When a new record comes out by one of your favorite artists, how do you listen?
My preference is for a deep dive.
My musical tastes encompass a wide swath of music, but when it’s something brand new (or new to me) by a favorite artist, I become fixated on repeated listenings to it. All other music is set aside to engage with it completely.
Part of this is because I’m excited about it. But there are several other factors that lead me to deep dive.
- I know that good music has many layers, and I want to afford time to listen in a lot of ways. (form, production, timbre, interpretation, arrangement, etc.)
- I know that I can’t trust my taste to be accurate on first listen. I know that as I listen more than once, I’ll come to understand it and appreciate it more as intended, just as I know not to trust my judgement when I’m sight reading a piece in choir.
- Repeated listening gives me time to take in all the accompanying material – especially liner notes, which I read obsessively to better understand the music.
- I want to understand the music on its own, in isolation, before I understand it in relation to other music.
- On the flip side, I want to take in the entire work before I go back and put a single song on repeat.
There are lots of ways to listen to music, but the deep dive is my favored approach to new music.
(Right now, I’m deep diving into Elements, the 21st album by The Real Group. I hope to prepare a full review to share sometime soon. For now, in a few words: I’m loving it. [Amazon] [iTunes] [Spotify])