We're all doing it every day, some after breakfast, some directly after waking up. There are others who do it while driving, some kids do it on the bus to school. Mothers do it with their babies in their lap.
You may even do it subconsciously - I am talking about listening to music.
I am writing this after a late night watching music videos on YouTube and realizing what an insane effect they have on my mood.
Thinking back in my childhood days, I remember music being present. There was a radio running somewhere in the corner. My father was working at the big East German electronics "company" Robotron and with that we had access to some cool gadgets such as early Robotron computers but also interesting radios. By my bedside there was a Robotron RR 2311 with a built in clock, alarm and snooze function as well as a touch control to activate the snooze function. I must have been 5-7 years old and at that time was mostly interested in the tech. I would regularly open the whole thing up to peek inside, not understanding anything.
What really did not matter that much was music.
The only memory of actual music from that time is a record my father had (illegally in East Germany) acquired. We would listen to it from time to time on the crackly record player. The record cover was simple, black background, some sort of prism in the center, a beam of light and rainbow colors. Your guessed it, it was "The dark side of the Moon" album by Pink Floyd.
The next big memory of my childhood/youth years were shortly after the German reunification. My father had picked up a job in West Germany, he would spend the weeks at work and come home for the weekends. Sometimes I was allowed to follow along and meet the people he was working with and his clients. That's when I met Willi. He was an architect, judging by the house and the Porsche relatively affluent and a heavy smoker with an infectious laugh. Willi wore leather at all times, I remember him clearly sitting in his studio wearing leather pants and leather jacket doing his thing. Willi was also a music nut. He loved Rock: Led Zeppelin, Danzig, The Cult, Van Halen, Hendrix, Jethro Tull you name it.
I had no idea about any of these bands and Willi was delighted to introduce me to all of them, he also had a sophisticated sound system and it seemed like speakers in every room of the house. Imagine being 12 and listening to Little Wing (SRV cover) for the first time.
From that time onward, my father would bring home a new mix tape (an actual cassette) ever weekend which Willi taped for me during the week.
I would disappear in my room, put the cassette in the Hifi System and just sit and listen. For hours. Then turn it around and listen to the other side.
Thinking back now, I think this was the biggest musical influence in my life. It lead to me later picking up the guitar, starting a band and still making music to this day.
Willi passed away a few year ago, once I learned about his death, I made a playlist with some of the biggest influences from his tapes to honor him. (You can listen to it on Spotify)
During the school days, we would have to take a bus from village to village until finally reaching school. This trip took about 30ish minutes and was a great chance for us kids to exchange cassettes and listen to stuff with our Walkman. The greatest anxiety those days arose out of batteries running out of juice. Later on came Sony's Discman, some had Mini Disc players or other fancy devices which made exchanging music harder. The good old double cassette deck in the home stereo was a simple way to duplicate music back then.
With the rise of the iPod, music was for me still an Album affair. e.g. I would look for my favorite artists, buy the album, same as I would have done in the past on CD and then listen to it front to back, back to front and over again.
Around that time came Napster (and it's siblings LimeWire, WinMX etc)
I remember my first experience with stealing music online, vividly. I was using Napster to download the MP3 of Papa Roach's - Last Resort. The file must have been 3-4MB in size but with the dial-up internet connection still took a good 10-15 min to download. Once on the hard disk there was the next challenge, how to play it? Winamp was the way to do it. None of this software came pre-installed on a Windows computer. It felt like diving into a new, slightly illegal world. It was amazing.
Suddenly music was not at all and "Album Affair" anymore, it was much more about the hits and singles. Whatever I had not downloaded, one of my friends surely had and with the ubiquity of USB thumb drives, it was easy again to share music. Those were the golden days of music. You saw the music video on MTV and 10 minutes later you had downloaded it to your computer and USB player.
I think that's also around the time when things went downhill for the quality of my music consumption.
Infinite amounts of music were suddenly available everywhere, the challenge was time. There's only 24 hours in a day, maybe 16-18 of those awake. Not enough time to listen to everything. So music just turned into this background noise for me. It was always running, while doing school work, while driving, while having a meal, while playing Commander Keen and Lemmings, while falling asleep.
Later, Spotify only amplified this issue, pay 10 bucks a month and access literally millions of tracks at once. It sounds like a fantastic proposition, but what happens with too much choice? It can have a paralyzing effect and instead of discovering new tracks and genre's, you may get stuck in your old playlists.
It took until way later that I rediscovered the intentional listening to music.
Actually sitting down, putting on a specific track or album, putting on headphones or using a proper speaker system to enjoy music. I like to close my eyes and imagine the band, after a while I can 'see' the drummers hands move, his imaginary head bobbing slightly, the guitarist hitting the high notes with swift movements of his fingers, the lady on the bass filling in the beat with smooth harmonic notes. Then there is the singer who often gives the track a big part if it's character. What mood are they in, what do the lyrics convey, how does this make me feel?
I find that music in my life is the greatest mood enhancing drug there is. It only works though, if I am listening with intent and mindfully.
When is the last time you listened to a track with the only intend of immersing yourself in the music?
What was the track? How did it make you feel? What memories did it awaken? Do you have a 'battle song' before a big meeting? Do you have a 'calm down' song before heading to bed? When you are heartbroken, what do you listen to?
Please share, I am curious!
PS: I believe that the only amplification from this point is actually learning and instrument yourself. It will be hard at first, it will sound awful, your body may hurt, frustration may be outweighing pleasure by an order of magnitude ... but.. once you figure it out, playing an instrument possesses the power of a deep meditation.
It makes the player forget the world, forget the worries, escape in a temporary world of sounds, harmonies and rhythm.
°°°
I hope you enjoyed reading this short essay. If you like to automatically get the next one in your inbox, feel free to subscribe below ⬇
You may even do it subconsciously - I am talking about listening to music.
I am writing this after a late night watching music videos on YouTube and realizing what an insane effect they have on my mood.
Thinking back in my childhood days, I remember music being present. There was a radio running somewhere in the corner. My father was working at the big East German electronics "company" Robotron and with that we had access to some cool gadgets such as early Robotron computers but also interesting radios. By my bedside there was a Robotron RR 2311 with a built in clock, alarm and snooze function as well as a touch control to activate the snooze function. I must have been 5-7 years old and at that time was mostly interested in the tech. I would regularly open the whole thing up to peek inside, not understanding anything.
What really did not matter that much was music.
The only memory of actual music from that time is a record my father had (illegally in East Germany) acquired. We would listen to it from time to time on the crackly record player. The record cover was simple, black background, some sort of prism in the center, a beam of light and rainbow colors. Your guessed it, it was "The dark side of the Moon" album by Pink Floyd.
The next big memory of my childhood/youth years were shortly after the German reunification. My father had picked up a job in West Germany, he would spend the weeks at work and come home for the weekends. Sometimes I was allowed to follow along and meet the people he was working with and his clients. That's when I met Willi. He was an architect, judging by the house and the Porsche relatively affluent and a heavy smoker with an infectious laugh. Willi wore leather at all times, I remember him clearly sitting in his studio wearing leather pants and leather jacket doing his thing. Willi was also a music nut. He loved Rock: Led Zeppelin, Danzig, The Cult, Van Halen, Hendrix, Jethro Tull you name it.
I had no idea about any of these bands and Willi was delighted to introduce me to all of them, he also had a sophisticated sound system and it seemed like speakers in every room of the house. Imagine being 12 and listening to Little Wing (SRV cover) for the first time.
From that time onward, my father would bring home a new mix tape (an actual cassette) ever weekend which Willi taped for me during the week.
I would disappear in my room, put the cassette in the Hifi System and just sit and listen. For hours. Then turn it around and listen to the other side.
Thinking back now, I think this was the biggest musical influence in my life. It lead to me later picking up the guitar, starting a band and still making music to this day.
Willi passed away a few year ago, once I learned about his death, I made a playlist with some of the biggest influences from his tapes to honor him. (You can listen to it on Spotify)
During the school days, we would have to take a bus from village to village until finally reaching school. This trip took about 30ish minutes and was a great chance for us kids to exchange cassettes and listen to stuff with our Walkman. The greatest anxiety those days arose out of batteries running out of juice. Later on came Sony's Discman, some had Mini Disc players or other fancy devices which made exchanging music harder. The good old double cassette deck in the home stereo was a simple way to duplicate music back then.
With the rise of the iPod, music was for me still an Album affair. e.g. I would look for my favorite artists, buy the album, same as I would have done in the past on CD and then listen to it front to back, back to front and over again.
Around that time came Napster (and it's siblings LimeWire, WinMX etc)
I remember my first experience with stealing music online, vividly. I was using Napster to download the MP3 of Papa Roach's - Last Resort. The file must have been 3-4MB in size but with the dial-up internet connection still took a good 10-15 min to download. Once on the hard disk there was the next challenge, how to play it? Winamp was the way to do it. None of this software came pre-installed on a Windows computer. It felt like diving into a new, slightly illegal world. It was amazing.
Suddenly music was not at all and "Album Affair" anymore, it was much more about the hits and singles. Whatever I had not downloaded, one of my friends surely had and with the ubiquity of USB thumb drives, it was easy again to share music. Those were the golden days of music. You saw the music video on MTV and 10 minutes later you had downloaded it to your computer and USB player.
I think that's also around the time when things went downhill for the quality of my music consumption.
Infinite amounts of music were suddenly available everywhere, the challenge was time. There's only 24 hours in a day, maybe 16-18 of those awake. Not enough time to listen to everything. So music just turned into this background noise for me. It was always running, while doing school work, while driving, while having a meal, while playing Commander Keen and Lemmings, while falling asleep.
Later, Spotify only amplified this issue, pay 10 bucks a month and access literally millions of tracks at once. It sounds like a fantastic proposition, but what happens with too much choice? It can have a paralyzing effect and instead of discovering new tracks and genre's, you may get stuck in your old playlists.
It took until way later that I rediscovered the intentional listening to music.
Actually sitting down, putting on a specific track or album, putting on headphones or using a proper speaker system to enjoy music. I like to close my eyes and imagine the band, after a while I can 'see' the drummers hands move, his imaginary head bobbing slightly, the guitarist hitting the high notes with swift movements of his fingers, the lady on the bass filling in the beat with smooth harmonic notes. Then there is the singer who often gives the track a big part if it's character. What mood are they in, what do the lyrics convey, how does this make me feel?
I find that music in my life is the greatest mood enhancing drug there is. It only works though, if I am listening with intent and mindfully.
When is the last time you listened to a track with the only intend of immersing yourself in the music?
What was the track? How did it make you feel? What memories did it awaken? Do you have a 'battle song' before a big meeting? Do you have a 'calm down' song before heading to bed? When you are heartbroken, what do you listen to?
Please share, I am curious!
PS: I believe that the only amplification from this point is actually learning and instrument yourself. It will be hard at first, it will sound awful, your body may hurt, frustration may be outweighing pleasure by an order of magnitude ... but.. once you figure it out, playing an instrument possesses the power of a deep meditation.
It makes the player forget the world, forget the worries, escape in a temporary world of sounds, harmonies and rhythm.
°°°
I hope you enjoyed reading this short essay. If you like to automatically get the next one in your inbox, feel free to subscribe below ⬇