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Music Appreciation And Good Music
You can hear music but do you listen to the musicyou are hearing' Music appreciation goes beyond
hearing. I was taught this by my lecturer during
my course a long time ago. To appreciate music,
you must learn to listen to music. What' Yes, I
was being taught that hearing and listening are
two different things. I always think women have a
better understanding of this concept. Hearing is
one of our senses perceiving sound coming out of
someone's mouth, or speakers, or musical
instrument in the case of music. Our voice is
also a musical instrument. Listening is the
conscious process to understand or better
understand what is being heard by our sense of
hearing. It is a process which involves the mind.
To fully appreciate a piece of music is to really
listen to it. Such simple observation ya.
Listen to music and appreciating it. Listening is
easy once you learn how but appreciating music is
a little harder, perhaps. How to even explain it
You know you liked a piece of music or a song
when you heard it for the first time, or maybe
after a few listen. Then maybe you heard it again
and decided to really listen to it. After
listening to it, you begin to understand why you
liked it; maybe it's because of the beautiful
melody of the song, the near-perfect harmony of
the singers, the pulsing rhythm of the song or it
could be the ringing guitar solo in the middle.
To really appreciate the music you have to
understand how the music is made (in effect how
it is played, recorded and what goes into the
recording. You don't have to take any course to
understand this, it's simple really.
Generally, I'm going to talk about pop music here
because that's what the majority understand most.
I would take pop music to generally cover pop,
rock, alt-rock, heavy-metal, hip-hop, r&b, soul,
synth-pop/rock, and everything else other than
classical and jazz; where the instruments used
are mainly the vocals, guitars, strings, drum or
percussions, and bass. When you listened to music
you liked, try to pay attention to all the
instruments besides the voice. Naturally, the
voice and melody are the most obvious parts of a
song. Try to appreciate the other instruments too.
The rhythm section (which are mainly the bass,
percussion or drums, and perhaps keyboards such
as piano or synth) is the most ignored part when
listening to a song. The rhythm gives the song
the foundation. Close your eyes, make an effort
to just listen to the bass-line of a song you
liked. Consciously try to shut out the melodic
part (the part which you can hum to-mainly the
vocals and guitars) and concentrate on the low
notes being played.
To further appreciate music, you can learn to
understand the little nuances of recorded music.
Listen to those slight touches of reverb which '
sweeten' the vocals of all those lovely ballads.
Here's an example, if you listened carefully to
The Beatles "Let It Be" which is a classic
Beatles song by the way, you could actually hear
reverb (or echo, as the Americans liked to say)
on the cymbals. There are two versions of this
song recorded - one on the original "Let It Be"
album which has the reverb on the cymbals and the
other on the newer "Let It Be...Naked" album
which does not have the reverb. Another example:
snare drums sound 'fatter' if you add a little
reverb to them. You could try to identify other
effects or tricks that are added to a musical mix.
Look up terms like delay, flange, vocoder,
equalization, pitch-shifting and then listen to
music which has those effects. You do not need to
be a musician to appreciate the sounds they
create.
Is there an ultimate form of music appreciation
then' It is one that is most simple. Music is
really 'food for the soul' as someone once puts
it. When you really think about it, music is an
expression of our human emotion. The joy, sadness,
anger, tragedy. It touches the heart. What is '
good' music then' Good music is any kind of music
which appeals to the human emotion, pure and
simple. It is the reason why music are made in
the first place. Bad music' It is music with no
artistic value and made for commercial reason-to
make money, to profit from the buying public. But
this is not to say that all commercial music are '
bad'. It is only bad when its sole purpose is to
serve the musician or in a bigger picture, the
music industry commercial agenda.
And good music is made better by the memories it
often evokes. That is the essence of music
appreciation.