It's when the angels fly
That you start to cry
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.
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.
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- 279 posts total
@mahgister ...an image search, and it's yours. ;) Cover up that delicti corpus that age threatens all with....;) Somehow I've managed to pass on the pudge ...127 @ 5'7", down from 150's @ 5'11"...always preferred nimble over strength, although the latter has usually been enough.... The carriage rattles 'n prattles along....music keeps the witless knitted to varied degrees..... I like my bad habits....they seem to have kept yours unruly mostly heaped up. |
My goal with high end audio has always been to induce high levels of ASC without the need for other stimulants/mind altering additions. Perhaps this has something to do with my experiences with hallucinogens at live concerts in which visual stimuli far overwhelmed aural stimuli. I can't recall a single thing about the music or sound, all my memories wrapped up in the visual, specifically, sometimes the performers became the actual, physical instruments they were playing. Hallucinogens worked best for me out in nature, nature's vast visual stimuli was totally engrossing, again can't recall any aural stimuli. Best trips by far for me was in relatively quiet environments, nature best provided that.
As for creating new and/or better ASC experiences, perhaps that's the very thing that drives at least some audiophiles. We continually try to improve our systems in order to derive some greater connection with the music. In recent years I've been quite content with the performance of my system and connection to the music. Every listening session results in total engagement with the musicians, the sense of living, breathing performers in the room doesn't take much if any effort. In retrospect I can recall all the years in which it took a fair amount of 'mind tricks' in order to reach deep engagement levels, the result was stress which foreshortened listening sessions and formulations as to how I could improve my system. Every listening session these days is a unique experience directed by the Roon robot (random play mode) which chooses the next artist on play list. I'm being taken on a mind excursion trip in whichever direction the robot and artist choose to take me. I'm liking this vs me being the director, so I guess this relatively new ASC experience.
I'm at point where my system can provide a SUSTAINING ASC experience, while the memories or lessons learned from using various mind altering substances can last a lifetime, they can't provide a 'natural' or sustaining ASC experience, they are 'manufactured' experiences in the sense they physically alter our brain chemistry. While it is true all ASC experiences result in brain chemistry changes, better for emotions/feelings to change it vs various physical substances. |
Very deep observation ! Thanks.
I felt the same, once we lived through a ASC musical experience driven by THC you felt it always stored in our body memory ready to reveal to us again, even without THC, how the music content (visual in my case and derived from the music ) spoke to our consciousness as from a higher level of meaning.
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- 279 posts total