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Listening without interpretation...is it impossible?

I came across an interesting quotation about texts which applies, it seems, to music listening and audio:

"We never really confront audio immediately, in all its freshness as a thing-in-itself. Rather, audio comes before us as the always-already-heard; we apprehend it through sedimented layers of previous interpretations or --if the audio is brand new -- through the sedimented listening habits and categories developed by those interpretive traditions." [Paraphrased from Frederic Jameson in The Political Unconscious (1981)]

If this application to audio is accurate, it indicates that what we hear and how we listen are profoundly influenced by how we talk about it, argue about it, interpret it. The ways we talk about it and who we talk about it with change the very ways we “confront” or encounter it the next time.

This would apply not only to the macro impressions about entire songs or even passages of songs, but even the minute ways we describe the details. (Using “etched” to describe the “highs” or “boomy” to describe the “lows,” and so on.) It also would set aside, as obtuse, the repeated suggestion that one can ignore what people say and “just get back to listening for oneself.” There is no such way of listening. Yes, one can move away from the computer, for days or weeks or more, but the notion that one can move one’s “own” mind away from the “sedimented layer of previous interpretations” is, well impossible.

I’m not sure, personally, where I fall on this interesting question. Just wanted to share it.

128x128hilde45
frogman
7,427 posts
 

Not sure that I agree with the notion that the way others describe what they hear influences MY perception of what I hear. Of course, if there is to be any kind of meaningful dialogue one has to try and interpret what someone else is trying to say. This is why I have always felt it would be extremely helpful on a forum such as this to somehow develop, limitations and all, a more consistent and meaningful “audiophile vocabulary”. As things stand, descriptive terms used are all over the place and often inappropriate and thus meaningless.

A few favorite (?) examples:

“Accurate”. Often intended to describe a sound that is lean and/or dry with emphasis on upper mids and highs. However, the word “accuracy”, by definition, suggests that for something to be accurate it can only be so compared to something else; and that something else is not necessarily something that is “lean and/or dry with emphasis on upper mids and highs”.

“Colored” - huh? Colored compared to what? The sounds of music are extremely colorful.

”Cold” - Somewhat like “accurate”, often meant to describe a sound that is top heavy and perhaps lean. I remember bringing a new amplifier home to try and my wife referred to the sound it caused my system to have as “cold”. Yet, the sound was not lean, nor too bright. What she meant, and I agreed, was that the sound was rhythmically dead; little sense of rhythmic aliveness, hence emotionally “cold”.

”Warm” - the opposite of the above in every sense.

Many more examples available.

 

 

erik_squires
16,039 posts
 

I'm sure the quote is true, the question really for many of us is whether we are sharing the same context as others.  With art it is the same thing. Each artist and genre comes to us as a response to what has come before. 

Some lucky enough to get a background in music or art culture are in on the message the new works are trying to say.  Some are just experiencing the works completely out of context.  I have a great example of this for myself.

For me David Bowie was just another musician.  Kind of an old folksy British rock guy.  I lacked the musical context of what was before him and what made him so extraordinary to so many. 

bobpyle
64 posts
 

But of course, it's all subjective and that's what makes our hobby of chasing the "holy grail" sound (for our personal gratification) so interesting.

It's taken me 40 years to construct and tune a hi-fi system to my perception of a palpable sound reproduction. Soon, I shall have a loss of hearing. What could I have done with all that time and money? Solace unnecessary.

hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
4,974 posts
 

Interesting replies!

@frogman Since none of us have a private language all our own, the very words we use to describe what we hear (to ourselves) are part of what others say. Your comment about the importance of developing a meaningful audiophile vocabulary speaks directly to that, and I completely agree. I also agree that descriptive terms which are too vague or too chaotically deployed do more harm than good.

@erik Yes, the context is so important, insofar as all words root back to contexts for their invention, development, and nuance.

@bobpyle It is all subjective in the sense that it is all rooted in subject's experience, but since what we experience emerges from interactions with others, embedded in particular cultural and historical forces, I'd prefer to say, "It's all inter-subjective." And since that's all we have access to, I'd be as happy to say, "It's all objective, though it varies as much as physical things such as snowflakes."

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