Do we always listen the same parts of the song?

[Nowhk]

Hi all,

I think the question is almost self-explaining.
Do we always listen the same parts of the song?

I mean, for what I know, we cannot hear more than 1 element at time (i.e. now guitar, than drums, than bass, than vocal, than guitar again, and so on).
So do we listen (during the time we take confidence with the song) the same sequence of elements? Or human explore during time/moments different aspect? Entering the domain of "different experience", elaborating different emotions also due to this path of discovering?

What's your/our knowledge about this topic?

Happy discussion!

 

[Deleted member 21219]

I mean, for what I know, we cannot hear more than 1 element at time (i.e. now guitar, than drums, than bass, than vocal, than guitar again, and so on).

Do you listen to symphonic music? Your question doesn't make sense to me.

Jim

 

[Nowhk]

Do you listen to symphonic music? Your question doesn't make sense to me.

Jim

Of course. But I doubt you can concentrate to all instruments at the same time. Brain will focus and filter, selecting from them...

 

[Deleted member 21219]

Of course. But I doubt you can concentrate to all instruments at the same time. Brain will focus and filter, selecting from them...

Interesting! I suppose I could force my brain to do that, but I don't.

I therefore suspect that I'm not the type of listener to best answer your question. Good luck, though!

Jim

 

[alex-z]

It depends entirely on the music. Auditory masking does exist, but it varies with amplitude, frequency, and time arrival. It is a complex field that allowed for formats like MP3 to be perceptually lossless.

With a good setup, you should be able to discern simultaneous instruments in most music. I recommend having a pair of IEM's as a reference point, compared to good loudspeakers they have less bass and stereo width, but the detail is naturally quite high, as there is a low noise floor and no room reflections.

 

[Josq]

Good question. Take for example a 4-voice fugue (Bach). With passive listening, I generally only follow the uppermost voice and the harmonies.
Following all the 4 voices at the same time is perhaps possible, but it takes a lot of mental focus, and probably I will miss many details in the timbre of each voice.

I think it is similar to vision: you can either focus on all the details in a small area, or have a general, less detailed impression of the entire view. Reading 2 pages at the same time won't work.

 

[zhimbo]

I mean, for what I know, we cannot hear more than 1 element at time (i.e. now guitar, than drums, than bass, than vocal, than guitar again, and so on).

This makes things sound very simple. Sure, I'll agree, for now at least, that you can't concentrate on multiple "elements", perhaps, but what is an "element" of something as broad and complicated as music? Is the snare drum an element? Or the whole drum kit? Or the tight rhythmic interplay of the bassist and drummer playing off of each other? Or can you "take it all in", the rise and fall of the massed sound?

In perception there are many "Gestalt" effects where many individual parts can be grouped into a different sort of whole. The degree of grouping is partly "bottom up" (dependent on how the sensory input is organized, which is what various "gestalt perception" demonstration typically show) and partly "top down" (depending on how one chooses or tries to organize the input).

This is easier to show with a visual analog. What's an element from figure A? All of these images, A-D are of 49 individual dots. But we can group these in any number of ways - one big square, 7 alternating columns or 7 rows, a single element out of a field of elements. We can make this obvious by making them different colors, or we can choose to do this in our head. We can do similar things in the audio realm, and I think how we do this depends an awful lot both on the properties of the music (how many instruments? how distinct are they from each other in sound, and in how their part is written/played?) and properties of the person (analytically oriented or not? formally trained in music or not? past listening experience, etc).

 

[DVDdoug]

we cannot hear more than 1 element at time (i.e. now guitar, than drums, than bass, than vocal, than guitar again, and so on).

Actually, you are hearing everything mixed-together. There is one "wave" in the digital domain, electronically, and acoustically. (Actually two for stereo and more for surround sound.)

If you are listening to the vocals and suddenly one (of all) of the instruments stops playing, you'll notice!

If you open a regular stereo file in Audacity you'll see the left & right waveforms. And without listening you can't tell much about the recording even though the waveform contains all of the sound-information.

Your brain can somewhat identify certain instruments and vocals, but not always. If there are two guitars it can be hard to identify which-is-which. Or when voices blend together you can't always tell which-is-which. And more voices (like a choir) makes it almost impossible unless someone is singing a solo-part. When you have a full orchestra you can't always identify all of separate instruments.

There is also "masking" where a loud sound drowns-out a quieter sound. The quiet sound is still there but with everything mixed together you can't hear it. It's very common in music but it's natural so we are not vary aware of it. One of the ways MP3 compression works is by throwing-away more than half of the information. It tries to throw-aways sounds we can't hear and it can do a very-good job and often the compression (loss of information) is not notieceable.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

Hi all,

I think the question is almost self-explaining.
Do we always listen the same parts of the song?

I mean, for what I know, we cannot hear more than 1 element at time (i.e. now guitar, than drums, than bass, than vocal, than guitar again, and so on).
So do we listen (during the time we take confidence with the song) the same sequence of elements? Or human explore during time/moments different aspect? Entering the domain of "different experience", elaborating different emotions also due to this path of discovering?

What's your/our knowledge about this topic?

Happy discussion!

I love Bach. Listening to counterpoint requires listening to at least two separate elements so you can hear the interaction. In music like jazz or rock one of the things I enjoy the most is listening to the way the bass and drums interact with the vocal or lead instrument. What I like about New Orleans jazz from the 1920s is the polyphony. In a sense it's listening to one thing. Music with more than one instrument has a "horizontal" and "vertical" dimension. If you listen one beat at a time you hear all the parts. In the horizontal dimension you tend to focus on the "melody" or another part.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

I sang in choruses in high school and college. I don't know sight singing. I learned my part by ear. I often learned it by picking it up from the piano accompaniment in rehearsals. One thing I always enjoyed about choral music was picking the various parts apart.

 

[Curvature]

Hi all,

I think the question is almost self-explaining.
Do we always listen the same parts of the song?

I mean, for what I know, we cannot hear more than 1 element at time (i.e. now guitar, than drums, than bass, than vocal, than guitar again, and so on).
So do we listen (during the time we take confidence with the song) the same sequence of elements? Or human explore during time/moments different aspect? Entering the domain of "different experience", elaborating different emotions also due to this path of discovering?

What's your/our knowledge about this topic?

Happy discussion!

The technical term you are looking for is called "auditory stream separation". Read the book by Albert Bregman called Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound.

 

[ozzy9832001]

Hi all,

I think the question is almost self-explaining.
Do we always listen the same parts of the song?

I mean, for what I know, we cannot hear more than 1 element at time (i.e. now guitar, than drums, than bass, than vocal, than guitar again, and so on).
So do we listen (during the time we take confidence with the song) the same sequence of elements? Or human explore during time/moments different aspect? Entering the domain of "different experience", elaborating different emotions also due to this path of discovering?

What's your/our knowledge about this topic?

Happy discussion!

I would agree with you that a lot of times you can have a different experience with a piece of music. One night you may notice a cool bass line you never really paid attention too and now your focus is on that. Same goes for a cool guitar or vocal part.

The quality of equipment and how the room is setup/treated will allow for more separation between instruments. The mind certainly can focus on certain aspects...to a degree.

However, mood, time of day, temperature, etc can all play a part in how we perceive the music...even volume. For this reason, I always have 2 EQ presets, one for night time listening and one for day time (night is usually only about 60-65dB and daytime closer to 80dB. Bass needs to be tuned to be perceived higher at lower dB. Otherwise, the music will sound too bright, but I could focus more on the mids and highs at that point.

 

[Nowhk]

Well...

honestly I was not talking about "discover" new element (such as bass at some time, and than remember/hear it again), due to attention, ear training and/or system which can put on evidence some "elements".

Rather, I'm discussing about (once got on my "history"), how to I focus on it during the playing. One day maybe guitar/drumkit/bass, tomorrow first drumkit than voice... which will (I think) change the whole content and experience...

Any other further info or idea about this? (bought Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound meanwhile...).

 

[Philbo King]

Hi all,

I think the question is almost self-explaining.
Do we always listen the same parts of the song?

I mean, for what I know, we cannot hear more than 1 element at time (i.e. now guitar, than drums, than bass, than vocal, than guitar again, and so on).
So do we listen (during the time we take confidence with the song) the same sequence of elements? Or human explore during time/moments different aspect? Entering the domain of "different experience", elaborating different emotions also due to this path of discovering?

What's your/our knowledge about this topic?

Happy discussion!

As a mixing & mastering context, it depends on what I'm doing at the moment. If I'm setting up EQ or compression (or whatever) on a single instrument or voice, I listen carefully both to the timbre of that source and how it integrates into the entire mix. If I'm mastering, the 'flavor' of the entire mix is dominant, but individual instruments are still kept in mind as regards to EQ, microdynamics, overall dynamics and emotional impact.

When listening for pleasure it's a whole different game...

 

[fpitas]

As for me, the 1kHz test tones I listen to pretty much sound the same every time. No need to complicate things with changing notes!

 

[Pareto Pragmatic]

This idea can be extended to all senses. The more you focus on one thing, the less you pay attention to other things. It happens with vision, think tunnel vision (metaphorically, not literally). With touch, if your head hurts and you get hit in the leg with hammer, you won't feel the head pain for a while.

If we did not filter sense data, we would be overwhelmed. Sensory overload triggers the fight or flight response.

You still hear and see things you are not focused on, but the brain tends to filter them out to a great extent. It does not fully render them, so to speak.

 

[Nowhk]

As for me, the 1kHz test tones I listen to pretty much sound the same every time. No need to complicate things with changing notes!

You just can't I believe, brain doesn't work this way.

As a mixing & mastering context, it depends on what I'm doing at the moment. If I'm setting up EQ or compression (or whatever) on a single instrument or voice, I listen carefully both to the timbre of that source and how it integrates into the entire mix. If I'm mastering, the 'flavor' of the entire mix is dominant, but individual instruments are still kept in mind as regards to EQ, microdynamics, overall dynamics and emotional impact.

When listening for pleasure it's a whole different game...

Well, thats the point. I'm talking about listen to music, not producing

 

[fpitas]

You just can't I believe, brain doesn't work this way.

Sorry, us engineers simply measure things. We don't even like music!