OT: How do you listen to music?

[time4jazz]

The only time I really have a chance to just listen is while driving. Commercial, over-the-air radio was unbearable.  I ended up signing up for satellite radio, and for the most part it works quite well. Great variety of old and new stuff. 

 

 

[Docbop]

1 hour ago, jazzpiano88 said:

 
I wonder if you could derive it with a set of test signals.   Input some sinusoids and measure the magnitude and phase at each output.   Then again there might not be an intuitive explanation of the result.  

I wonder if it's like Spatial audio that with two listening points it sounds are placed in different location with in 360 degrees.    I got a used Macbook Pro recent with that great screen it has.  It came with free Apple TV for a few months so been watching and using my airpods that support Spatial audio and cool how they place the sounds based on what's on screen.  

[Ed A.]

5 hours ago, Lou_NC said:

No streaming for me, I absolutely despise bleeding cash on a monthly basis to listen to music that I already paid for once! 🙂

 

All my music now is in MP3's.  I went through a phase years ago where I digitized my own LP albums and ripped all my CD's.  On the rare occasion I want a new song (usually in reality a "vintage" rock/pop tune) I check to see if it's already on YouTube and if it is I use an MP3 downloader and then drop the MP3 file in my music folder.  

 

I listen in my car using MP3's on a USB stick, or by running the audio jack of my "vintage" iPod into the AUX input of my car radio.  Occasionally I'll listen to FM on my car radio, until the back-to-back commercials drive me to switch to my MP3's yet again!

 

At home I'll hook up the iPod to an input channel in my stereo rack mixer, and listen to tunes through my keyboard monitor setup while I fantasize that I'm Danny Federici playing along with Bruce. 🙂

Almost anything I stream on Apple Music is something new, and I hardly ever listen to old music I had on CDs, so I don't mind paying an annual fee for it to find interesting new music I've never heard before. The advantage of streaming is also that it's lossless 24 bit, 48K+ sample rates compared to lossy 16 bit MP3s. It noticeably sounds better IMO.

[Ivan May]

I still own an innumerable amount of CDs and LPs, because I am too old fashioned. I also own a lot of DVDs, I recently saw the Pretenders 2003 concert in Los Angeles on a DVD I purchased recently.

[ProfD]

21 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

But I spend very little time listening to music recreationally.

MOI's whole post captured it for the most part but this line stuck out the most. 

 

Nowadays, my listening is focused on music for ideas and/or inspiration. 

 

I'll put a record (vinyl) on the turntable or or pop in a CD into the player and scan through music for a tune I want to rearrange and play or a piece of audio worth mangling in sound design.   

 

I mainly listen to the news or sports when I'm driving. Every now and then, I'll scan radio stations or the internet hoping to hear a piece of music that knocks me on my azz. 

 

Unfortunately, that does not happen too often as it seems like I've heard every piece of music several times over already.

 

Nowadays, the most enjoyment I get from music is when I'm sitting at the Rhodes and playing it my gotd8mn self.😁😎

[Dave Bryce]

Man… 

 

My mind is a bit blown by how much of an outlier I am here.  

 

I listen to hours of music every day.  Material I love, or I don’t know, or that I always wanted to check out/others have recommended, or that I haven’t heard in years, etc.  I absolutely love it.

 

I’m very lucky in the fact that I can sit in my AV room with my laptop and do work while I’m listening.  My wife now likes for me to spin records while one of us is cooking, and when we’re eating dinner.  She calls it the Golden Hour. ☺️ 

 

There’s very little doubt that this phase was kicked into gear when I redid my AV room in 2021.  For the previous couple of decades, I was in the same boat with most of y’all - rarely did anything like play an album.  Now I feel kinda badly for all the time I spent without music playing.

 

dB

[jazzpiano88]

I do a TON of informal listening at the iMac Pro.     I have ear worms or ear wigs that pop into my head multiple times per day and I need to chased them down.

 

Like in the middle of this clip from Jimmy McGriff  "Out of Nowhere".   I have to find out where it was from or I'll go nuts!

 

 

 

[Docbop]

1 hour ago, Dave Bryce said:

Man… 

 

My mind is a bit blown by how much of an outlier I am here.  

 

I listen to hours of music every day.  Material I love, or I don’t know, or that I always wanted to check out/others have recommended, or that I haven’t heard in years, etc.  I absolutely love it.

 

I’m very lucky in the fact that I can sit in my AV room with my laptop and do work while I’m listening.  My wife now likes for me to spin records while one of us is cooking, and when we’re eating dinner.  She calls it the Golden Hour. ☺️ 

 

There’s very little doubt that this phase was kicked into gear when I redid my AV room in 2021.  For the previous couple of decades, I was in the same boat with most of y’all - rarely did anything like play an album.  Now I feel kinda badly for all the time I spent without music playing.

 

dB

 

Yes, i can't believe the number of replies from people saying their listening to non-music instead of music.   I don't have a fancy music space the bedroom in my little apartment is my music room and my bed is in the dining area.   I found having a space dedicated to music really helps, I enter my music space and it all about music.   I think I get into it because towards the end of my working days and having long commutes to work and somehow got into listening to talk radio.  that eventually crept into my home life talking to people about the radio crap, and dealing with caring for a dying mother.   Finally one day I realized that listening to all the talk radio CRAP made me such an a55h0le and I stopped cold turkey.  I started listening to music in my car again, talking music with people and my life became good again, i was happy again. So music is important even just listening for me it saved my life.        

[David Emm]

I'm somewhere between ProfD and Dave F. I soaked in the world of music until it got into my pores and I began to feel the itch to compose. Input became less imperative and answering the call with my own howl of output took over. As that process has grown, my casual listening has dropped off. I dig into odd classical performances and music suggested in random posts on here, but I feel sort of... full up, you dig? I've been looping the 1976 Ash Ra classic "New Age of Earth" and the solo works of Ulrich Schnauss like a palate cleanser. I missed the band name, damnit, but I saw a young woman do a scorching violin bit that slightly echoed Eddie Jobson, so excellence does crop up.

 

Otherwise, I'm not drawn to new pop music much. I hear people who have it together musically, but the material feels like water when what I need is a snort of Ol' Mjolnir, the Beer That Made Valhalla Crowded.

 

I'm satisfied to feel restless, because that seems like a natural progression for any ar-teest. That's why I took to keyboards. Piano taught me about polyphony & NOTE power and synthesizers have handed me the welcome ability to dabble in brass sections or set off dogs and car alarms if I push it. I like to make spooky loops and such for trick-or-treaters, but it may be too much. Some parents do a dog-leg thing to avoid my house. Good, more KitKats for me.

[Dave Bryce]

If I had to say what I listen to the most, it’s older recordings with which I’m not very familiar, or haven’t heard at all.  

 

Right now, I’m digging into a four CD set I got for $12 that has eight of Quincy Jones’ early records - two per CD.  Such fabulous written, excellently played, well recorded music.

 

dB