How we learned to stop listening to music
(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg)
I'm talking about listening to music, as opposed to having music serve as background to other activities. "Listening" when you're on the computer, making dinner, reading, driving, running, working, etc isn't the same thing as listening at home without doing anything else.
A friend who owned a record store in the 1980s put it best when he said, "Recorded music is the worst thing that ever happened to music." At first I thought he was kidding, but he explained that before Edison recorded sound most families played music, on their own instruments, at home. Most middle class families had a piano, or at least a guitar and sang and played at home. Involvement was on a whole different level than it is now for most people.
Records changed that, so fewer and fewer people played instruments, but at least they were listening to records. They'd put a LP on the record player, sit down and listen to music. Yeah, I know that seems a little strange in 2008, but people actually did that on a regular basis. Especially when they bought a new LP or 45, when they really wanted to take it in, they listened with their eyes closed.
I did, when a new Beatles, Stones, Doors or Led Zeppelin record came out I set aside time to take in the whole thing. When a new LP really grabbed me I'd play it over and over, without playing any other music for three or four days. Yeah, I was and remain a total music freak, but it wasn't just me.
But when CDs came out people immediately used the format's longer playing times to do other stuff, they were no longer tied to the music and stopped listening. Music was just there, filling up space.
Fast forward to the present and now they don't even have to think about the music they want to play. They hit shuffle and let the iPod program the music. And once music is relegated to the background sound quality is no biggie.
There is a glimmer of hope now that LPs are starting to make a comeback. I hope the kids buying vinyl pick up on the sound. Maybe, just maybe they'll become audiophiles, and get more out of music. We'll see.
What about you? Do you ever just listen?
Steve Guttenberg is a frequent contributor to magazines and Web sites including Home Entertainment, Playback, and Ultimate AV. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
I think the medium that the album would have been listened on at the time of being produced has a large effect on how the album is structured and how it feels. A zeppelin album for example because it would have been produced on LP originally, feels like a single piece of music with several parts to it. Whereas if you take most modern albums in todays top charts, it feels like a collection of singles thrown together on an album. because its either going to be listened to on CD, where people just skip to whatever track they want to listen to, or they download specific tracks online. Im rambling here, does anyone understand what im trying to say?
I have bought fewer than 5 CD's in the last 4 years, yet I am buying more music than ever. And I buy complete albums and listen to them from start to finish and I rarely use shuffle. I have over 500 CD's in boxes and 2 crates with over 200 albums in my closet. Yet its all hosted off a 750GB music server. I enjoy the flexibility and fluidity of the new technology to bother getting wistful about the "good old days".
Just because you use and iPod or listen to mp3s does not mean you stopped caring about music.
I started buying music on cassettes. When I listened to music on cassette, I only listened to my fave albums (or maybe fave sides of my fave albums). When CD's came out (especially with CD burning) I started only listening to my favorite songs. Now with MP3's I tend to listen to only my favorite parts of songs...
Unless it's a REALLY well put together album.
I think recorded music is one of the BEST things to ever happen to music. Without the studio-as-an-instrument we would have never had such great pieces of sound art as ******* Brew or Sgt. Pepper.
I just feel that the way its so easy to skip track\album\artist on mp3 players, its having an effect on the production of modern music.
I can't work with music playing unless I'm doing some mindless task, so I don't play much background stuff.
yea i suppose you cant really compare zeppelin with some of the crap that comes out today, maybe its just because zeppelins albums were so well made that they worked more as a complete piece rather than a collection of singles.
I just feel that the way its so easy to skip track\album\artist on mp3 players, its having an effect on the production of modern music.
Sure we're all thankful and respect the benefits of recorded music, however it's invention was certainly a vehicle for many of us to stop "listening" to music and just simply "hear" it.
The question is:
"How many of us sit down and listen to an album front to back with out doing ANY other activity?"
I do once a month. I would do it more often if I had more time. Thankfully in between those times I have my iPod, some burned cd's for the car and a MacBook full of mp3 files.
I do. Unfortunately, these days the albums that entice me to just sit and listen to them are few and far between. '07 and '08 have actually had some great offerings that have made me sit and listen, nothing else, a few times. I fondly remember listening to Radiohead's OK Computer in 1997, and it made me consider the very same point you're making in this blog. Recent albums that have made me stop and listen include The Shins - WIncing the Night Away and Wilco - Sky Blue Sky.
Now I listen to 20% vinyl, 30% CD's, and 50% MP3/Lossless. I try to stay in the 320 kbps range, but my budget limits me to pirated stuff. Im trying to convince my peers to follow me, and listen to music, at least for 30 min a day, without doing ANYTHING ELSE. Just sit in bed, pop a CD in, turn it up, and chill.
That's what artists want.
Contrary to the audiophile party line, that pristine quality is necessary to appreciate great music, I believe this is preparation for the introduction of a new format, or a cry to end DRM.
LMAO, vinyl reached a height in sound quality. It wasn't great sounding "because" it was on vinyl (there are a lot of other contributing factors, so the final medium is more moot than some would like you to believe).
To this day I still enjoy whole albums, if they are good ones, and no, it's not vinyl (it's digital). But the TRUTH is, as someone else posted, enjoying music has EVERYTHING to do with musical compositions themselves.
Consider our current pop culture. Enough said.
That's pure bullshht. Compare number of people able to afford to get into fine concert halls often enough to familiarize themselves with all Beethoven's sonatas and symphonies in different interpretations (and other composers, too), against number of people that got full set of LPs and CDs with all those compositions and have listened to those many times, that made them able to practically recite any of those.
Compare number of performances times hall capacity with number of CDs sold.
See, a ticket to LA Phil is $70-$150, but a Mahler's 9th with Benjamin Zander CD can be bought for $20.
And no, people ARE playing instruments more than in old time. Of course, old times are always better because we were getting younger chicks. Oh well.
- by John72953 August 7, 2008 5:34 AM PDT
- As a vinyl junkie (I have over 3,000 LP's), I tend to listen to them approxinmately 40% of my listening time. Several times per week I'll come home, put on a LP, grab a cold beer and just sit and listen and relax. I don't want to get into a discussion about which format is better and why, because it really doesn't matter. The point is to take the time to listen to music as a dedicated activity. And that means setting time aside...it matters little what format is used in enjoying that experience.
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