Listen up!
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak” said Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher. For those who create music, whether as songwriters, musicians, singers or producers, the act of listening is especially fundamental and not just passive entertainment. It’s a gateway to understanding, inspiration and self-discovery. In this article, we will explore the importance of actively listening to music, its influence on artistic identity, and its potential to raise your musical awareness.
LISTENING WITH CURIOUSITY
During my fifth and final year at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense, where I was studying to become a guitarist in the different “rhythmical” genres such as jazz, rock, pop, folk, and beyond, I had a remarkable teacher named Jakob Bro.
Back then, Jakob was already a significant influence in the world of music and a role model of fine musical taste for me — one that I still look up to. For me, it’s not a stretch to mention him in the same breath as jazzguitar legends like John Scofield, Pat Metheny, and Bill Frisell, but that's a tale for another time.
Jakob taught me some important things about music that would take me years to fully understand, and one of them was about the power of listening.
In one our lessons, he once shared a story from his younger days when he was a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Jakob used to take the train out of the city to random places in the US, journeying out a couple of hours before returning. He'd load his iPod with diverse and weird music. Often it would be music he didn’t really understand, that came recommended by people he respected. Then, he'd gaze out the train window at the passing landscape and simply listen.
This investigation of the inner workings of music was across all genres. Especially the more difficult ones, like different forms of modern classical composition music. He’d even listen to music he didn't really like, importantly, without judgement or criticism, purely to understand. With an open ear and a curious mindset.
Later on, I came across an interview with the singer-songwriter and popstar, John Mayer, who had a similar approach but with a different focus of genre. He listened to the top ten every other week or so, not with the resentful "Why is this so popular?" attitude that some of us might have, but with a genuine interest in understanding why these tracks resonated with so many people. What made these songs so appealing that billions of listeners streamed them?
You might say, “Well, it's all about massive marketing and strategic playlisting." However, it's not that straightforward. Many artists receive similar promotional efforts and still fall short. So, there must be something inherently musical at play here, beyond the influence of the onslaught of the major label PR machine.
John Mayer approached music with the mindset of a musical anthropologist of sorts, with an open and non-judgmental curiosity. He wanted to know what made these wildly popular tracks so appealing to the average music consumer.
Another example that came to my attention recently is drummer, DJ, and producer Questlove. He allegedly listens to a hundred new tracks every day using the "Fans also like" feature on Spotify before heading to the studio. This routine allows him to draw from a huge well of fresh inspiration when creating. Whether he’s exaggerating, goes to the studio very early, or gets there really late, what he's doing is in principle similar to what John Mayer and Jakob Bro is doing.
These great musicians have all realised that the whole mystery of music, the key to everyone’s heart and the grammar of the universal language of emotion, is right there in front of us, if we just take a minute to pay attention and listen.
DEVELOPING MY OWN LISTENING SKILLS
For many years, there was a lot of music I didn't understand or didn’t like at all. Let's start with country music, which later became so profoundly important to me. As a young man immersed in metal, alternative rock, and later modern acoustic jazz and Jazz/Rock Fusion, I despised country music for years.
That is until someone introduced me to Alison Krauss and Union Station, and suddenly, I saw the light. I discovered tasteful and flawless phrasing, profound emotional expression, and simple yet universally honest storytelling. This experience led me to understand artists like Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash on a whole new level. I delved into Dixie Chicks and bluegrass, playing with my incredibly talented folk music friends at the conservatory in Odense (DK), which, luckily for the rest of us, had the only folk music department in Denmark at the time. These guys knew both how to play music and party!
Similar revelations occurred in my journey with electronic music, rap and hip-hop, and modern classical music, to name a few genres that used to feel difficult, as certain artists and composers opened the door to new worlds of musical understanding and knowledge.
Artists like Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, and Bob Dylan, whom I once found difficult to appreciate while enclosed in my modern jazz bubble, suddenly made a world of sense after repeated listening. The storytelling genius of Kendrick Lamar and the sympathetic darkness of Nick Cave also started making a world of sense. Alternative bands like Neutral Milk Hotel, Cocteau Twins and TV on the Radio were other bands I struggled to understand, but ended up appreciating deeply and so my musical palette grew bigger and bigger with more nuances and hues to choose from as I advanced my listening.
All these experiences and realisations have transformed my understanding of musical expression, helping me to grow as a songwriter, maturing me as an artist and sharpening my senses as a producer.
WHAT ARE THEY ACTUALLY SAYING?
I believe it’s generally important to strive for enhanced musical awareness and I think it’s essential for working creatively. Becoming aware of the emotional impact of chord progressions, the subtleties of lyrical phrases as they relate to one another, and the interplay of melody and harmony, is crucial if we want to grow as songwriters and music producers. Heck, as performing musical artists of all sorts.
Listening with open-minded and curious skepticism to a wide range of music also allows you to understand what story the music is actually telling. Have you ever noticed how some music is saying: “Hey, check me out! How cool am I? Are you not impressed? Look what I can do with my looper or how I tap and bang on my acoustic guitar, so it sounds like 3 guitarists at once! Check out how many notes I can sing or play in 2 seconds!” Stuff like that is fascinating and has an easier life in this modern social media driven world of ours, where you have the shortest window of time to grab the listeners attention. But I quickly get tired of listening to stuff like that, when all the music wants is to impress me. There’s so many deeper, more complex and interesting layers of expression, that will unfold if you invest the extra time beyond just being impressed by something. And yet, also from these perhaps more shallow forms of expression, we still learn a lot about what the general music consumer reacts to and this is yet another important data point that we’d be fools to neglect or devalue in any way. I can tell you however that on any normal thursday I’d rather hear Justin Vernon fall off his bike, than one more tiktok reel with a technically gifted but shallow music artist that only wants to impress me. This is also the curse of deepening your taste. So be warned about that before you start evolving your musical taste through focused listening.
KEEP LISTENING
Your artistic identity is completely shaped by the music you have listened to and internalised during your life and your individual responses to it. This also means that the more you explore and listen actively, the more defined and unique your artistic voice will become.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that your expression should grow more and more complex though, although it could. In fact, one of the things I admire so profoundly with artists such as Jakob Bro, Andy Shauf and Kings of Convenience, is their ability to simplify their music. Everything has a time and a place, including your own expression. But you have to decide what that means for you and the more music you listen to, the better an idea you’ll have.
Becoming a good listener is a long process of exploration and growth. It's not just about consuming more music but about actively engaging with it. It's about asking questions, seeking to understand the intentions of the artists, and the emotions they convey.
So, take the time to listen to music from various genres, eras, and cultures. Dive equally into the work of artists who challenge your preconceptions, as well as those who resonates more with your own normal preference. It's through this ongoing process that you will discover not only the music that moves you, but also the artist within yourself.
Remember that the entire tapestry of music history lies right at our feet. To deepen our own musicality, all we need to do is dive deep into it, without prejudice or judgment, and keep an open ear. As always, the key is to keep working, writing and playing around with the building blocks of music. But besides that, you’ll be amazed at what happens when you develop the art of listening to the level of someone like Jakob Bro or Questlove, and that, my friends, is something to aspire to.
I know it sounds simple, but take my word for it: the art of listening to music will be your most valuable music teacher in this life.
Thankyou for reading through my article!
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