Talking about listening

Maybe I’ve talked too much.

My last newsletter post, a poem called Acoustic Isolation, was my 75th. I took that as occasion for reflection. I started here in September of 2023 with the goal of sharing my meager insights and experiences about music and the creative process. Some posts deal with a creative block. Others follow from one observation or another that emerged while producing, recording, or collaborating with musicians in my studio in Virginia. I released an album in March called Exist Everywhere and have written some posts about it. Along the way, I’ve also shared a handful of videos of me playing music or messing with sound. My hope in all of this was that I might help you in your creative practice (whatever it may be) by sharing about mine.

Sharing online is not natural for me. Maybe I’m too old. Certainly I’m too introverted. I started on Substack after years (a decade?) of basically feeling guilty about not showing up to IG or FB or YouTube or TikTok or wherever. The guilt was professional. Because after all, I’m a musician and as a music manager friend once put it - “if a musician is not on social media, they have no career.” On a personal level what I felt (and continue to feel) about most social media is an acute sense of fatigue, tension in my neck, a sinking in my chest.

With the exception of YouTube and certain dimensions of Substack, when I tune into social media for more than like 3 minutes I seem to feel worse than I did when I showed up. So I tend to not show up and accept the consequences on the career front. But then this means I don’t really share my work in the form that at least IG or TikTok lend themselves to (i.e. short-form video), and thus here in this newsletter I’ve done more talking (writing) than just delivering the pure goods (sound).

The elephant in the room is my general wariness about being on camera. Not my happy place. So opting out of the life of Reels or TikToks is made easier. Nonetheless, several subscribers have requested that I share drum videos and some of you have also expressed appreciation for the few synth or sound design videos I’ve posted here over the past few years. Your feedback has been helpful because honestly my core belief is “who really wants to watch some dude fiddling with knobs on a synth or playing a drum solo?” I say this not from a place of “nobody cares about my music” so much as a general sense that very few people, other than drummers or sound nerds like me, actually care. And after 35 years of drumming, I’m not even sure I care about drum solos!

I’ve avoided making this newsletter a place where I dig into the technical sides of music since I talk about that stuff plenty with students, fellow studio geeks, and other musicians. But as I reflect on my newsletter I realize that I’ve spent more time talking about the creative process than I have about listening. And I want to talk about listening. Or I want to talk less to allow for a listening experience.

There are a bunch of writers on Substack who write about the Slow Music Movement and I think that this gets it right in the sense that by bringing more intention to the act of listening, we might reclaim our attention spans as listeners to find a way through the noise. We will also enjoy music more by actively listening to it at least some of the time. I want to contribute to that conversation but it poses a fundamental challenge - how do I encourage or cultivate listening by only talking about it?

I don’t know. But I think I can get closer to it if I tweak the format of this newsletter a little bit. So here are a few things to expect moving forward…

• more video, specifically short videos of my practices on whatever instrument (fumbles & all). And video or at least voiceover of me talking through what I’m hearing and/or responding to as I listen to music, mix, or create with sound.

• a slight deceleration in post frequency while I figure out how to work with video (I’m a dummy with video, y’all). Expect 2-3 posts per month for the next little while instead of the weekly average that got us here. Posts will still arrive sometime in the latter part of the week or over the weekend.

• a name change of this newsletter for a little more separation of it from my studio work. I will also reorganize the Sections on my Substack site to better account for the updated happenings and in case you prefer to subscribe to only one Section and not another.

The only way I can see to move through the noise and to find the music is to slow down the listening process, to become more conscious with it. As a music listener, I’m never looking for the 20 thousand hours of music I could listen to but instead the 5 minutes (or 1 minute or an hour) of music that I want to listen to, the sound that I can show up to with presence and awareness. We can quiet the noise by slowing down to listen. And by listening, we learn, grow, appreciate, enjoy.

Thank you for your support of this newsletter. I realize that email clutter is real and appreciate you welcoming this one into your inbox. Please let me know if there is anything you’d like to see or hear more of as I start into this next chapter. I love hearing from subscribers about what sparks, connects, or provides value in your listening practice. Thanks again for tuning in.