Learning to Listen: Neurological Evidence
MC, Since it is easy to hear the difference on mine, but they both sound the same on yours, you figure out which is transparent and which makes everything sound the same. |
I am rather new to this forum, but I honestly don’t understand why this topic seems to be so controversial. If you have ever learned to play an instrument, learned to read music, learned how to sing in a choir, learned how to harmonize with other voices, then this topic becomes very academic. You can and do learn how to listen for specific instruments, voices, harmonies, melodies, rhythms, etc. People with music training tend to have an easier time in identifying instruments and voices when listening to music. Most people have the ability to learn this with the possible exception of my father who was completely tone deaf (and he never learned how to sing in tune). It just takes time and the desire to learn. I do apologize for any grammar mistakes, poor spelling, and if my comment seems rude. I am suffering from jetlag and the coffee just isn't helping. Thanks! |
But the brain is also able to put things into the equation that are not there in reality…All the "gist" and intricacies linked to perception are precisely that there is not a "thing" that is absolutely here and out of consciousness... There is not a "res extensa" for a "res rationis"....And there is not even an absolute object called the brain here and out of consciousness which would create consciousness like my liver system my metabolism ... We learned perceiving as babies but as adult we perceive our learnings histories as actual meanings and we grow to learn this simple truth...Meaning are more creatively real than "object", more deadly and more potent ... For example a musical "timbre" is not out there like a table...It is created not only by physical acoustic, but also psycho-acoustic conditions and for "timbre phenomenon" experience, all humanity and personal histories combined participate substantially to his rendition for our consciousness ... Timbre is a meaning first even before being a musical objectively reproduced and conventionally partaked phenomenon... All that is my opinion ....Take it for a minute to think... «Did you just say that the thing which are not there are the more real or powerful?»-Groucho Marx 🤓 |
Our brains definitely “fill in gaps” from data supplied by our ears, eyes, nose, skin, etc.
This is a long-established area of medical/psychiatric study.
I’m a magic enthusiast. Not a practicing magician (was when I was a kid), but someone who follows the art form, and is interested in the history and the how.
I recently read a book, “Sleights of Mind”, that examines how magic works from the perspective of neuroscience. One of the primary take-aways is that our brains fill in the blanks from what we see and hear during a trick, and that these blanks are filled in incorrectly. This is how a magician fools us. He/she manipulates a prop in a manner our brain believes it has seen before, placing a coin in a hand for example. Many of us have seen a trick like this...the magician repeats placing a coin into someone’s palm several times, then when he/she does it the fourth time the coin disappears. The magician does something with the coin that fourth time that our brain doesn’t process correctly. Our brain processes what it “thinks” our eyes have seen based on seeing the coin placed in a hand several times prior. Our brain fills in the blank, and misses the sleight of hand, even though our eyes have plainly seen the manipulation.
To me, it’s not hard to correlate this concept of filling-in-the-blanks to audio reproduction. Many of us know the sound of a live stand-up bass, a drum, a trumpet. When we hear a recording of an instrument, do our brains fill in the gaps of missing recorded information and make that recording sound more “real”? I’d say the answer must be yes. Musical memory, familiarity with sound(s), is part of listening whether passively or actively. I’m sure there are published studies about this. |
