listening is an underrated art form.
It took a long time for me to get better at listening to people. Basically I had to learn to shut up, ask more questions if needs be. There is still room for improvement, but there always is. Life is a journey, no?

But this post is about a different kind of listening. Listening to music. Specifically, listening to YOUR music.

photos

When it comes to photography I always say “only show your best work” - as in your photos will look better if you only show the good ones. BUT. That only applies to a certain type of arty photography - what you might call contextless photos - if you shove this in front of a random person will they say ooh that’s nice.
But. Photography is all about context.
Relevancy is absolutely key. A photo of someone could mean nothing to someone else, or it could mean everything. Like a photo of someone you once loved will give a very different response than someone you’ve never met.
So instead of contextless photos - you could say photos of a universal language. Which doesn’t exist. Maybe why its so hard?

danger

Anyway. There is a danger here. I’ve met some people who won’t show even their best work. So it’s probably best to get it out there really. Just in case.

quality

There is something lurking here. And that is notions of quality.
And we’re all about energy, right?

sidebar:
There is a phrase - “quality vs quantity” - which implies that they are opposing things.
So when you talk about the quality of art - you are talking about how much quality it has - the quantity of quality - which doesn’t make sense, really. Maybe the problem is we need to talk about the qualities a piece of art can have? And that is closer to the concept of energy?

Anyway. Who is in the photo matters. Similarly, music has a context - what someone has listened to previously and enjoyed. Maybe preconceptions about notions of genre. Cultural backgrounds.

So that makes listening to your own music tricky - how will you know the context of the listener?

However, listening to your own music is a great idea. Partly because you made the music you wanted to hear? Both Alex McLean and Brett Anderson have made this point.
Also, you can’t rely on other people to tell you what they heard - something makes this quite tricky - they might not be able to express it in a useful way.
Also, people don’t want to offend you if they don’t enjoy it. Which is nice.

You can listen to your own music though and tell yourself what you hear.

Second sidebar:

music means a lot to me. Has since I was a kid and first completely blown away by hearing Space Oddity in a school assembly. When I bought Da Funk on cassette tape. When I sat and listened to Different Class over and over again. When I put on Endtroducing or Electric Ladyland in the darkness and drifted away.
It is a visceral experience for me. That’s what I love about it. It has a direct impact that no other artform has (except film which it could be argued is also all about music?)

play

So, yeah, the first step is to actually play your own music (or make it first if you haven’t already)
(if making music seems hard then join pastagang you will have released an album within days or hours)

everywhere you can

Listen in different ways, in different places. One way to feel the impact of music is to listen on headphones around other people. If you feel some kind of dissonance - does it heighten the contrast? But that could just be me lol. Maybe why I don’t listen to a lot of music on headphones in public?

Like I said in my previous post - if nothing jumps out as out of place then it’s probably fine.

If it’s too quiet then add some compression.

Compression sidebar:
How to do this?
The proper way is to look at the meter showing ‘gain reduction’, if yours doesn’t have this use another. It doesn’t really matter how much - 6 to 12db is okay? but check that it is doing something.
I usually limit about 6db of the peaks from a track, which will make it twice as loud. Enable ‘soft knee’, lookahead and makeup gain if you have them. 50 to 100ms release should be fine.
Or alternatively, if you want to cheat, take a look at the waveform displayed in your daw/editor and see on the side scale where you should aim for to slice off the spiky bits.
If you want to go more into depth, that’s cool but I’ll leave it up to you :)

tijflalol?

One thing Lucy Cheesman aka Heavy Lifting always talks about is - why are you doing this? If it’s for fun then make it fun. (my favoured approach)
If it’s for fame or money then I can’t really help you as I have neither of those things and I’m not sure how much of them I would really like having.
What I would like is for everyone who might enjoy my music as much as I do to hear it.

In the meantime I’ll keep listening ;)

bonus content

This bonus thing is a tradition now so I’ll continue 😀

What do I think/feel of my own music?

I feel that I’m really starting to make what I want to. I feel I have a lot to explore. I feel that I want to not get stuck in certain grooves and keep pushing myself.

But really, I love it.

(Those people who told me I’m humble, sorry - you’re wrong I’m completely up my own arse lol)

wondering

Sometimes I wonder if I want to edge towards the music I always loved, in terms of experience if not style. Sometimes I wonder if I’m heading too much in that direction and there are other musics out there I need to find and love too.

One thing that guides me is a sense of landscape - urban, rural etc. Rolling hills, distant houses, lush woodland, tall buildings at dusk. People moving through them. So I guess I should focus on that.