What do we hear? Really hear? One of the first challenges in studying the arts involves paying attention to what we hear and see. Let’s start with the music we hear.
Tell the truth: have you ever listened to the radio and been unable to recall a single song you heard? What about the tunes most of us hear passively throughout the day, from ring tones to recorded music at Starbucks? Are they music, or noise?
Here’s a suggestion. Run your own experiment by keeping a journal. It’s one of the oldest educational tools and has become trendy again. Let’s call our journal a “listening diary.”
Everyone can do it, from grade-school kids to grandma. First decide how many days it should run? A week? A month? Be realistic here. Life gets busy.
Make your own form or use ours from the Discovering Music coursebook. Whatever format you pick, select some questions to answer. (Feel free to revise these as you go along.) Here at Professor Carol, we’re fond of these simple questions:
- What did you hear?
- When and where did you hear it?
- What was the method of delivery (electronic, live)?
- Was it encountered voluntarily (sought out) or involuntarily (came across a loudspeaker, through a window, over a phone’s “on-hold” track).
- Did it evoke any response in me? (pleasure, annoyance, neutral reaction)
When you’ve completed the span of your journal, see what you find. Are you able to draw any conclusions about the role “listening” to music plays in your daily life in today’s culture? Do you think your experiences are typical?
We learn a lot when we analyze the historical record using the arts. In today’s noisy world, you might argue that it’s difficult to pay serious attention to the sounds we hear, including the sound of music. That statement, by itself, is an analytical commentary on the role of music in our modern culture. And it’s precisely the kind of analysis we foster with Discovering Music and all of our courses.
So, keep your jottings handy, and let’s reexamine your conclusions as we make our journey through the arts.
