# The Ear/Brain Connection



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

If your ear/brain connection is good enough, you can listen to anything "tonally." When I listen to Miles Davis' The Cellar Door Sessions, I hear like this, and I think all the musicians are, too.

Allen Shawn states in his book that Schoenberg heard everything tonally. 

That says to me that the ear/brain has a natural tendency to hear interval relations in terms of their relation to a fundamental tone (not "root"), so your acuity (or lack) at perceiving more abstruse harmonic meanings (meanings which shift constantly) is similar to the ability of "experts" who have learned (and have inherent propensities) to perceive other types of perceptual meanings, like seeing visual meaning in abstract art, the ability to draw, to dance, throw a football, a master chef's sense of smell/taste, and other areas.

What I'm saying is that you either hear it, or you don't. The people who can hear meaning in abstruse music are the ones who like it, and have a natural visceral propensity; the ones who say that they "reject" it are more often than not unable to hear it, based mainly on an inherently lower visceral propensity. These people are "crippled" from the start.

If a person has demonstrated that they do have a good ear/brain connection (by playing an instrument, singing, etc) and they still can't penetrate more abstruse music, then this is more likely to be from willful choice, due to unfamiliarity or refusal to explore, not an inherent inability. This type of "refusal" is much more credible than the run-of-the mill criticisms of those listeners who are inherently unable to hear and understand, from both a vicseral and cognitive standpoint.

What I'm saying is that "your ear" (visceral) is the stimulus that "draws you in" to more difficult music. This is a very natural ability, and some folks have it, while others don't. This translates (after the fact) into "preference." 

This preference is not "debatable" on a credible level by those who are unable to hear it on a visceral level, because this boils down to inherent ability, not will. It's like some people don't enjoy dancing because they can't do it well (comparatively).

So any data results derived from an assessment of what "most classical fans want" will ultimately be a picture of the listener's inherent visceral abilities, and not "the music" itself.


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