A friend who caught a bit of the audio bug from me asked me what I felt when I listened to music. I was taken back by the question because I didn’t know. I told him that I was relaxed when I listened to music. I didn’t think that was a good answer but I couldn’t think of any other. After a few days I came to the conclusion that I what I often feel is a sense of gratitude when I listened to music. I feel gratitude to be hearing the performance so well. It is if I was rich and had the best musicians in the past and present to perform at my pleasure.
When I'm deep in listening, I'm in a flow state. Ego dissolves, and along with it sense of time, of past and future. I'm immersed in artistic intent. Motorhead and Tchaikovsky can both melt my face, and that's why I sit down and turn out the lights as often as I can.
In my case there's an analogy between cravings for music and cigarettes.
First I feel cravings just like before having a cigarette(quit 2 years ago);
Than I figure out what kind of cravings these are: a) Spin some vinyl; b)Download something new and play; c)Purchase live performance tickets; d)Type of music; e)Recording quality if applicable; d)Opt out from listening...;
Than I go to the listening mode just like smoking cigarette and enjoy the music just like I used to enjoy the cigarette.
My 'cravings' for music are substantially more frequent than for cigarettes that still exist after 2 years of not touching a single cigarette at least once per week.
The Oscar Wilde comment is amazing! Most times, music is a constant backdrop to my day to day life, but others times a mood modifying/uplifting/introspective experience. I remember clearly the first time I heard Barber's Adagio For Stings on a really good system. The music picked me up and carried me away mentally to some other place (almost out of body) and when it ended, the reverb trail of the last note made me feel an inexplicable sense of loss, almost an abandonment that the journey was over. Hard to explain but these moments are what makes all the obsessing worth the effort.
many things but my favorite is "connected". one constant of modernity is alienation. i love the irony that technology can be a part of finding meaning in things that afford some beauty to life.
Bob, I agree with you, i feel relaxed. Music is the only thing that gets me into another state, that is of relaxing. It also brings me back to certain places and people in time. Like a time machine, some songs sent me to different girls i went out with others to different times, and people, or events in my life. I could not live with out music. So enjoy the music while you can, nobody gets out of here alive per Jim Morrison..............
I find the beauty of the music very healing and it makes me soul-connected to listen rather than in my head. I can use music to celebrate a good mood or change a bad mood into good. The power of beauty to heal is profound. Music was even able to reach me after my brother's suicide, when very little could get trough the grief.
Everything else in my life, my awareness disappears and I am enveloped and move along with the music. The moment, the music, the awareness of it are all one. That is of course on a good night or day. Sometimes it is only background or wallpaper. Sigh!
I use music to help me relax when I come home from work. I play music in the morning as I'm getting ready for my day and this could be rock or soft classical depending on my mood.
Aside from that, when I'm listening I sometimes can feel the emotions that the composer infused into the music, so sometimes that can be feeling sad, joyful, heart ache, blissful, excited, etc. That is what I love about listening to classical music. It's like listening to a whole drama unfold, complete with suspense, doom, rapture, feeling love, feeling loss- everything. It is very fun to sit back and take it all in and enjoy it.
I find that I enjoy music more when I can let myself really surrender to what the music has to offer and let myself feel it all.
i think there is another aspect of the value of music which has been implied by some of the posts. music has the ability to both alter psychological states, as has been indicated, but also alter physical states, which has not been mentioned.
music can lower blood pressure and put you to sleep, or at least contribute to a soporofic state.
Simply put, I could not live without it. I quite agree with Rosemary Harris' character in the Ralph Fiennes movie Sunshine, who says "But you cannot live without being able to play a musical instrument!"
I find listening to be kind of like a "runner's high." A feeling of stimulation, relaxed concentration, and focus. And (usually) some degree of mood elevation.
Contrary to what Mr. T describes (which I'm sure is true in many cases), I can't listen to music within an hour or two of retiring for the night, or I'll feel too stimulated to fall asleep.
I feel engaged or I feel nothing, really, at all. Without it there is nothing to appreciate, to get my toes tapping, to lull me to la la land, to tickle my brain. Without engagement, there is no honeymoon.
Foster_9, unfortunately it's necessary to go through that period of critical listening. I went through it for years. Not until I got tube pre and amp did it fall into place. I know we like a lot of the same music and that's why I mentioned this.
There are many paths to Nirvana, and I'm sure you will choose the best one.
Everyone is a philosopher, and everyone has a philosophy. They may not know it, or be able to put it into words; but everyone has a philosophy. That was a bit of "Orphesian Philosophy"
I make CD's with titles like "Ann, or Gloria, or Cynthia". They are who I think about when I hear "our music". I feel all the colors of the rainbow.
The long answer is not so much an answer as it is an explanation of my history with music. Ever since I was about 5 years old I have loved rock music. I used to listen daily to the top 40 station on a tiny AM transistor radio (every kid who grew up in the 60's owned one, right?). My parents were very religious and taught me that rock music was the devil's music, so I would have to sneak my listening in late at night at low volume while lying in bed. My first record purchase was the 45 RPM single of Elton John's Philadelphia Freedom, which my mom bought for me during one of her moments of weakness. I knew how to read her pretty well and pounced when the opportunity was right. :) By the time I was in the 7th grade I was into metal and hard rock (KISS, The Who, Zeppelin, The Stones, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, etc.). By this time my parents realized that music was more than some passing interest for me, and thus I convinced them that it was time for me to buy a serious stereo system. That meant an all-in-one record player, cassette, AM/FM with speakers. Every kid had one in the 70's, right? I would spend my spare time listening to music in my room, often with my two best friends, who were also deep into music, but nothing like I was. For me music was my life. One thing to note is that back then we didn't have cable television, and in my house we didn't even have a color television, just old black and white units that my parents would get as bargains or hand me downs. We had one TV and it was pretty much dominated by my two older sisters, so this only served to reinforce my love of music. Music provided me solace from the stresses of childhood. My college years became fodder for a full-blown music obsession. I made friends with other music freaks in my school, and together we shared lots of good times listening to music and going to see concerts. So what is it that I feel when I listen to music? It's a type of euphoria that I experience when the music is right, the system sounds right, and my mood is right. The other night I really didn't feel like listening to music but I put a record on anyway just to have in the background while reading email. What I expected to be a short listen turned into a 5 hour marathon. I got sucked in. My system sounded so good I just wanted to play record after record. Listening like this is like the funnest party, the most relaxing vacation, or the best sex. It's really better than any recreational drugs I have taken. I haven't done any of that in a long time, but I find music replaces the unhealthy stuff in my life. My soul craves music and feeding this craving keeps me right with my creator. I am so lucky to have such a nice system to hear my music on, a great collection of music to draw from, and a fairly understanding wife and kids who allow me to indulge my passion.
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