THE MAGIC OF MUSIC Part 2

 GETTING THE MOST OUT OF LISTENING TO MUSIC

Learning to listen by listening -- This is how I learned to listen to music while in college in the charming and peaceful city of Pune in the foothills of the Sahyadri mountain range in Maharashtra.

Rock was our music at the time and I was determined to hear it in the same way that my friend Terry and three or four of our Rock loving friends sat and listened to music in silence for hours together in the tranquil presence of Mary Jane.  

LISTENING TO ROCK – The Rock music we listened to was creatively and musically at a very high level. We listened to whole 45-minute albums at a go, often repeating the whole album, never skipping a track, or only hearing tracks we liked. We listened to complete albums. Completely immersed in the music.

Dissimilar and unalike rock music -- It was the era of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, The Who and Led Zeppelin. Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Blind Faith and The Doors. Pink Floyd and Procol Harum; there was Crosby, Stills and Nash, Deep Purple, Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers and Jethro Tull. Blues musicians, B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. There were John Mayall and Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield and Johnny Winter. There was Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. Chicago, and Blood Sweat and Tears. And the virtuosos that towered above them all, defying genre, Stevie Wonder and Frank Zappa. These were some, but not all the bands we listened to.  

     Remarkably, all the music produced at the time was musically dissimilar from the others; each band and individual artist was distinctive in sound and expression; their music pushed boundaries and defied conventions. These bands are still spoken about and listened to even today. Rock, blues and folk classics.

     Listen, layer by layer -- After a long listening session during which I had seen my friends Arun Pathak and Sudheer Gaikwad who had the gift of music in abundance, exchanging quick glances of appreciation at certain points in the music that we were listening to, I asked both Arun and Sudheer, what they hear that I don’t, Arun, who took my query seriously, thought about it and came back to me after a few days and suggested that to increase my listening ability, each time I listen to a rock album I should listen to only one of the instruments, so at the first listen, I could perhaps, carefully listen only to the bass guitar, then next, listen only to the drums; next, listen only to the lead guitar and then listen to them all together and check out how they relate to each other. 
     Seeing the whole picture. This method - not easy to do - worked. It helped me listen to rock music with greater awareness. I learned to give the music my full attention; I focused on the qualities of individual sounds and began to notice things which were not immediately obvious. 

     Seeing and Unseeing -- Listening to jazz and classical music however, is different from listening to rock music. In rock music one listens to bands comprising an average of three to five musicians, and the arrangements of the music and the compositions themselves follow certain basic patterns. There were exceptions of course. But generally, a Rock band had four or five instruments including the singer, whereas a symphony orchestra could have hundred instrumentalists and a jazz band would usually have fifteen members, and unusually, eighteen members. However, the method of listening to rock music I had learned, laid the foundations of listening to all music. 

LISTENING TO CLASSICAL MUSIC -- To listen to classical music, one could apply the same method as listening to rock or pop music, but our listening canvas would be on a grander scale, especially when listening to a symphony orchestra.

     When listening to an orchestra with so many sets of instruments, one can listen to each group of instruments separately as we learned to do in rock music, but it is not recommended, because classical composers create intricate, interconnected melodies, harmonies, and dynamics to convey powerful feelings and create astral atmospherics of beauty.

     Classical music, unlike pop music, may not pop out at us with a catchy tune, or captivating lyrics. Classical works deal with complex and subtle emotions and tend to be a deeper, more sustained experience to a listener.

     Transformation of themes and their return. To get the greatest amount of pleasure out of listening to a classical piece of music by an orchestra, or a chamber music group, we should try to identify the different groups of instruments and how they sound.

     We’ve got to listen to harmonies and tone colours of the whole orchestra.

     We’ve got to listen and recognise themes that are being played and how the themes are passed around to the many instrument groupings, and how they are being transformed and how they return to the original themes. 

     Explore and expand our zone of pleasure. As we continue listening to classical music, we will expand our musical horizons and explore various styles, genres, and performances.

     Classical music has stood the test of time due to its long-lasting allure and emotional resonance. In time, as we listen and understand what words like sonata, nocturne, etude, prelude are, and, that these musical forms and genres are typically instrumental, we will marvel at the remarkable skills of the composers and performers and, we will enjoy every nuance and complexity of the music. Once we’ve found the pleasure of classical works, it’s unlikely that we would ever lose that appreciation.

LISTENING TO JAZZ -- Jazz is a complex and highly technical art form that is largely Instrumental music.  Jazz experiments with various scales, and unusual chord progressions and harmonies. And, it is played by highly proficient, advanced musicians.      

      A major part of jazz is improvisation; the spontaneous invention of melodic solo lines composed on the spot within the overall structure of the song.

      A precise characterization of jazz is impossible, but I’ll have a go at describing what sets Jazz apart:

     The sound of Jazz itself, is unusual. Jazz uses highly complex chords, and  deliberate dissonances. Jazz melodies have some curiously flattened notes within the composition called ‘blue’ notes. 

     Jazz has the feeling of the Blues. Blues is a genre of music which has a blues tonality, a melancholy, reflective sound due to a unusual blues scale which has dissonant notes which give it emotional impact. The Blues genre is foundational to jazz. Jazz is not jazz without the blues in it. 

     Improvisation is the spontaneous part within the structure of a song, and is the heart and soul of jazz. it’s the space in the written and arranged music for a soloist or sequence of soloists, whether vocal or instrumental to improvise within the melody and structure of the song. 

     And lastly, in this description, jazz swings -- Jazz has a propulsive rhythm that makes you sway and swing, rather than rock back and forth. Jazz swings – just like the Duke Ellington song title says, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”. 

     The structure of jazz bands – Big Bands usually have a rhythm section which include a piano, bass, guitar and drums, and a horn section, which is typically five Saxophones -- sax players often double on clarinet and flute. Four Trumpets, and Four Trombones. Small Jazz ensembles, often called Jazz combo’s, typically have drums, acoustic bass, piano, trumpet and sax. Moreover, there are piano trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, octets nonets which have different configurations of instruments. 

     Listening to jazz is very different from listening to Rock and Pop, and very different from listening to Western classical music. In Rock and Pop music, song lyrics put across an idea or story which an audience relate to. In jazz, the improvised solos communicate an emotion or a musical idea. Good solos tell a story.  Western classical music has no room for improvisation. 

     Plunge into the moment and listen actively. A listener of jazz listens to a piece of music and takes in the unique sound of jazz, and hears the individualistic interpretation of a song that jazz musicians impart to the melody, the harmony, and the rhythm of the song.

     Listen to the melody and the variations. We will hear how the musicians add some variation to the melody at the first repetition of it, we will then hear how the musicians keep adding variations to the theme and we will hear them invent melodies on the fly while they improvise and innovate. 

     Notice the emotional range conveyed through improvisation. The ebb and flow of dynamics. Notice the interplay between musicians while they converse. Each performance by jazz musicians is a conversation -- not only with them and the audience, but also amongst themselves.

     Flights of imagination - To listen to Jazz is to listen to the great technical prowess and flights of imagination by the musicians. To create and make good their inventive imagination, soloists have to have the technical ability to make  their instruments do what they have to. 

     Music is an antidote to entropy -- Listening is something everyone can do. Just like learning the words of a popular song, you listen over and over. Repetition creates familiarity and comfort, and allows us to listen again to parts of the music we may not have heard fully, or understood when we heard it before. Everything comes together, and the structure of musical compositions upholds a balance that defies the natural tendency toward disorder.  Active listening enlivens us so that we savour more than the general outline of a performance. Every time we listen, we will hear something we hadn’t heard before, and that makes jazz such an enjoyable experience.  

Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze? For those of us who have to learn to listen to music, the practice outlined is valid. It works. Most musicians who have the inherent gift of music, usually hear everything in the music without the effort others like me had to commit to in the beginning; but the achievement it is worth the time. We enjoy listening to absorbing and compelling music like jazz and Indian and western classical music just as much as advanced musicians do. Indeed, we get all the juice out of the music. And the juice is definitely worth the squeeze!

https://highnotesdance.blogspot.com/2024/07/why-is-jazz-not-popular-like-pop-music.html
https://highnotesdance.blogspot.com/2023/10/jazz-music-is-like-good-conversation.html
https://highnotesdance.blogspot.com/2021/04/elements-of-music.html
https://highnotesdance.blogspot.com/2018/10/an-orchestra-is-holarchy.html
https://highnotesdance.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-orchestra-conductors-instrument.html\
https://highnotesdance.blogspot.com/2016/08/why-we-love-blues-bb-king.html
https://highnotesdance.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-comfort-and-joy-of-music.html

https://highnotesdance.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-magic-of-music-part-1.html