Active Listening Exercises

Here are some fun listening exercises for you to try as you start writing music. The first step is learning to listen.I found these in a book called "Hearing and Writing Music" by Ron Gorow. Most of it was a little advanced for our class, but it had some awesome stuff about harmonics and the golden ratio, or the golden mean, and the scale of harmonic proportion that is found in nature and the intuitive designs of humankind.

EXERCISE 1:

1. Find a spot where you can quietly sit or lie down. Relax. Listen to your breathing for a few minutes. Let any inner conversations play out; let that inner commentator settle down.
2. Now you've created space to allow all exterior sounds to enter your awareness. Listen to the sounds around you--near, far, high, low, intermittent, sustained. Notice that each sound occupies a certain portion of the total sound spectrum.
3. Concentrate on one sound for as long as you can.
4. Switch to another sound and focus for as long as you can.
5. Switch back to the first sound.

EXERCISE 2:
1.Listen to a sound from nature and relate it to music. Birds are especially musical, usually maintaining the pitch as they repeat a phrase.
2. What register does the sound occupy? (high, low, middle)
3. What instruments are suggested?
4. How would you orchestrate it?
5. Visualize the notation you would use to describe the sound.

EXERCISE 3:
1. Notice the acoustical properties of objects of various materials--woods, glass, plastics, metals--and how the shape, size and density cause differences in sound as the objects resonate. Who among us hasn't banged on everything in the kitchen?
2. Build an instrument with found objects. Choose the material for its acoustic properties. It may be as simple as suspending an object and finding the optimum striker to produce a resonant sound.
3. How can you alter the object to change the pitch, the timbre, the duration?