How do you 'listen' to new music?

The Slapster strikes again.

Boy, you're missing out on the bi-aural experience! Although you've pretty much got it wired for any monophonic recordings...

Slappy, LOL. I can just picture you trying to get your 'ear' at tweeter highth. By the way, I've heard that this makes for an excellent passive tone control, reduces irritating highs and at the same time greatly increases the appearance of bottom end. Just be careful when some one comes into the room with a sharp stick!

Just like Siliab says, music is a language, and we have to learn the syntax and structure of a new language to become comfortable with it. I was lucky, my mom was a classical musician and I was exposed to it from day one. (Of course, her elitist dismissal of popular musics of all sorts meant I had to acquire that taste on my own.) The often repeated maxim that music is a universal language overly simplifies things. The elements of music are shared to varying degrees, how the are put together can render one form or another almost indecipherable to our ears at first. Repeated listening to new music without expectations of reward or understanding eventually will lead to familiarity and eventually appreciation I think. Of course, reading some music appreciation books about classical or jazz will enlarge our appreciation and comprehension a great deal.

There are some good points (& good humor) above. Music is like any other 'tradition'--film, literature, etc.--in that the broader your familiarity with the tradition, the more you'll appreciate individual contributions to it. Or to take Siliab/Photon46's language metaphor, your familiarity with a particular musical idiom or set of idioms will to a large extent govern your ability to understand what the music is doing. Same concept applies to a particular style, conductor, piece, whatever. I often find that the more difficult stuff grows on me, while music that is more easily accessible varies in the persistence of its appeal. In most cases, the latter-mentioned variability probably relates to greater formal complexity behind the beauty or tunefulness that first gets me (Mozart comes to mind here).

The suggestion to read some books is also a good one. I recently read Aaron Copland's _What to Listen for in Music_. I don't know what other people think about it, but for a guy like me, whose formal musical training ended with the fourth grade tonette choir, it could be a helpful starting place for a better understanding of music. Not that you really need to do anything but listen, though. :-)

That's a great question!

With Classical you'll have to understand what is expected (which takes work). You can enjoy the melodies, but you'll have to know how composers work within guidelines to come up with something new and unexpected, yet satisfying, terrifying, etc. Obviously, there is more to it than that, but it does take understanding the background and how it was developed.

Jazz is something that's hard to nail down also, but it's modern enough that you can just listen to some of the original stuff and understand it right off the bat.

But what the heck do I know. There has to be someone who could explain these types of music better than I just did.

Rob