DMS Blog #10

One more entry before fall break,

According to Pauline Oliveros, deep listening is a philosophy that differentiates the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary selective nature of listening. As a result of this people appreciate sounds on a higher level and increasing interaction with their environment, technology, and performance within music and arts. Deep listening gives artists, musicians, and audiences a chance to grow. In my own opinion, she talks about ‘deep listening’ in regards to hearing but not listening. I think by this she means that we tune out certain sounds even though we hear the music we are not listening for the out of place sounds (makes sense hopefully).

She says that the first recorded sound she listened to started her philosophy of deep listening. She recorded sound in her apartment and when listening to it heard sounds that she didn’t normally hear, thus she gave herself a meditation, “Listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening.” This is what helped her to understand her environment because now she listens to everything; she listens for every little detail.

She has made much collaboration and shows her collaborations in many places. She encourages people to use deep listening with their own creative interest and professions.

I think that her ideas would apply to my projects in DMS as well as other things. I agree with her idea of deep listening. I feel that a lot of the time I am hearing things but I am not ‘listening’ to them, so I do not understand the things I am hearing. I feel that I did use ‘deep listening’ in my audio project for DMS 121 because I kept playing each audio piece over and over again trying to get the best sound. Even after I was done, listening to it in class I found more sounds I didn’t hear before. Yet, I think I could use this idea outside of class as well. For example, if I wanted to make a CD or sound track/song, etc. I would have to consider how it would sound to different people played in different places.

On another note, I think I just found the inspiration for my final project. I think that ‘awareness’ of the things around us, ‘deep listening’, or whatever you want to call it is really what music and art are all about. A lot of art deals with reality or peoples’ perception of reality, so if each person sees/hears the world a different way than the art is going to be different. Deep listening essentially just allows the artist/musician to get in touch with their surroundings and use that for inspiration.

Okay, now I’m going to say something off topic (well it might be off topic because I could have answered the questions wrong). I like how she talks about her time as a professor. I think it’s interesting that she focused on listening to teach music as opposed to reading and writing music. Although, I feel that this quality might make her a perfectionist when it comes so the sound of the music, nonetheless it’s an interesting way to teach music. Also, I do agree that listening is an important skill to learn and it is undervalued in school, I applaud her for giving it the appropriate attention.

Signed for the last time before fall break,

Yours Truly