Music is about tradeoffs. Time, money, relationships, physical fitness come to mind. All of these are things I’ve sacrificed for music. All are valuable but worth the trade to a certain degree. Every moment that I spend thinking, listening or practicing music I sacrifice some other element of my life. Every day that I get up and continue to pursue musical endeavors I evaluate the tradeoffs and proceed accordingly.

There is one thing that’s been lost in the past 10 years where I feel like I don’t have a choice in the matter. Something that I sometimes wish I could recover - the ability to just listen to music. To be able to listen and just enjoy without mental analysis… To listen without hearing notes out of tune & shifts in timing.

It’s virtually impossible for me to enjoy music at a non-analytical level now. I can’t just digest a melody, harmony and all accompaniment as a whole without parsing. I constantly decipher intervals, phrases and licks as if I’m on constant patrol for the introduction of a new string of notes or timing.

Critical listening definitely enhances my enjoyment of music sometimes but there are times where I’d do anything to just be able to turn off the musician part of my head and just listen to music as if I’d never touched an instrument.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 12th, 2006 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Gripes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.