As you study a piece,
create a journal or record of what you hear, what you want to listen to more carefully next time, guesses about what is going on in the music, reactions, and questions. It may be difficult at first to come up with descriptions, but the struggle to write something that makes sense to you is an important step in making sense of the music. Pictures and diagrams can also be part of your journal. You can use any music notations you know, or make up your own. Choosing words, phrases and pictures that describe elements and characteristics of the sound will help you to think about them, listen for them, remember them accurately, and discuss them with others.
You won't be able to listen carefully to everything at once. If the piece is long, you might want to start with just your favorite section of it. Start by listening to the characteristics or elements that are most interesting or obvious to you. Save more challenging elements for later. You can think about the music in any way that is useful to you, but if you have no idea where to start, here are some suggestions:
What do you hear?
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Text - Are there sung or spoken words? Can you understand the text? If not, why not? Is understanding the text important to you? If you can understand the text, can you relate to what it is saying? How different is it from the texts of your favorite songs?
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Meter - Can you feel a steady beat? Are beats organized into stronger and weaker pulses? Are they all the same length, or is there a pattern of shorter and longer beats? Does the pattern seem too subtle, too slow, too fast, or complex for you to follow? Is it possible that the music moves forward freely, without reference to a predictable beat? How is it different from the beat in familiar kinds of music?
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Rhythm - When do notes begin and end, (on a beat, in between beats, at irregular intervals)? How long do they last (one beat, many, an indefinite length)? Do they follow each other quickly or slowly? Can you hear specific rhythmic ideas or patterns? How complex are the rhythms? How repetitive are they? Do different parts (different instruments or voices) have the same rhythms or different ones?
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Mode - Do some of the sounds have pitch? If so, do they slide up and down, hitting all of the possible pitches, or does the music only use specific pitches in each range? Does it use a lot of different pitches that seem very close to each other, or only a few pitches that seem to be spaced far apart? Do some pitches seem more important than others? Do you think this music is using the same set of notes (the same scale, mode, or raga, for example) as familiar musics? If not, how would you describe the difference?
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Tuning - Do pitched notes seem "in tune" or "out of tune" by the standards of more familiar music? If the tuning is noticeably different, how would you describe the differences?
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Articulation and ornaments - How does each sound begin and end? (For example, do notes seem to be separate, or do they glide into each other? Are they cut short, or do they die away slowly?) Is each note a single pitch, or does it include little ornamental variations? What do the variations do to the pitch (does it slide, waver, bend)? Do they happen at the beginning or end of a note, or all through it? Do they connect one note to the next?
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Timbre - What adjectives would you use to describe the tone quality of the sounds you hear (for example, squeaky, nasal, warm, resonant, fiery)? What do the sounds do (crash, flow, clang, buzz, echo)? Are the instruments that make the sounds familiar or unfamiliar? Can you name them or picture them? Are the sounds they make like any instruments in your favorite musics? How is the tone quality different from what is familiar to you? If there are singers, is the quality of the voice very different from the voices in your favorite musics? If it is noticeably different, how would you describe the difference?
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Range - Does the sound of the music seem higher or lower than you are used to, or is it in a range that is comfortable and familiar? For each specific instrument (or voice) that you can distinguish, do you hear it playing only high notes? Only low notes? A wide range? Does it sound as if the instrument (or voice) is near its upper or lower limit, or in the middle of its range?
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Texture - Are there multiple lines or parts going on at the same time? Can you tell what instrument (or voice) is creating each part? What role does each part have in the music, and how do the parts fit together? Which parts catch your attention, and which seem to be supporting/accompanying parts? Does the piece include recordings of sounds such as traffic or ocean waves? Does it include recorded samples of music, and if so, what do these contribute to the piece (for example, in terms of rhythm, meter, harmony, timbre, and so on)?
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Harmony - If there are multiple pitched parts going on at the same time, do the pitches interact with each other to form harmonies? Are there two notes at a time? Three or more? By the standards of the musics you like, do they seem harmonious or discordant? Do you seem to hear changing chords that direct you to an expected ending chord (functional harmony)? Are any of the parts unchanging drones? How different is this from familiar musics?
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Small-scale form - Are there pauses, rests, ebbs and flows, or sudden bursts in the sound that seem to organize it into ideas, motives, themes or phrases? Are there any rhythms or melodic ideas that are repeated often? Are they exactly the same with each repetition, or do they change? If they change, how do they change? Do individual ideas overlap each other, flow seamlessly into each other, or happen one at a time with pauses between? How easy or difficult is it for you to follow the way the music is organized from moment to moment?
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Large-scale Form - As the piece develops, do you hear major changes that seem to divide the piece into sections? How many sections are there? Are they all different, or do some seem to be a return to an earlier section? What is it that marks the different sections: changes in rhythm, instruments, range? Is it easy for you to recognize sections (for example, verses and refrains of a song) or difficult?
