How To Listen
July 9, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Charlisms, Music, Weblogs
The Good Musician is one of the new just-launched music blogs here at b5media—-go here to find out about a contest to win a free iPod (guess I should get my husband Jim to do this, as his broke a month ago……). Arjun Muralidharan at The Good Musician provides two valuable tips about How to listen to a song:
1. Press the button
2. Listen
I usually listen to music while doing “something else”—-while driving, running, writing. Arjun writes:
Listening to music isn’t as easy as you might think. We listen to music while cleaning the house, driving a car, or sitting in the bus (for our more environmentally friendly readers). We often forget that you can just sit down and listen, putting all your concentration and resources to the music.
I do know someone who “just sits down and listens”: This would be my son Charlie, who has started to insist on taking his iPod everytime we get in the car. I put together a playlist (”Charlie’s music”) with a mixture of his long-time favorites (something about certain Sesame Street songs) and also The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Desmond Dekker, Sugarcane Harris—–whose “Song for My Father” was on the iPod when Charlie came in from the car the other night. He jumped onto his knees on my bed and laughed and leaned over, hands on each headphone wire.
He was listening.
Photo courtesy of callumalden via Flickr .
Jeff Stimpson
Jill Cornfield
Hi Kristina,
that is a beatiful tale you just told. And I’m happy I could move you to sharing it.
Music is such a wonderful energy, it surpasses all boundaries.
Thanks so much! I’m more than looking forward to reading more of your blog on music, which is an essential thing around here.
Yup, sometimes I forget to just wallow in the music, let it flow, let m’self go, and really appreciate. When I remember and remind myself to attend only to the music, I feel much better, both during, and afterwards.
This is way off-topic, but I don’t see an e-mail addy for the Prof here so I’ll have to do this in public:
Over at http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2007/07/hi_fires_09_jun_1.html
there is a discussion of the exact meaning of the Ancient Greek phrase, Molon Labe, or MuOmicronLambdaOmegaNu LambdaAlphaBetaEpsilon.
Words like “aorist” have been tossed about in the comments there.
Could you have a look and define and straighten things out for them?
(They won’t hurt you, they keep 2 dogs, 8 cats and 2 horses, and are happy to communicate with them and the autie girl who lives down the block from them in song. And man do they have a collection of shiny things!
Very good point. There is so much to learn from our children. Some of John’s faves have been The Beatles (Abbey Road), Bob Marley (Legend) and the Forrest Gump soundtrack. He’s also in to Veggie Tales.
My teen (with Asperger’s) has absolutely eclectic taste in music. He goes to classical organ recitals once a week with his grandmother every summer. At home or in the car, he listens to oldies, classic rock, and his favorite: country.
I loved the How To Listen post; it was so good. And thanks for the link!