How Many Times Do You Have To Listen To Understand A Piece Of Music?

Rap about five seconds. It’s absolutely horrifying. I don’t understand opera. Classical from Rachmaninoff is a challenge to understand. Frank Zappa challenging I just wish he played music rather than interrupt with all this weird stuff he likes to do.. Lots of chord progressions and jazz proposition that can be complicated. don Ellis an amazing trumpet jazz player from the 70s has remarkable arrangements but sometimes he does weird stuff that I don’t understand, I do like pussy wiggle stomp Don Ellis that’s done in a very unique time. Oscar Peterson handles very complicated playing and makes me wish I had taken piano playing so I could understand what he’s doing but I can just sit back and really like it though. I don’t understand why we can’t listen to Christmas music all year long.

If I’m being screamed at, I don’t like it.

If it’s extremely violent, I don’t like it.

If it’s is disjointed, I don’t like it.

If it sounds like I’m being preached at, I don’t like it.

And I usually know within a few measures.

I don’t have to understand it to like a song, but it usually helps.

The original question is something that my musician friends and I talked about from time to time (How Many Times Do You Have to Listen to Understand a Piece of Music?).  At first exposure it's not so much about understanding the piece but rather really liking the piece. To illustrate the point, do you hear the lyrics or the music first?  My wife hears the lyrics first.  I (along with several musician friends) hear the music first.  In fact, I hear the music (the beauty of chord progressions, etc.) and the first three or more times I hear it.  The meaning of the lyrics comes later (and I do love great lyrics).

As far as understanding the piece, that comes within the first couple of listens as well.  If I'm learning to play or perform the song, the understanding becomes very deep.  And it will be listened to dozens of times to truly climb into the orbit of the song and represent it well.

I want to thank everybody for participating in this discussion.  I should not have used the word "understand" in starting this post.  Appreciate is more towards what I intended.

Also, I'm referring to popular type music not anything highbrow or intentionally challenging.