Re: music listening styles

[Julian Rohrhuber <rohrhuber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In film theory, there is, for instance, 'causal listening', 'semantic 
listening', and 'reduced listening', which Michel Chion [1] developed 
from Pierre Schaeffer's theory of acousmatic sound. The first refers 
to listening for a sound source, the second as listening to 
language-like sounds meaning and the third as a reflective stepping 
back. Reading philosophy of sound (e.g.[2, 3]), one can find that the 
question of "what is sound?" is answered in ways that correlate to 
possible modes of listening (proximal, medial, distal and aspatial 
theories, for instance). In my view, listening styles are bound to 
implicit assumptions about what one listens to. In music, this can be 
very abstract.


[1] Chion, Michel (1994). Audio-Vision. Columbia University Press.
[2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sounds/
[3] O'Shaughnessy, B. (1957). The Location of Sound, Mind, 66, 471-90.


best,
Julian
--





.