Why Not Listen?
Music is my listening laboratory. Sure, I hear new stuff there, but not on the playlist suggestions offered by The Algorithm. Same same similar does nothing for my head brain, and even less for my heart.
When I want to really improve my listening skills, I have to listen outside of the normal infinite playlist of music I already know. It takes effort and focus – no musical backgrounding here – and intention and time…yes: time. To really pay attention, multi-tasking must end. Sometimes I discover new music that I being to like; most of the time I don’t.
Why would anyone do that?
Well, may I ask a related question: how much of your attention can you bring to content that you don’t like or even want to hear?
Why is that?
It’s easy to turn off the sounds that don’t feel familiar. Musical wallpaper that upsets our internal decor gets skipped all the time. On the other hand, what other way do we have for learning to practice our ability to listen to sounds that we may neither like nor appreciate?
Music works the like/dislike muscle, sure, and any toddler can swipe left or right. If you don’t learn some skills to process what you hear, your listening skills are no better than a dopamine fix, and dopamine – even at its best – is merely a transient hormone that wont’ fix anything.
Three Ways To Listen Better
Beyond like/dislike – dare I say “judgment?” – there’s an infinite variety of ways to listen and understand music. May I suggest just three?
- Active Listening/Emotional Intelligence/Mindset: use the skills you’ve learned from those methods to parse the new music you hear. Can you discover the musical hooks that hold your attention? Are you able to achieve a depth of emotion beyond judgment? What new perspectives does the new music invite for you?
- Somatic: for you, imagine the music smells, tastes, feels to the touch, appears to the eyes, and what other ambient sounds might appear as you listen. Listening to music this way invites several underutilized skills, from imagination to self awareness.
- Conscious: what level of consciousness does the music invite? The nearby Hawkins Map of (Human) Consciousness helps me connect what I experience in the music to a useful way of gauging this. You might try comparing differences on the Map between the music you love and the new music you’re using to expand your awareness and consciousness.
The Bottom Line
This could be just the beginning of a lifetime of deepening your connection to the people around you, since a more holistic practice of listening to music dovetails perfectly into listening to each other. You can do that individually, or enjoy a little free guidance in the weekly Musimorphic mastermind, where I guarantee you will feel heard in a way that only music can make possible. Or, book your individual private Musimorphic session. Either way, here’s to your advanced listening skills and their positive effects in your life.
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Over the course of more than 40 years of paying attention to how music works on us, Bill Protzmann has rediscovered the fundamental nature and purpose of music and accumulated a vast awareness of anthropology and sociology, as well as the effects of music, the arts, and information technology on human beings. Bill has experimented with what he has learned through performing concerts, giving lectures, facilitating workshops, and teaching classes. He first published on the powerful extensibility of music into the business realm in 2006 (here and abstract here). Ten years later, in 2016, he consolidated his work into the Musimorphic Quest. In this guided, gamified, experiential environment, participants discover and remember their innate connection to this ancient transformative technology. Also, The National Council for Behavioral Healthcare recognized Bill in 2014 with an Inspiring Hope award for Artistic Expression, the industry equivalent of winning an Oscar.
In addition to individuals, Musimorphic programs support personal and professional development and wellness for businesses, NPOs and at-risk populations.
