Do Your Ears Deserve an Adventure?
Have you ever thought that your favourite playlist maybe creating an echo-chamber around your listening skills?
Don’t get me wrong, we all have our favourites. But how many times have you disliked something (or someone) on your first encounter only to find a new favourite? It’s human nature to feel confronted by contemporary concepts, but it is also in our nature to push past the confrontation and embrace new things.
It’s called growth (and it’s good for our brain health too).
The human brain is a neural network of millions of pathways forged by accumulated knowledge. Knowledge gained through curiosity, study and experience. Our ability to develop this neural network is called neural plasticity. Neural plasticity being “the brain’s capacity to reorganise itself by forming new neural connections ... supporting learning, memory, and recovery from injury or disease” (Gazerani, Parisa. "The neuroplastic brain: current breakthroughs and emerging frontiers." Brain Research (2025): 149643.)
When we embrace new ideas, new tastes, new personalities and new sounds, our neural network becomes more complex and our lives become enriched. We grow into more tolerant, more worldly human beings. Quite frankly, embracing and exploring new experiences are good for our brain.
When it comes to music however, there seems to be a particular rigidness regarding neural growth. How often have you listened to something new and had to turn it off within a few seconds? Pushing through the barriers of new sounds seems to be more confronting that a plate of deep fried spiders.
How do we break through and take our ears on a new adventure?
Simple: curiosity, study and experience.
Become curious
Whether you pull the music apart using Schenkerian analysis, focus on the inner layers, map out the form, list the instrumentation sounds or read the lyrics (if there are any), becoming curious about why you are reacting so violently to these new sounds can teach you a great deal about yourself. If you’re going to dislike something (and that’s ok), at least know why!
Do some study
When we learn about the composer and their life story, their message and their purpose, it can transform our relationship with their music. It helps us to make sense of what we are listening to and alters the way we listen to it. With some study, we’ll become better prepared for the sounds presented to us and as a result, we'll develop our tolerance because we know more about the creative mind behind them.
Experience the music
If you have the capacity to do so, play the music on your instrument. Put yourself (or the ensemble you play in) through the rehearsal process of the work, so that day by day, the new sounds reveal their hidden messages, and their (at first) hidden beauty. The repetitive nature of practise and ongoing rehearsal allows the music itself to develop our neural plasticity, forging appreciation for different, sometimes more complex sounding music.
We are currently living in a world that is infatuated by social media engines fuelled by “likes”. To challenge the popularity echo-chambers created by such engines, it is imperative that human beings keep challenging their first reactions. Our neural network is our own, it is what gives us individuality, personality and our all-important sense of self. It drives our creative expressions and maintains healthy neural plasticity. Through this we develop our own personal, individual tolerance for the different, the unusual and the alternative. In turn we become a more tolerant society, and replace judgement with appreciation and respect.
So take your ears on an adventure. You might just surprise yourself.
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Read more about challenging your listening:
https://www.jodieblackshaw.com/blog/whose-ears-are-you-listening-with
