How Do You Listen To Music?

How do you listen to music? Do you even listen at all? I often listen to music while I am doing the dishes or cooking or something like that, which is fine. Just something in the background that you can sing along to and do some funky dancemoves while you are doing what you are doing, to make the work a little more enjoyable.

But how often do you sit down and just listen to music? Nothing else. No phone. No book. No talking. Just listening to music? People used to do this, you know. It is only in recent years this has become a rare phenomenon.

If you want to get the most out of my music, this is how it should be listened to. Just saying…

And what do you listen with? Most of us would probably say our ears, right? This makes sense, of course, but did you know that our entire bodies perceive sound, not just our ears?

So again; how do you listen? Do you ever actively feel the music? What does it feel like? Is it the sounds that causes you to feel, or is it the words in the song?

Storytelling in song form is an ancient tradition and a beautiful artform, but for meditation purposes I mostly recommend music without words. Or very few words. Or like I do sometimes; just sing in a language nobody understands. If we do not understand a language, the words just become sounds, right?

This works best for meditation and healing purposes because if there are words we understand we immediately start associating. The brain goes to work bringing up all the ideas we have tied up into those words from earlier and thus it becomes difficult to enter the subconscious. Without words this do not happen. We might associate certain sounds with ideas and events or whatever too, but it does not happen in the same way.

Simply put; it is pretty difficult to deeply penetrate the mind when there is too much going on at the surface.

Again; how do you listen?

Are you constantly having earplugs in wherever you go? These days it seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Let me tell you something; I never do this! Never! First of all, however wonderful I believe that music is, I do not believe it is good for us at all to be blasting it straight into our brain all day like that. Even if it was the most beautiful and harmonious music, I do not think it would be good. And let us face it; it is not! Most of the music we listen to is quite dissonant and the idea of this constantly playing in our ears… It is a bit unsettling.

That is one aspect of it. Another is that we actually turn off one of our senses as we go out into the world. Most of us live in relatively safe environments, I guess, and I am not encouraging fear and paranoia, but if you told a lion that human beings turned off their ears before they went out for the day it would probably be horrified! Our ears are essential for perceiving our surroundings. The only explanation to why we do this without any second thought is that we have come to rely way too much on our eyes. Modern humans only care about what we can see, and that is part of the root of our many challenges. Also, the environments we live in are so safe that we are hardly conscious that anything bad can happen at all. Safety is good, I guess, but this kind of dullness… I do not know..

Again; I am just saying…

One more thing before I end this rant. Whether it is earplugs, headphones or speakers, are you aware of how they work? Are you concerned with sound quality at all?

As a musician and audiophile I must admit that it breaks my heart to see people listen to music through the speakers on their phones or tablets or laptops. These speakers do not even come close to presenting the entire spectrum of sound that is in the music playing. It is like watching half a movie. Really. If the movie sucks it makes sense, but if you really love a piece of music are you not interested in really hearing it? I think a lot of people are not even aware of this. With the combination of mp3 taking away a lot of the quality and listening through those truly terrible mediums… we can say that a lot of people have never even heard their favourite song! They have only heard a little percentage of it. It blows my mind. And when it comes to healing music for example the effect will not be as good as it can be if the equipment we are listening through is not capable of presenting everything that is going on.

I am not saying that everyone should run out and get fancy speakers and headphones. I also understand very well that everybody can not afford this. Number one rule is always; use what you have! This applies to everything in life and something is always better than nothing. However, if you identify as a music lover you should do everything you can to create an optimal listening experience. If you have never heard your favourite music through a pair of decent speakers it will be a wonderful experience.

Just be aware of these things. That is all I want. Spread awareness. Things are moving so fast these days. We are taking so many things for granted. Slow down. Look around. Center yourself and become aware.

Ok. Rant over.

Until next time; peace and Love and all the blessings in the world.

Jonas