After watching the TEDxTalk, The difference between hearing and listening1. I was struck by the amount of time that I spent passively listening to music. As she states, “the ear hears, the brain listens, the body senses vibrations”. For development as a musician and producer I can see the necessity to listen more actively.
Looking at the practice of Deep Listening2 I started to look at the exercises that I thought would be most appropriate to my current music practices. The exercise itself goes through the relaxation techniques that then allow you to focus on the sounds you hear, without distraction. But the book goes a step further. Oliveros then goes into what she names “Ways of Listening” (P13-16). This is broken down into seven different areas:
Forms of attention
- Focal and Global attention. This is the difference between sounds that take your attention (focal), like a sharp horn stab, and more generalized (global) sounds, crowds talking for example. “Deep Listening encourages the balancing of these two forms of attention so that one can flexibly employ both forms and recognize the difference between these two forms of listening.”
Sending and Receiving
- Oliveros goes into the difference between a sender, or creator of sound and receiving sound. For me this is about mindfulness, about knowing what mode you are in.
Sound/Silence:
- “Listening to sounds means listening to silences, and vice versa.” This is true for all sounds as there is a relationship between discrete sounds that is part of what we use to make music.
Palms of Hands:
- This attention is more to do with the body, which should be relaxed to focus attention.
Soles of Feet:
- Become attuned to the vibrations that can be sensed by the feet.
Whole Body:
- It is important to also notice when you feel sound in your body.
Multi-dimensional Listening:
- “Sounds are both temporal and spatial.” The concept of how space and time combine to create a sound experience is the most fascinating. The soundscape that we live in is an overlapping tapestry. Making sense of it brings together all the other ways of listening above.
These principals of Deep Listening were also evident in the lesson in the slides on Aural Awareness. Combined these two ways of listening require a vocabulary to accompany in order to describe what a listener interprets. Of particular interest is “Reduced Listening”, where the listener concentrates on: Pitch, timbre, dynamics, tempo, envelope (how it changes in time).
References:
- TEDxtalks (2015) The difference between hearing and listening. Available at: https://youtu.be/_QHfOuRrJB8 (Accessed: 30 September 2022).
- Oliveros, P. (2005) Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound practice. United States: Deep Listening Publications.