HOW do you listen to music?

[Makeout Patrol]

Hmm, interesting, by me it does not create any physical feeling at all. There are "images" rarely, but no physical feeling.
I too tend to analyze the song, sound by sound. I just enjoy some kinds of sounds that hit my ear, that's the feeling I enjoy. But I can't tell it's physical, though.

It's extremely rare for me to get the physical thing if I'm not at a live show, but sometimes, you hear the music and you just have to move.

[InCreator]

If I do listen to anything, it's usually when traveling from one point to another, most likely to work or back. At work, di.fm always plays, but from co-workers computer, and it's too quiet to hear.
And at home, any additional noise is the last thing I need. I do turn music on sometimes when it's weekend and I'm in creative mode. But those cases have gotten rare... No matter what, at home, I ALWAYS wear headphones, even though I rarely listen to music... Some kind of escapist/isolation issue?

When listening, I usually imagine some sick shit, like high-speed jet fighter chase or some weird stuff, like everybody moving in slow motion or backwards. Or sometimes, when driving a bus, I imagine a laser beam emitting from bus side and cutting everything bus passes. Not in violent and bloody, but for sure explosion-filled and steel cutting way...

I listen to progressive trance, mostly. And have loads of unused imagination.

[Oliwerko]

I imagine a laser beam emitting from bus side and cutting everything bus passes.

And I thought I have weird things going round in my head! Now that's what I call true fantasy.

Maybe these imagination things depend on a music genre? I don't know.
Anyway, I have found out that I have a few sound types that I really enjoy.
Most of them are pure synth ones, especially the ones that sound like when you are waving with a 0.5x0.5m piece of metal very fast. I don't see a particular image, but hearing this 80s synth sounds just makes me feel good. For example the very beginning of "Send me an angel" is one of these cases.

[vict0r]

Thinking about it, I do actually imagine alot of things when travelling, like InCreator. Loads of destruction and rampage everywhere!

[Lionmonkey]

Does any one of you try to reverse engineer the music in their mind, like, split it into channels?

[Stupot]

If it's a song with lyrics I quite often have the actual words running through my mind's eye, as though on a sheet of paper, and if there is a particular line or word that I can't make out by listening to it, this often appears as either a blank space or a scribbled out black smudge... the smudge is code for "something something something", and is telling me to look it up on the internet... haha.

If I have seen the official video of a song then I may sometimes remember the video if I hear the song on it's own and scenes from the video will play out in my mind's eye.

Occasionally songs will remind me of a particular situation that I was in when I heard the song.  For example I've got a whole playlist of 'Japan Songs', that remind me of being in Japan, even if they are old songs I already knew, such as 'California Dreaming' (which I sang at a memorable evening of karaoke).

Also the entire album of Muse's 'Origin of Symmetry' reminds me of playing Skies of Arcadia on DC, because I used to listen to that album while I played the game.

[Oliwerko]

Does any one of you try to reverse engineer the music in their mind, like, split it into channels?

Well, I do this always. Maybe all musicians do that? I don't know. But I can't listen to a song without hearing it as single sounds, single melodies added together to make up a whole song.

[Makeout Patrol]

Does any one of you try to reverse engineer the music in their mind, like, split it into channels?

Occasionally I make an effort to listen to individual instruments in a song, but not usually, for two reasons: first, I really enjoy music with a loud, full, complicated, diverse sound - aside from spoken word tracks, almost half of my iTunes library is instrumental bands or bands with lyrics in languages I don't speak, and I don't pay a lot of attention to the lyrics on those tracks that have them (actually, a lot of my favorite bands that have lyrics have a greater emphasis on the instruments, making the lyrics difficult to understand; I even have a couple of CDs with lyrics so distorted and underemphasized that I completely honestly do not even know what language they are in). Second, sometimes when you split apart songs like that, you find things that you don't like. You know the song that played during the Kill Bill trailer? I tried listening for the bass line of that song, and it is one of the most irritating things that I have ever heard; it pretty much completely ruined the song for me.

[InCreator]

Maybe these imagination things depend on a music genre? I don't know.

I'm ready to eat nails for belief that it DOES depend. It works so strong for me.

But then again, my favourite genre happens to be most emotional genre in a world of electronic dance music (synthetic emo?), being mostly extremely sad and melanholic (if there's no minor scales, wrong genre), yet controversially being stamped with stereotypical club-party-fun sign.

Maybe it isn't so with some other genres..?

Does any one of you try to reverse engineer the music in their mind, like, split it into channels?

Guilty as charged...

[Lionmonkey]

I tried listening for the bass line of that song, and it is one of the most irritating things that I have ever heard; it pretty much completely ruined the song for me.

It's fascinating, how human ear can reconfigure itself in order to listen to specific noices and split them aside from all others, just by the user's wish.
But it seem that musicians want you to concentrate on one concrete channel and keep the others as a background. And like Stupot has noted, it sometimes doesn't seem to work properly.
So, how do you make people concentrate on a specific channel of your choise?

[Makeout Patrol]

I tried listening for the bass line of that song, and it is one of the most irritating things that I have ever heard; it pretty much completely ruined the song for me.

It's fascinating, how human ear can reconfigure itself in order to listen to specific noices and split them aside from all others, just by the user's wish.
But it seem that musicians want you to concentrate on one concrete channel and keep the others as a background. And like Stupot has noted, it sometimes doesn't seem to work properly.
So, how do you make people concentrate on a specific channel of your choise?

By emphasizing the channel you want them to be listening to, and reducing the emphasis on the background channels. Basically, the foremost channel will be louder, less predictable, and more complex; the background channels will be quieter, simple, and repetitive. A great number of rap songs are just the lyrics, which are constantly changing, superimposed over a one-measure drum beat that is repeated the whole time with only minor changes.

[Oliwerko]

Also you will probably notice high-pitching sounds much more than low bass ones, even when they are equally loudly played. Perfect example is rap, like Makeout said. When you listen to what is behind that lyrics, you find out usually one bass and one drum layer, which is constant. But you don't really notice it at first. Imagine having a high-pitched sound playing the bass rap layer at the same volume. You wouldn't concentrate at anything else. So the instrument/frequency does matter.

As for me, I enjoy being able to listen to individual melodies in a song. Many people can't do that. And so far I haven't heard a song that has had one bad channel that ruined it, as Makeout said. I have heard channels that I would normally miss, and that channels were marvelous. I would really miss not to be able to concentrate on them. In some songs, I listen mainly to them, because they are sometimes better than the rest of the song playing.

EDIT: To give a proper example, watch this (ignore the sucking quality, it's the best one I could find) and scroll to 3:50. When I heard the song first few times, I automatically concentrated on the lyrics and drums. Then, I realized the beautiful electronic melody that runs under it. And that's what I like about this portion of the song.

[Big Nerd]

When I´m listening to music, I really enjoy trying to separate de different instruments in my head. It´s also funny sometimes when you listen to a song you hadn´t listened for a long time and you recall what you were doing back then.

  Diogo

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