The Art of Listening to Music

Music. From rap to pop to opera, music is a unique and personal way to express your opinion, beliefs, and feelings. Music can be the catalog of an individual’s life story; or it can be a simple stand-alone piece that evokes strong emotion for a short time. As important as music is to our lives, few really “experience” it.

Most never get the most pure listening experience and are not connecting to music in the way that the artists have intended. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are ways that anyone – everyone – can boost their listening experience and finally hear music the way they were meant to.

Listen In Full

Many artists use their albums to tell a story or a history of certain events. Artists and their teams spend days, sometimes even weeks, choosing songs for a studio album and placing them in a special order to truly tell the story and ensure that the songs ebb and flow in a thoughtful, emotional, and thought provoking way.

If you don’t feel like you are getting the most out of your music experience, try listening to one full album of songs, in sequence. Stop deviating from the map that the artist has given you. They know their music, and by listening to an album in order you are able to hear what the artist of that music hears, essentially giving you the same deep connection to their art.

Ditch Your Devices

Most of us are so used to carrying a phone around, giving us immediate access to music; whether that is through a single song or an entire album, our favorite tunes are just a tap away. But, this is not the best way to get the most out of your music experience. Devices such as phones, CD players, and mp3s simply do not have the ability to provide the same type of quality through their speakers that an in-home entertainment system can. If you are serious about music, and use it to boost your mood and want to get the most out of your listening time, invest in a good sound system.

Make sure your system is of the highest quality and that your speakers are positioned correctly for the room you are in so you hear every note with sharpness. A bad quality system, or consistently listening on your phone through headphones, ensures that you don’t hear everything your music has to offer because the quality isn’t good enough to really isolate every note and ensure you are enveloped in sound.

Choose Your Experience

Music is all about what experience you want in the moment. If you are sad, you may want the music to cheer you up or you may want to listen to songs that express the same experience you are having. So, don’t choose a song; instead choose the experience. Pick songs not for their words, but for the feeling they evoke. This is one of the best ways that you can enhance what you are listening to and ensure that your music always matches your mood.

Clean Up and Clean Out

A cluttered music library can be one of the reasons you are not getting what you want out of your music. One way to know if your library is overflowing is how often you are skipping songs and getting out of your groove. If you are reaching for the skip button every few songs, the music you have in your library no longer fits your style.

Constant skipping means you know what you want and your library is too cluttered to get to it, or your library is just filled with music you never listen to. Either way, it’s good to go into your library every few months and clean out songs you consistently skip over or never listen to. Get your groove back by listening to the songs you love and can get lost in.

Don’t Overdo It

Lets’ face it, most people think that more is better, and that if a speaker is not covering every inch of wall space, you’re doing it wrong. But, this really is not the case. Go for quality over quantity and don’t overbuy what you need. Too many speakers can cause interference and actually decrease your listening experience.

Buy a set of quality speakers that will last and follow the instructions completely on how to install them correctly. Skip the cheap gimmicks and go for the company that has been in the music business for years and has perfected the art of home entertainment.

Draw the Blinds

Most people don’t know that sound waves have a very particular and interesting relationship with glass. When sound waves hit glass, instead of being absorbed they are bounced off and shot back from the direction they came. This type of bounce back can cause sound interference with your speakers and lessen the quality of your experience.

So, cover your glass table with a blanket, draw your curtains, and even move your music into a room without picture frames on the walls. By reducing the amount of glass the sound waves can come in contact with, the less bounce back will occur and the sharper your audio will be.

Follow Proper Placement

If you can’t convert a spare bedroom into a secluded listening space with no interference, then chances are the placement of your speakers may be what is preventing you from a great listening experience. Placement is critical to crisp audio because it affects how the sound waves bounce off of surrounding objects.

For best listening first place your speakers away from the wall. While most people have speakers placed against their wall for the sake of space, but having speakers flush to the wall can create reflection which can muffle the bass in some songs, creating a more muddled sound. You may also want to try angling your speakers so they are at a more inward facing rather than outward facing position.

The inward position will mimic the placement of things like instruments and performers in a live setting. Therefore, giving you an overall better experience that is more akin to going to a concert than simply listening to an album in your living room.

No matter who you are, where you live, or what job you have, music is the ultimate language. Everyone has a distinct taste in artists and genre which create experiences like nothing else can. However, getting the best out of your listening experience has proven harder than ever these days with advancing technology and too many entertainment systems to choose from.

If you choose a quality system, create a personal space, and ensure proper set up you should have no problem getting the most out of your music with the sharp clear audio that evokes a multitude of emotions.