Does being a musician reduce your listening pleasure?

Andy

Honorary Member
I've often thought it would be great to listen to music from a non musician's perspective. I'm getting better at just getting into the vibe without picking it apart, but there's always a piece of me that feels the need to analyse. I'm not just talking about picking the drum parts out for scrutiny, I'm talking about the whole thing. Individual performances, recording techniques, effects, arrangement, production, you get the idea. In some ways, the analysis is a source of pleasure in itself, but in other ways, it's a blight on the naive joy of music in it's totality. I find it easy to get into the zone when listening to something like a live solo cello performance, but as soon as I listen to anything in a band context, I'm screwed. Anyone else feel handicapped in this way?
 
I know EXACTLY what you mean! I think that's the fun of being a musician though. You can appreciate the music more because you know what went in to making it. I am in the printing industry and currently print a newspaper. I can't read the paper or a magazine or anything else without checking out the print quality and color registration.
 
Even Mark Twain struggled with something similar.

http://grammar.about.com/od/60essays/a/twowaysessay.htm

In this essay he talks about how he romanticized life on a steamboat, but when he finally got to work on one, he became disenchanted.

The problem is we can't unlearn things like that. I just try to take as much pleasure as I can from relating to things the way I do, instead of longing for a past when ignorance was bliss.
 
I know EXACTLY what you mean! I think that's the fun of being a musician though. You can appreciate the music more because you know what went in to making it. I am in the printing industry and currently print a newspaper. I can't read the paper or a magazine or anything else without checking out the print quality and color registration.


+1 I used have a job testing video games. When I went home I still enjoyed playing my usual games, but I did notice many flaws that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

I don't think playing guitar and now drums has diminished my enjoyment. I still (can) get the same enjoyment out of listening to Tool or Opeth that I used to get from GnR back in '86.
 
I had something similar to this happen to myself a few weeks back.

I was in a training course at work and through the lunch break they played music.

I was sitting there with someone I work with who a much more accomplished musician than myself.

50 Ways came on and this guy and I smiled at each other and just listened into Gadd's playing.

I was looking around the room and thought to myself- all these other people are just happily letting this music float over them and I was analyzing every note Steve plays.


I just thought how good it would be to just be able to listen for once- something I havent done in quite some time
 
I wouldn't want to be color blind just to make it easier to look at garishly dressed old people. Just sayin' :D

But seriously, I get the dilemma. But I cherish enjoying the finer bits of drumming and songwriting that I assume more lay people don't pick up on - even if it means I have to suffer through something that might otherwise be tolerable.
 
I know what you mean. I've said that a million times, I hate playing in public where there are other musicians because I know there are a-holes like me walking around analyzing everything.

By playing in public I mean at Guitar Center or something, shows are different.
 
I've often thought it would be great to listen to music from a non musician's perspective. I'm getting better at just getting into the vibe without picking it apart, but there's always a piece of me that feels the need to analyse. I'm not just talking about picking the drum parts out for scrutiny, I'm talking about the whole thing. Individual performances, recording techniques, effects, arrangement, production, you get the idea. In some ways, the analysis is a source of pleasure in itself, but in other ways, it's a blight on the naive joy of music in it's totality. I find it easy to get into the zone when listening to something like a live solo cello performance, but as soon as I listen to anything in a band context, I'm screwed. Anyone else feel handicapped in this way?

I get this! Going to college cured me of this! I found myself in an environment where too many people I knew were over-analyzing everything they heard (I refer to it as tweezing). At that point in my life I was already making a living as a musician who learned that "If they're not drinking, the band's fired" so my simple solution was to stand-apart from my so-called "compatriots" and just enjoy the music. I still tend to analyze, but it's all internal. When I listen to the radio it's this way too. If people are having a good time, then I go with that vibe. If anybody wants my opinion, that's really rare anyway. Maybe that's what we need to realize: nobody wants our opinion, so you shouldn't feel the need to broadcast it!
 
I tend to use this as a yardstick for whether I really like a particular piece of music/performance/recording - if I'm not dissecting it so much, it means that I'm bypassing my analytical side and connecting it with in a more emotional way.
 
I used to like Nickelback before I got into music. I used to think that Yes was weird.

I'm glad that's in the past.
 
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In the same vane, I play, among other venues, in a community orchestra. We are a non profit "pay for play" group. We are very good and we have a lot of fun. I listen to a lot of "classical" music and enjoy it very much. I know people who play with the professional orchestra in town (they are better than we are) who don't listen to classical music in there spare time and they don't have as much fun playing as we do. Draw your own clnclusion.
 
It would be interesting to hear music from the non-musicians point of view if only to figure out why they would listen to some of the pop songs out there, but I'm happy to be afflicted with being a musician. I do find that I can't work or read technical documents while music (other than classical) is playing because I'm too easily drawn into it and distracted. I can listen to classical because it's not something I'd play on a drum kit, and I can appreciate it without analyzing it.
 
On one side it does, because you are always looking for the analitycal point of view of all resources involved in music. But also depends on the musician´s ability to pull back and enjoy listening like everybody else.
 
Most musician's listen to music on crappy systems with crappy set ups and have no idea what good recordings sound like. Even many jazz musicians who actually know how to record listen to horrible systems in poor;y set up rooms. I a very unfortunate dichotomy.

(And just in case i get pushback. Expensive does not always equal good and a lot od set up principles are free or low cost).

So. . .given this the only way I could see your supposition being true is regarding technique not sound
 
Since every human has some listening perspective anyway, which they can't compare really, I think there's not much use in trying to imagine how someone else perceives a piece of music.

Although I of course understand the question and know the "dilemma".

I do have experience with listening as a non-musician though, as a kid or teenie that is! Compared to today I knew nothing about music. But I did enjoy some bands, while I disliked some others. Same as today. Not the same bands and styles, but IMO it will always remain a matter of taste.

I can follow quite a part of the music I'm exposed to harmonically and rhythmically, but still I like some, and I don't like others.
I might like a band that doesn't consist of extraordinary musicians, or I may appreciate a genius musician while I don't dig the style and won't listen to it a second time.
 
If I could be so brave as to say, I think our pleasure of listening to music is what made us musicians in the first place. So to your question I would have to say No.
 
Not at all!

Ever since i started drumming just over a year ago, i have listened to music like crazy and i have analyzed the hell out of every song on my iPod. I think it has infinitely enhanced my music experience, and i am glad to understand and respect the music that musicians play.
 
Maybe musicians have never listened to music the way "normal" people do. Maybe that's why we became musicians in the first place.

Music had a big impact on me even when I was a tiny little kid. I heard it all and found it deeply affecting. Everyone else seemed to just take music for granted, but it wasn't that way for me.

Maybe, just maybe, the way some people listen to music is what causes them to take up instruments and become musicians.
 
Maybe musicians have never listened to music the way "normal" people do. Maybe that's why we became musicians in the first place.

Music had a big impact on me even when I was a tiny little kid. I heard it all and found it deeply affecting. Everyone else seemed to just take music for granted, but it wasn't that way for me.

Maybe, just maybe, the way some people listen to music is what causes them to take up instruments and become musicians.
+1
Well said, and definitely true in my case.
I have always focused on music in a different light that the average listener.
Im sure that many others here also feel the same.
 
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