wk1

QUANTUM LISTENING – week one

*All references are from the book ‘Quantum Listening’ by Pauline Oliveros

  Hearing happens involuntarily in our daily lives. We are constantly hearing sounds of movement, technology and urban environments around us. However, listening is voluntary, where we pay attention to what is being heard, and we can then develop listening into interpreting meaning behind what we hear. With this, Pauline Oliveros explored Deep Listening, where she takes the idea of listening even further. It is stated in her book ‘Quantum Listening’ that deep listening “emphasises both detail and scope of, in Pauline’s words, ‘the sounds of daily life, nature or one’s thoughts’”. While hearing, we don’t think about the sounds around us as much, but since listening requires having full attention on these sounds, our ears can pick up on small details we wouldn’t notice while hearing and this would then shape sounds in a way that helps us create meaning behind them. Oliveros has been practicing meditation of “listening to everything all the time and reminding yourself when you are not listening” which has helped her continue to evolve through the way she composes.

  As a composer, Oliveros makes her music through Deep Listening after “understanding how important listening is to creative music making”. It is stated in her book ‘Quantum Listening’ that “the quality and flexibility of listening skills is the foundation of musicianship”, with the ability of understanding sounds. This is because being able to recognise the smallest change in, for example, pitch or tempo can be useful when composing since this can have an effect on the final outcome of a song. Therefore, with thorough understanding and analysis of different sounds, Deep Listening is beneficial when creating and even performing music. For example, Oliveros had a collaboration with other composers who were said to have “very individual style of composition”, and through improvising together and listening intensely to one another shows how effective the practice of Deep Listening can be in musicianship.