Stop Practicing And Intentionally Listen To Music Better Listening

As a guitarist, I tend to spend a lot of time practicing in solitude. This solitude is not just from people but also other music than what is on my music stand. The more I isolate myself, the more disconnected I can become from the greater story that music is telling through history and in the present. This is why I have made a habit to intentionally listen to great music daily.

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What does it mean to listen to music with intention?

All of us do a variety of things while listening to music. However, most of us never take the time to engage in the listening process daily unless it is listening to our notes as we practice. Listening with the intention of a recording or live performance requires a lot of mental work. It is forgetting about the demands of what awaits us after the event and what happened before our entrance into another artist’s world. To listen with intention means focusing on the music and nothing else. It is difficult to not allow the mind to wander. However, by practicing this focus while listening to recordings you can make a habit of how to focus while listening to a live performance.

What should you listen to?

It is important to not constrain yourself in your listening. The goal is to open yourself up to many different expressions and to learn about them, yourself, and music in general. I purposefully stay away from using my intentional listening to only listen to classical guitar music. I hear much of this daily. I choose to listen to the classical greats (modern and from the past) from opera to symphonic works to ensemble works to solo works.

Some days I will turn my attention to the jazz greats and focus my attention there. Typically I, again, refrain from listening to jazz guitar. I spent several years with a hardcore focus on the jazz guitar world and want to expand beyond it.

Other days I turn my attention to the pop world. I have to make very specific choices when it comes to this genre. And by “pop”, I mean anything from 1940 onward that is not in the jazz or classical idiom (i.e. rock, metal, rhythm and blues, etc.). Much of today’s music is so redundant that it bores me almost instantly but there are great musicians and writers out there that make listening such joy.

What to listen for?

Having a recording to repeat is of great value when taking the time to intentionally listen. I usually listen once without listening “for” anything. When I play it again I will focus on different aspects of the music. I may focus on melodic or thematic content. Then I will turn my attention to the rhythm. From there I usually focus on harmony and key. Finally, I will listen just to self-explore how it makes me feel. What emotions arise from within as I listen to the music?

This last question is one that I feel is why I enjoy music without words more than music with words. When words are present there is already an agenda given to the music and I now am subject to that agenda. This is not to say that a composer writing without words does not have an agenda for his/her music. Even if they do have an agenda it does not mean that I have to know it ahead of my listening. I can do research after the fact to learn of that agenda if I am so inclined.

Intentionally Listen to Music While Connecting to the family of music?

I headed this section with “the family of music” because I don’t know what else to call it. When we begin to really listen to music we truly are influenced by what penetrates the depths of our being. Music moves us in ways that no other form of artistic expression can come close to. This is why a movie always has a soundtrack. If you were to just listen to a movie with only the actors speaking, then it would lose the power of the material being presented. I am in no way suggesting movies are greater to theater but the previous statement cannot be denied.

So here is your challenge, take time out each day to intentionally listen to music. It will inform you and change you over time. You will grow as a musician and you will grow as an appreciator of music in general. There is an infinite amount of music but you and I only have an infinite amount of time to enjoy it.

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Chadwick Becks

I have two degrees in guitar performance and was privileged to study under Aaron Shearer, Tom Kikta, David Skantar, Ken Karsh, Tim Bedner, and currently Christopher Berg. Outside my editorial work on this blog, I teach full-time across many genres including classical, jazz, blues, rock, funk, and metal.