Listen: carefully? →

Jeph Jacques on listening to music casually versus concertedly:

Music affects us on three levels- conscious, subconscious, and emotional. You don’t necessarily have to be consciously concentrating on a song to appreciate it or learn from it or have it affect you. […] A good song should appeal no matter HOW casually you’re listening to it- the details are the icing on the cake, the stuff that separates a GOOD song from a GREAT one. And those details frequently take time to tease out. Even music that on the surface seems to require close scrutiny to appreciate should appeal on a base level.

Click the link at the top of the post to read the whole essay.