You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How To Listen to Music

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

A simple question with a complex answer - Peter and Adam respond to a question on the way they prefer to listen to music.Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipe: link.youllhearit.com/speakpipeSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Are you listening? Are you listening to me? Are you listening to me? What is it happening? Yeah. Are you listening to me? Peter, you jumped the whoosh. Sorry.

Hey, that's gravy. Is it another one of these intros? Yes. It's a 157. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast.

Daily music advice, inspiration, instruction. Bickering like an old Mary couple through the entire intro. I mean, we've been in here recording all day, so, you know, we don't know where this is going to go. Happy Monday. Happy Monday, everybody.

For this Monday's episode, we have a speak pipe from a long time podcast listener. Zoom from Vancouver. What's up, Zoom? Check it out. Hey, guys, it's Zoom from Vancouver. I'm wondering if you guys could talk a little bit about how you guys like to listen. This podcast is all about listening. So I'd like to hear about how you guys like to listen to music at home.

Do you like to listen to it in the background while you're cooking or cleaning or just focus listening with the lights out and no other distraction? I'm wondering if you could talk about your format preferences, vinyl, CD, streaming, downloads, and kind of what mix of formats you have and how you decide what format you're going to use for any particular album that you're getting. Maybe even talk a little bit about your home audio systems and how you put yours together, how did you pick out the right speakers, the right amps, et cetera. So thanks a lot.

Love to hear a little bit more about that. Peace. wondered how we listen to music and you've been intimidated. I'm going to fix that for you right now. I just love that, new one. Thanks, Harry. Thanks, Terry. Thank you, so much.

Harry Cottage, Jr. This is something that we talk a lot about listening. We do. We're pretty passionate about. We are very passionate about. And I guess we don't talk about the kind of intricacies of the systems with which we listen as much as sort of what it is we're listening to. So this would be more of the how do we listen?

How do we listen? And it's interesting. And it's kind of, I mean, this is a little bit of like, it's the plumbing, not the plumber, or it's the plumber, not the plumbing kind of thing. If you think about the plumber being the craftsman or the musician that's making it,

and then the plumbing maybe doesn't matter. But I think it does matter. And it is an interesting thing and happy to talk about it. The first part about it, the question I think mentioned, background versus active listening. And I would say that I'm very, I used to be like,

Like no background music. And there's certain situations where I don't like it. But I've kind of softened a little bit to that. But I wouldn't even consider that listening in a way. But I mean, I used to be like if there was really good music that I wanted to listen to and I was in a situation where it was placed into the background. First of all, I just generally wouldn't do that myself. I don't like put on music that I want to listen to and then like turn it down so much

that it's just like part of the wallpaper. But if I'm in a restaurant or I don't know anywhere, airport or something, something that I want to hear and I can't quite hear it. It's kind of frustrating to me. I'd almost want silence instead. So I never put on music in the background. Yeah, I don't have music on if I'm cleaning or doing anything like that. I'll do a podcast or something to zone out with.

But the only time I use... But a podcast, you're pretty active listening, right? Yeah, and you can kind of tune into it and come and go. And I don't want to do that with music I love. However, I will do some ambient music. In the pandemic, I've got really into ambient music. Literally music as wallpaper. Like music as sound design in your house.

But that's stuff that's pretty much like designed for that, produced for that, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Like music for airports, you know, Brian Eno and all that stuff. I love it. I mean, I legitimately love it. Sometimes I'll deep listen to it too. Like I'll tune into it big time.

But I've especially loved in my mornings if it's not silence, then I'll put on some ambient music. And then, of course, social situations with people. Yeah. Background music is crucial for a problem. party of any kind now that I will do too and that's kind of weird because for some reason that to me makes more sense like we'll put on you know we got certain playlists especially with like new or like meters or whatever they just kind of seems to work and and for me i hate to say this but like if you're having a party or some people over and you kind of want to not zone out but like

take your attention somewhere else i kind of like having that absolutely talking to people could be a conversation thing too like i love this song did you know that when cdie was 18 or whatever he wrote you know all that stuff right that can be great but yeah i'm generally zoom i'm generally a with everything a one thing at a time kind of kind of guy yeah yeah um okay so another part of the question was format like what do we like to listen to vinyl streaming whatever i'm a little bit like agnostic to that i mean i like the highest quality possible but i definitely uh valued convenience so like the streaming thing i mean i've like had at different times i mean i think we have it actually now hooked into our system, the Sonos, which I'll talk a little bit about

because I'm a big, I was a big early adopter on the Sonos system and I really like it, even though there's a little bit of a ceiling to the quality level you can get. And so like really big audio files would never use that system because it's just, it's very good, I think, and it's good enough. I hate to say good enough for me. But it, the convenience level of it kind of trumps whatever sonic limitations are with that. But like with the streaming, I mean, we've got like the higher quality Spotify and I mean can I really tell the difference between that I've had title before I've got to dialed in where it sounds really good but I can't really tell I mean but I've never well no one time I remember A being on a turntable versus on our sonos kind of blue I was like okay I know this record really good ever heard of it and I mean it's not a better on the vinyl that'd be something you might be interested in exactly it's not a better on the vinyl but you know what I might not have had everything dialed in exactly the same so I don't know well no I love the sound to vinyl. I use all the formats. Just with the audio file, the quality thing, for me, that's always been something to kind of stay away from, to be honest, because you can go down a rabbit hole.

Oh, yeah. And then, I don't have time for that. I love it. I'd love to go down that rabbit hole. If I had a rich uncle, I'd do that. I'd rather just listen to the music. If I'd rather just listen to the music. Like, if I get into, and sometimes I'll go through phases where I'm like, I should really up my speakers or my. No, but think about this. It's all about listening to music, but think about if you were just like, you had a sugar daddy, sugar mama. Yeah, of course. Like you got up in the morning. Oh, you throw money at anything. And you're like, at one o'clock, I'm going to listen to Herbie Hancock, Imprian Isles.

But between now and one, I'm going to construct the ultimate listening battle station, speakers, turntable, and amp. That would be fun. But who's got time for that? No one's got time or money for that. I mean, I'm sure there's people listening now that really get into it. But that's the thing is like... That's a hobby. It's a great hobby to have, but it's never been in something that I've been super stoked on doing.

For me, I get myself to... Like, I have one of those... very steady as a rock Sony head units that sound decent. What's the head unit? Receiver? A receiver. Like the basic bob receiver. It's got plenty of power for what I need it for. I've got a pair of

ELAC speakers which are really like good medium quality speakers. You know what I mean? They're small but they're really sound I think very neutral and good and I'm sure audio falls out there like rolling their eyes big time. But I love, in that I have of course like a streaming

setup and then I have a turntable And I love a CD, man. I've been getting more and more into CDs. You can find CDs relatively cheaply now. Yeah. And they sound terrific. They do. They sound great, man.

I was listening to a CD this morning. So Miles Davis Bitches Brew on CD, which sounded friggin sweet. Yeah, yeah. So I have a Sonos, you know, multi-room system. I actually had the original Sonos when it first came out. I mean, like, I flex. Well, you know what it was? Because when we moved, you know, after we went through the whole Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans,

thing that was 2005 yeah 2005 i believe is when sonos that was like first started or first was kind of available but they were like unknown but i remember reading this article about them in in new york times because i had all these like albums and cd collection everything got flooded out and i was like oh man what am i was like down my house trying to clean off CDs and wipe them and like i couldn't get them to play they were contaminated and all this and like streaming hadn't really started yet yeah but what did have what did you could download like on iTunes or whatever albums you know I hadn't done much of that, but you could also get them semi-legally. But my thing was like, you know what?

I lost all these CDs. I'm going to download some stuff with a clean conscious because, you know, I'm going to get the, because a lot of those I actually had digital versions of because I was like ripping my own CDs, which you were allowed to do. Yeah. And like, Sonos was just popping up a little bit. And I was like, wow, this could be cool because now I can just go to all, I'll switch over, kind of force to switch over to all digital tracks.

But this was, like I say, before streaming, so you had to have like pretty big hard drive and make decisions about how big the, the, the, the, the, the, the, files were but Sony Sonos had this kind of elegant system at the time with the original controller it was pre-iPhone so there was no app you had this control I still got it the very that would be great because the worst part about Sonos now is the little app I know yeah it was kind of cool actually so anyway I've got like an updated Sonos

amp kind of their one of their better ones and I've got it running into a pair of B&W speakers that I've had for probably 12 11 years that I really like they're on the lower end for BNW. BNW is a British company that makes some incredible speakers. I mean, you can spend 20 grand for a pair of them. Yeah. These were not that. But I kind of made the decision.

I was like, well, I could go for maybe some really good speakers of a mid-range or lower-end speaker company or the kind of bottom of the barrel, which B&W doesn't really make bottom of the barrel. But they were like just within what I could afford. So they were going in a relatively small room too and that was not totally tweaked for audio. So I was also like people that go and get all. this incredible audio file gear and then don't tweak their room as we know i mean we tune this room for

speech you know yeah and don't do the things that you have to do to tweak a room it's kind of ridiculous anyway but i've really liked those speakers i mean i they're very flat i mean they're very like accurate i mean you can't blast them like crazy without getting some funny nuances but i mean plenty loud enough for that living room and we've got a nice little listening i mean my as my kids were growing up like we never had a tv in the living room we had the sono system yeah people come in there pick up the control and listen to music and read or just listen, you know, and it's, it's been a great listening experience. It's probably like a B-plus for an audiophile's guide. You know what's great for deep listening, though, is the CD or vinyl? Like, to pick up a CD cover and take out the

case and read about the record or have a, of course, have the vinyl, the big artwork right there and read the liner notes as you're listening and really absorb the album in full with the art and everything, It's such a great experience. I think it trumps streaming even the convenience of it. You know, it's not great for deep listening. Listening on YouTube. Horrible.

Because it's going to like suggest something or you're going to look at the side and be like, oh. Oh my God. Listening on Facebook. Kim Kardashian just got married to Kanye again. But I would say, too, you know what I had going for a while?

And I don't know why we stopped doing this. I think we still have the system. So once we did get a television deliver, which is like just a couple years ago, I was like, okay, because I got it, we have a turntable in there too, but we don't have a lot of.

I don't have a lot of records. I just couldn't bring myself to re-I had such a great collection. And I kind of got heartbroken. And it took me years to even come back to collecting a little bit. I lost my entire collection. You and I, we're going to go down to dead wax records on Cherokee Street. And you're going to flip out a little bit. Okay.

You know, you take me on a shopping spree? I bought thrust down there. Oh, man. I know. What about secrets? Ever heard of that record? If I could find secrets on vinyl. My man.

Oh, my God. So, no, but I had a thing where as you were streaming something on the TV, you could see the album cover would come up. Cool. Yeah, I had it kind of through the Roku. So I'm going to get that real.

I mean it was kind of fine. It's not like holding it, but you could just see the artwork. You couldn't see the liner notes. That's fine. But you'd see the artwork as it was playing in our little listening room there. Cool.

Well, Zoom, thanks for the question. Great question. Yeah. That'll do it for us today, Peter. Have a happy Monday, everybody. We'll see you on Wednesday. Until next. Oh, sorry.

I wasn't listening. Not listening. Until next time. You'll hear it.