lot of background music in the past, people today can click a button on their device and have music play indefinitely.
Society is getting busier as a whole, or at least feels busier. This topic is for another whole article, but the point is that people have less leisure time than before. People simply don’t have the leisure to drop everything they have in their hands and do nothing but listen to music. Raymond Kim, a current sophomore at Korea International School, rarely only listens to music, but instead he “use[s] music as an addition to complement another action or activity I am doing.” For example, he listens to music while he runs for motivation and to run along the beat, conserving time. “In my opinion, music alone is not enough entertainment for my whole body,“ Kim adds, “I believe that music can enhance your experience while executing another action, rather than only keeping the ears and mind busy.”
The shift in society and the dominance of passive listening has led people to appreciate music less than before. Somewhat ironically, increased accessibility to music has resulted in people appreciating it less. The quantity of people actively listening to music has obviously increased, but that number compared to people using background music, filling silence, or drowning out distracting noises is negligible. That is not to say that background music is bad or illegitimate–some people definitely benefit from listening to music in the background like Kim. However, the overall appreciation of music has declined, and consequently, its overall quality and detail, in the author’s opinion, has decreased.
This, of course, is completely subjective, but one measure of music may have a more objective indication–time. The duration of the average song has decreased over time, and yes, there are countless other reasons for this trend, but a contributing factor could be that a songwriter, knowing that most of his songs are listened to idly, could make his songs a few seconds shorter than before and spend a few hours less on producing the song and continue to make the same revenue and playtime. This could be because his target audience is for those who want to listen to his music in the background (music for exercise, studying, sleep, etc.). Over time, the quality of his music might decrease, as most of his listeners aren’t attentively listening to the intrinsic quality of the music.
At the end of the day, music is music. There isn’t a correct way to listen to music, and anyone can do whatever they want with it. Still, try listening to a song or piece and concentrate solely on the music. Even if you’ve listened to it a hundred times, you’ll be surprised at all the little details the music has yet to offer.