“Yao made specific claims concerning the listening practices of professional musicians, classical musicians and conservatory students”…agree on this…

when i said “far away”, i didn’t mean on this level…

and yes, of course, i belong to none of the mentioned groups…but i think the process is quite similar among all those who are involved in making sounds(the differences, i think, are just various degree on the same continuum)…

cheers.

Thank you for your comment. However, I must disagree with you. It seems that your comment “gets too far away from what Yao means”. Yao made specific claims concerning the listening practices of professional musicians, classical musicians and conservatory students. I take it you are none of the above.

Please refer to comment #1.

Cheers

I don’t know what ‘music makers’ are, I don’t know what it means to ‘listen well’, and I wasn’t aware that it’s necessary for improvisors to have a ‘conversation’ (although I appreciate it when there is one). However, I do know Mr Lopez, and he is certainly not ‘full of shit’.

The problem with listening is as follows:

All listening is conditional. What you hear is different from what I hear, is different from what a bat, an elephant, or a tuna hears. In fact, what you hear is different from what you remember yourself to hear, just as it is different from what you expect yourself to hear. Beyond what you are able to consciously recognize, even the physiology of your middle ear canal and the hair cells in your cochlea are biased, and the way these stimuli are processed as they become a perception is extremely biased.

You hear music. You hear what you like, what you don’t like. So what? You have a certain bias (due to physiology, cultural background, training, lack of training, etc.) and a sheng player from Anhui has another. Where is the music? It’s insufficient simply to say it’s in your head, or that it’s subjective. After all, we are not ideas but organisms, part of our environment.

So, to recap: I agree with you. There is certainly something to the *concept* of ‘absolute listening’. However, listening itself is inherently provisional, just as we are. Do you see the problem?

Your question ‘why not have it both ways?’ is well taken. How many ways do you want to have it? This is not the same as asking how many ways you can have it. It’s asking about you: why only those ways, or certain ways in particular? This is one way for us to recognize what we are, and what we are doing.

That’s the problem, more or less.

Of course GNO is fantastic. Lawrence is God. :-P

Cheers

AND… GNO: FANTASTIC SITE AS ALWAYS! I’m looking forward to the translated podcast transcriptions!

Having one’s ears trained is a problem. Having them untrained is also a problem. There is no such thing as the ‘absolute listening’ espoused by Francisco Lopez. This is also a problem.

Listening is a problem.