Excuse me while I contemplate my navel.
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.
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@middlemass Contemplate your navel? Are you up to it? @sns "Are non-audiophiles non-audiophiles simply because they don't speak our language, or is something inherent to them?" I think it has to do with vocabulary but also where they place their attention. I've heard that many musicians don't care about audio sound because they're more concerned with other things.
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True. Many don’t. However, most musicians do care about audio sound; just not on the same level as most audiophiles. Even so, and I’ve made this point in the past, as a percentage of the population of musicians, far far more of them are audiophiles (mid level and up), or at least care about sound to some degree than the percentage of the general population of music lovers who are audiophiles. |
The vocabulary and sound experiences used and suggested by audio engineering mass market in audio magazines is NOT the vocabulary and experience used and suggested by acoustic and by psycho-acoustic sciences... And the vocabulary and experience of music is NOT the vocabulary and experience of the others two... Learning how to use and experience and DISTINGUISH the reality suggested by these words and concepts in these THREE different perspectives is very important... But contrary to the vocabulary in acoustic and psycho-acoustic experiences the vocabulary used and suggested by electronical design mass marketing HIDE the musical experience behind the sound experience and for the sake of the sound experience of the particular piece of gear... Acoustic reveal music, the focus on the gear obsession hide it...
For the OP. citation i think it is an interesting one because NO ONE can listen music tabula rasa... We all come from experiences and past history which act like a sieve and a filter... Positively and also negatively....there is a balance which is related to each one personal musical evolution history and cultural and spiritual knowledge here... For example it is impossible for someone NEVER exposed to the history of the symphony in European music to catch the meaning of the 5th Bruckner symphony finale... But when i was 14 years old i immediately loved Bach at first listening but with the help of a short musical education in a music course.... None other composers ever attracted really my attention at these times .... Then there is also a past history in us not coming from this life only perhaps and there is in us an innate taste unbeknown to us waiting to be awaken... But music is like mathematics and the scale of each meaning levels cannot be PERCEIVED and LOVED and UNDERSTOOD without a loose or a minimal formal education of ourselves by ourselves or by others and with time and listening experiences... Even crocodile are not tabula rasa anyway but we cannot change easily their basic taste....But it is possible with a baby crocodile with a part of him relatively a tabula rasa.... I have seen a South-american man educating a crocodile young to be his pet.... Perhaps he can teach him "love" manifested at his most basic level....Anyway....
«Do you suggest here that we can educate audiophiles or the rap music lovers?»-Groucho Marx 🤓 «It will not be politically correct to say so brother»-Harpo Marx
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