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Critical listening and altered states

Ok, this is not a question about relaxing, but about listening to evaluate how the system (or a piece of gear is sounding).

What, in your experience, are the pluses and minuses of altering your state of mind for listening? This can include anything you've used to affect your everyday state of mind, from coffee, beer, scotch, tobacco, to much stronger — and psychoactive, dissociative — additives.

What do you gain by altering your consciousness in terms of what you notice, attend to, linger on, etc?
What causes more details to emerge?
What allows you to stick with a thread or, alternately, make new connections?

Or perhaps you like to keep all those things *out* of your listening; if that's you, please say a bit about why.

128x128hilde45
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
I recently bought a Raven Blackhawk. Some have complained about a transformer buzz. My goal tonight is to match that buzz.
pedroeb
493 posts
 
Ultrasonic harmonics and a Schumann Resonator can be beneficial.
mitchagain
452 posts
 
There is a special place for any music that can give me an adrenaline rush; but, there is a cherished (perhaps even sacred) place for any music that can give me goose bumps, regardless of whatever equipment that I was listening to at the time. However, I tend to be more impressed when those things occur during sober listening, because I don't have to question or debate what caused that response.
unreceivedogma's avatar
unreceivedogma
985 posts
 
If you remember* being at Woodstock, you weren’t really there. So the saying goes.

Similarly, altered states are good for experiential activity, not for evaluative activity.

* I remember trying to get there with friends, then the VW van broke down some 15 miles away. We repaired the van and turned around.
hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
5,001 posts
 
@unreceivedogma 

Similarly, altered states are good for experiential activity, not for evaluative activity.

If you look back at my posts in this thread, you'll see that I'm not proposing altered states as the default for evaluative activity. They're proposed as being *among* the ways one might expand what is noticed in observation or as a prompt to new connections.

Unless you're saying that the are never helpful for evaluative activity. If that's what you mean, why do you think that?
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