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


Speaking solely about popular music, broadly speaking, it takes 2 to 3 listens to figure out if I like something.  Roughly meaning do I want to hear it again.  To get to the point where I think I understand the piece can take dozens of listens.  A big factor in how digestible a piece is whether it's a genre, artist or song I'm already familiar with.  At least for me truly new music is harder to get into.

Just curious as to how others experience new music.

onhwy61

Showing 1 response by oldrooney

@fatdaddy2 Your comment on Springsteen made me laugh out loud.
@onhwy61 Depends. Some music grabs me immediately and all I want is more of the album, and the artist. Others take a few more listens, or just being in the right mood. Sometimes learning something about the artist’s life is enough for a second listen. I was once ready to chuck a disk as unintelligible garbage until I looked up the bio of the artist, one Chet Baker. I was intrigued, and gave it a second listen, I ‘understood’ it much better the second time around and treasure it now. But not when I want to dance. 🙂

Note: I had purchased a rather large collection of assorted CDs and was trying to pare them down to size. I have quite a stack of ‘Punk’ CD’s you can have for free. I tried every track on them to make sure they played, but not more than two seconds on any of them. I don’t like being screamed at. But I can remember, days in my adolescence when I might have been screaming right along with some bands in the 60’s, just not this stuff.