How to Build Music Listening Skills: 5 Tips for Active Listening

In music, active listening refers to the conscious choice to focus on a piece of music undisturbed by other stimuli. In daily life, you may use music as background texture, but when you eliminate distractions and focus your attention on the music, you shift into active listening.

Active listening allows you to process the compositional structure and nuances in a piece of music. Active listening may help you notice the different instruments within a particular piece of music or appreciating its complexity.

No matter what types of music you listen to, you can also use active listening as a musical training exercise for writing and playing your own music. Perhaps you'll hear a chord progression you want to borrow for your own songwriting. Perhaps you'll appreciate certain idiomatic quirks of a genre of music, which will help build your music skills within that genre.

By listening for each of these five components of a piece of music, you can build up your active listening skills.

1. 1. Instrumentation: As an active listener, see if you can identify every musical instrument on a recording. If you're hearing the music live, try to pick out the individual lines played by each musician.
2. 2. Structure: In popular music, listen to the song form—verse, chorus, bridge, etc.—to study how the songwriter structures the tune. In classical music, try to identify formal structures, such as a fugue, a sonata form, or a dance style like a rondo or mazurka. Having a background in music theory will help immensely in this regard.
3. 3. Style: Is the music you're hearing aligned with a particular musical genre? Do you hear elements of other genres as well?
4. 4. Technique: Decide for yourself whether you like the way the instrumentalists and vocalists perform. You may love what you hear, or you may note imperfections.
5. 5. Lyrics: Focus on imagery, figurative language, and rhyme scheme.

An active listening session is most rewarding when you're listening to music as attentively as possible.

• Position yourself in the right location. In a live setting, find a place near the center of the room and a little bit back from the stage. If you see the sound engineer's mixing board, try to stand near that; this will ensure you're hearing the same mix as the engineer.
• Use headphones. If you're listening at home, the best way to get a fulfilling listening experience without breaking the bank is to listen on headphones. While good headphones aren't cheap, they're far more affordable than top-of-the-line speakers.
• Seek out high-fidelity audio. Streaming music services are convenient and comprehensive, but they tend to compress audio files to the point of leaving out key parts of the sonic texture. Whenever possible, listen to music in high-fidelity formats. Vinyl records and CDs tend to provide better audio than most streaming options. Note, however, that some streaming companies offer hi-fi streaming options that contain a lot more detail than standard mp3 streams.
• Sing along. One way to ensure you're engaged with a piece of music is to sing along. Bear in mind that doing this may distract you from hearing all the nuance in individual performances, but it will surely connect you to the music you're hearing.
• Practice ear training. Begin your own music education by learning to recognize different pitches, intervals, chords, and keys. Develop a familiarity with different types of rhythm and other musical techniques, and identify them in the music you're listening to.

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