listening/not
what is listening and what is hearing, then…
the main difference i can think of is again a matter of focused attention on a sound when listening, and general presence of a sound within the perceptive field when hearing.. the two things overlap a lot
so during our first improvisation of last class, we were listening to our own playing (or trying to) but only hearing the others without following them.. then when we stopped playing we heard Kevin playing and since that had become the strongest sound in the room we ended up listening to him and reacting..
very interesting, i think we all enjoyed playing ‘carelessly’ for once, not being inhibited by our relationship with the others, just going for it and throwing whatever came to mind on the table.. and this unleashed a good dynamic, who knows this could be a great warm-up exercise for many bands or any group of people doing this type of work (AA again..)
in a studio environment we could have taken the thing further.. imagine we all had headphones and could hear
- only our own playing while improvising together in a circle..
or we could even expand and see what would happen if we could only hear
- someone else’s playing but not ours
- all the others except us
- nothing at all
- some other piece of music
and so on..
it would be interesting to listen to the recordings, looking for relationships in each case
and just as well, we would be in a situation in which we players would be the same as the external listener not playing.. just listening to the music we played without recognizing it
i think we’re getting into this Heisenberg’s principle situation.. we could ask ourselves how much the listener influences the performer
(pretty easy to find examples, everyone has a story of things that ’sounded great’ when i was on my own in the practice room, and look what i mess i just did.. in front of the audience.. the examiners and so on)
