Non-musicians Listening to Music
by Jungreis
I am unable to approach anything in this class (or music in general) as someone who is not a guitarist. I listen to a lot of music because I like the guitar playing. When the guitar is absent or used merely in a supporting role, I listen to the violin (or whatever) line and think about the techniques and note choices; this is difficult to do with something played on the piano.
I have to think that I am not so bizarre in listening to music to hear my instrument on display. A sax player music get a kick out of hearing a crazy jazz saxophone solo. (I’ll assume that a sax player likes jazz; this strikes me as necessary to play the saxophone.) Violinists must have really liked the in-class video of the Paganini piece (or they got really depressed, which can also happen when you hear someone who is really good).
A few weeks back, someone posted a video of a Mozart piece played on just one acoustic guitar. It was really cool. That’s the way that I think about most of what we listen to in this class.
For the non-musicians, how do you listen to music?
Conversely, how to the classical musicians listen to the music from this class? Are any of the singers offended by the strong presence of instrumental music, particularly as of late?
The Thousand-Year Ears 
Being a clarinetist has impacted the way that I have listened to music throughout this course just as being a guitarist has influenced you. I become especially interested and focused while listening to a piece when the woodwind section is highlighted.
I don’t play any instruments and before this class I focused mainly on the voice of the singer. For instrumental music, strings or piano usually caught my attention. Now, I try to listen to as many different lines as I can distinguish, but that usually takes listening to the piece more than once.
As I don’t play any instruments, I will pick up something arbitrary about a piece and focus on that. It could be the brass, the strings, or the organ, depending on whether I “like” it. While it matters more to me if the music sounds good or not, for many violin players, they will like a piece more than me if the string part is particularly complex, because they can appreciate more than me the skill required to play it.
I played piano for seven years, so naturally I feel more connected to the music when I hear piano sonatas. Sometimes, when I listen to a piece not played by piano, I imagine what it would sound like if it was instead played by piano. However, I do believe that the class has taught me how to listen to music through a variety of instruments.
One thing that I have noticed is that a lot of times those how have musical backgrounds pay attention to technical details more often, whereas those without background just take the piece as a whole and listen to a piece for enjoyment. A lot of times when I’m listening to music, I pay attention to chord progression and the key the song is in. It’s my version of fun and enjoyment, whereas other people just like to pay attention to the beat or melody. I guess beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.
I’m not much of a music person either. Sometimes I don’t even know what some of the most famous songs when people mention them. Music attracts me if they sound catchy or if they have a meaning in the song. Many people do alot of remixes and I think these remixes give a new feeling to the pieces, which attract me even more as a non musician.
Before I took this class, I almost never went to symphony concerts because I couldn’t understand what’s going on beyond the melodies. Now that I’ve learned all those forms and structures of a symphony, I’m more confident when I attend a concert and I found out that I actually enjoyed it a lot!