How do you hear music?

How do you 'hear' music?

Have you ever tried listening to music without using your ears? I know it sounds crazy... but have you ever tried to?

Normally we hear sound as sound waves that enter our ears, bounce around, and vibrate our eardrum which those vibrations get turned into electric signals that our brain undersands to be sound. This is what we have learned since elementary school and I believe every doctors office in existence has a poster or plastic model of the working of the ear that we have looked at while we waited, and waited.

Think of hearing a sound, like one from your MP3 player, played through speakers and into your ears. This is how a lot of people 'hear' all the time. It is the 2D way. There is style, there is tempo, intonation, volume, and technique that can all be heard through this style of listening. You can tell me what type of song it was, how well it was played, and how you fealt as a result of the sound you heard using your ears...

Now think of thunder...do you remember being a little kid and plugging your ears at night during a thunderstorm and being able to still 'hear' the thunder because it would make your whole body and especially your chest resonate (just like eardrums do). The depth of feeling that trembles through your whole body and adds so much more emphasis and detail to the sound heard. But it is hard to describe. hmmm, let me explain more...

If you play an instrument it is very easy to get caught up in the 'noises'. The sound of the bow scratching the string, the piano keys tapping against the wood, the breath before singing or blowing into a flute... There are so many of these noises that the performer will always hear. They are sitting right on top of the sound and because of that have to have a lot of confidence in themselves to know that it sounds fine to the audience. Yet there is the amazing part of playing an instrument. You can feel the music as it resonates through the wood or metal and in you as well. The easiest way to get used to this is to play percussion or a low instrument with noise-canceling headphones on. Even drumming on a desk-top you can feel what type of tone the your fingers make on different parts of the desk. You can feel it. even with music blasting into the headphones (five variants of dives and lazarus... oh yeah)

Just a random bit of music-stuff I happen to be thinking about right now...not very complete, or anything, but I thought it was worth throwing onto the blog.

Toodleoo