How Does Your Listening Repertoire Impact Your Composing?

Or does it influence it at all? Or do you listen seriously at all?

I just wrote a long post sort of related to this on the thread about creating a "personal" style, but it is my firm belief that a person's listening repertoire has everything to do with their composing. On the most obvious and basic level, this is why all pieces of music from a particular place and time period share certain characteristics: people write what they hear. And I think what we listen to often becomes a part of our compositional identity whether we want it to or not: for instance, although I write only "art music" (whatever that means), I think I've learned a lot about chamber orchestration and ostinati from listening to progressive bluegrass. There's also an almost blunt directness at some moments in my music that I suspect comes from having listened to punk rock as a teenager. And I think this is just as well: listening to a wide variety of culturally-familiar repertoire and allowing its influence to come out in your writing helps to ensure that your music will be relevant to audiences. (Keeping this from being mere regurgitation of familiar styles, however, is an entirely different matter... one maybe more appropriate for a different thread!)

what if you don't really listen to music?

what if you don't really listen to music?

Is that even possible?  Unless you are a scientist on a mission headed for Mars and managed to forget to pack your iPod.  We're bombarded with music, whether we like it or not, all the time.  In annoying little snippets while on hold with the cable company, in blasts from passing car radios, in stupid TV commercials that ruin your favorite song for you.

And you can't seriously be asking this question, right?  Joking?  

 In annoying little snippets while on hold with the cable company, in blasts from passing car radios, in stupid TV commercials that ruin your favorite song for you.

And, if you hate those, why would you let them slip into your own writing:  so, I guess you could say, then they are affecting you by choosing what NOT to write...??

Is that even possible?  Unless you are a scientist on a mission headed for Mars and managed to forget to pack your iPod.  We're bombarded with music, whether we like it or not, all the time.  In annoying little snippets while on hold with the cable company, in blasts from passing car radios, in stupid TV commercials that ruin your favorite song for you.

 

And you can't seriously be asking this question, right?  Joking?  

It's true that some composers did not listen much to other people's music (or at least maybe after a certain point in their lives).  Either they didn't like what they were hearing or felt it intruded too much on their own thoughts.  

For my own part, I don't listen to nearly as much as I used to at all, which I find unfortunate, but also for some reason necessary.  I can't say whether it's helping or hindering (probably the latter, really), and it might  have something to do with my life at the present moment, but that seems to be my instinct for now.

Is that even possible?  Unless you are a scientist on a mission headed for Mars and managed to forget to pack your iPod.  We're bombarded with music, whether we like it or not, all the time.  In annoying little snippets while on hold with the cable company, in blasts from passing car radios, in stupid TV commercials that ruin your favorite song for you.

 

And you can't seriously be asking this question, right?  Joking?  

There is a difference between 'hearing' and 'listening'. 

True enough, Cadenza!

what if you don't really listen to music?

4'33".

Well, I listen all the time, critically,  and I am envious most the time because I don't waste my time with music that I am not envious of.

 I will listen from start to finish ANYTHING, once.

ready, set go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_hQOTT_kKg

ready, set go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_hQOTT_kKg

Haha I put it under my pillow for the night.