# Do you over-think music?



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Sometimes I feel I over-think any and all issues surrounding music, any genre. Sometimes the answer is simple, yet I look too far into it.

I'm getting better about it, anyone else in a similar position?

:tiphat:


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## Joe B (Aug 10, 2017)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Sometimes I feel I over-think any and all issues surrounding music, any genre. Sometimes the answer is simple, yet I look too far into it.
> 
> I'm getting better about it, anyone else in a similar position?
> 
> :tiphat:


If your over thinking is getting in the way of your enjoyment.........................CUT IT OUT! Music is to feed the soul first; challenging the brain at best should be a distant second place.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I know. Easier said than done, though!


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## Annied (Apr 27, 2017)

Not me. Either it moves me or it doesn't. I'm a simple soul.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Annied said:


> Not me. Either it moves me or it doesn't. I'm a simple soul.


:tiphat:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Annied said:


> Not me. Either it moves me or it doesn't. I'm a simple soul.


Ya, I just need to settle on my musical identity and life choices right now. I think at heart I'm a true genuine hippie with a wide taste in music.


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## Dumbo (Sep 3, 2017)

I think the more you understand music, the greater your capacity to appreciate it. Even if it takes years for it to really sink in.

I didn't grow up with classical music. I had to learn about the large structure forms of classical music before I could really appreciate it. I had a girlfriend, when I was young, who came from a family of musicians. They played Beethoven trios in their living room to entertain themselves. When she was a kid, she went to summer classical music camp, where she got to conduct Beethoven's Fifth.

I commented to her one time that I had to listen to a Mozart symphony several times before I really got it. She knew I was talented and intelligent, but she swung around on the car seat on her knees and said, "What??" That was incomprehensible to her. For her, it was like a first language. She heard Mozart, she felt like she understood it.

I've wondered many times since then whether my need to analyze music was an advantage or a disadvantage, and I have swung both ways on it. If you can just absorb the Jupiter finale the first time you hear it, I admire you, but damn, I have spent hours and hours and hours over the many years (I'm 60 now) listening to that, trying to grasp it.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Joe B said:


> If your over thinking is getting in the way of your enjoyment.........................CUT IT OUT! Music is to feed the soul first; challenging the brain at best should be a distant second place.


For me challenging the brain is #1. Not cuz I really want to appear intellectual or anything, but I just find a lot of music boring over time, no matter how "perfect" the music may be. Most pre-20th century music has gotten dull and conventional for me. But some simple stuff can still be very stirring. I was listening to Telemann's Paris Quartet 12 today, and find it mesmerizing for some reason.


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

Phil loves classical said:


> Most pre-20th century music has gotten dull and conventional for me.


You couldn't possibly say that most music written before the year 1900 is dull and conventional compared to what has come after it, could you though? :lol:


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

To answer the OP: I sometimes fear that I _over-feel_ music, to the point of it being harmful, but then at least I hurt myself in an enjoyable and refined manner.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Improbus said:


> To answer the OP: I sometimes fear that I _over-feel_ music, to the point of it being harmful, but then at least I hurt myself in an enjoyable and refined manner.


I could not agree more, now that's called emotion. :tiphat:


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Improbus said:


> You couldn't possibly say that most music written before the year 1900 is dull and conventional compared to what has come after it, could you though? :lol:


Sure I can, but I do feel contemporary music has become dull and conventional as well. :devil:


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

Phil loves classical said:


> Sure I can, but I do feel contemporary music has become dull and conventional as well. :devil:


I tend to get more obsessed the more I listen to something I really like. Speaking of that: have you gotten into Brahms yet? There you have something that will inspire you forever, believe me!


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Improbus said:


> I tend to get more obsessed the more I listen to something I really like. Speaking of that: have you gotten into Brahms yet? There you have something that will inspire you forever, believe me!


His Clarinet Quintet is great. Other than that, I like his first symphony and the first movement of #4. I'm more inspired by Bartok and Prokofiev, though.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Phil loves classical said:


> His Clarinet Quintet is great. Other than that, I like his first symphony and the first movement of #4. I'm more inspired by Bartok and Prokofiev, though.


Brahms, Bartok, and Prokofiev: a fine foundation upon which to build decades of enjoyment!


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

Phil loves classical said:


> His Clarinet Quintet is great. Other than that, I like his first symphony and the first movement of #4. I'm more inspired by Bartok and Prokofiev, though.


Well, so are his string quintets and his clarinet trio (period instrument performance). While you're at it you could check out this orchestral arrangement of his second string sextet. :tiphat:


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Thinking is only for after you've heard a particular piece or performance and begun to make a personal judgment about it.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

I have been accused of over thinking many times. Over thinking music, art, literature, movies, over thinking a relationship, a conversation, just everything. It happens automatically. It is how I respond to the world.

Some folks try to just be in the moment, be a responder to the music, quiet the "talking monkey" that jabbers in the brain. Not me. I am very Western in that respect, I am always curios as to what, why, how. Figuring things out is, for me, a kind of transcendence. Knowing a bit about what just happened, and what it means, and suddenly realizing something about what the composer did - that is a powerful moment of transcendence, for me as powerful as being overwhelmed by the volume of the lower brass.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

My overthinking really comes into play when I'm choosing what I like to listen to. I know I want it to be high art (by my subjective evaluation of what that is), but sometimes I'm like no, I want to fit into the culture of the gentleman/intellectual and only listen to classical.

Taste in art also plays a part into the culture you fit into and your identity. 

I think I fall into the hippie culture, cuz I'm genuinely about peace and love and compassion and empathy, and many of my friends are hippie types too.


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

JeffD said:


> I have been accused of over thinking many times.


I can't recall that anyone has ever accused me of over thinking. :lol:


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Captainnumber36 said:


> My overthinking really comes into play when I'm choosing what I like to listen to. I know I want it to be high art (by my subjective evaluation of what that is), but sometimes I'm like no, I want to fit into the culture of the gentleman/intellectual and only listen to classical.
> 
> Taste in art also plays a part into the culture you fit into and your identity.
> 
> I think I fall into the hippie culture, cuz I'm genuinely about peace and love and compassion and empathy, and many of my friends are hippie types too.


And it's nice that lots of hippies are into a wide variety of music as well.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Improbus said:


> To answer the OP: I sometimes fear that I _over-feel_ music, to the point of it being harmful, but then at least I hurt myself in an enjoyable and refined manner.


Ok then. Bring it on! Take me to the concert hall and hurt me over and over! :lol:


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## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

No. I over-think most everything in my life, so I like to not over-think music.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I think I fall into the hippie culture, cuz I'm genuinely about peace and love and compassion and empathy, and many of my friends are hippie types too.


I am distinctly outside the hippie culture. I grew up kind of just after the real hippies. While they were seeking a life of more abandon, I was the responsibility being abandoned. While they were experimenting with different ways of loving and making family/community, raising me was too square. Man. I was craving consistency and shelter from the storm.

While everyone was like "love the one your with", I was more "hey wait, I got a new complaint"

So maybe this accounts for the differences in how I enjoy music. I abhor abandoning my intellect to emotions, (abandoning ourselves to the feeling of the coolness and comfort of the mud as it encapsulates us) and prize my ability to think through things.

I don't mean anything by this, just pointing to a difference that may explain things.

There I go, over thinking things again. :lol:


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Sonata said:


> No. I over-think most everything in my life, so I like to not over-think music.


I don't want to recommend reefer, but it does tend to stall the thinking process. Maybe a couple of drinks would do?


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

What exactly is 'over-thinking' in relation to listening to music? I listen, I feel some things and I think about the music all at the same time. Isn't this how it always goes?


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

There is much musical machinery being utilized, in even the simplest of pieces. The music does what it does to us for very complicated reasons that involve very deliberate applications of physics, audiology, mathematics, psychology, and cultural evolution. Lots of stuff to appreciate and wonder at and figure out.

To put all of that aside and just "groove" on the emotions, would be like a fifth grade book report on James Joyce's Ulysses. "It was a big book and it made me sad." I mean, you are welcome to approach it that way, but my goodness the richness you are missing.


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## Minori Aiko (Sep 2, 2017)

I used to totally over-think music and listen to it purely for the technicality. (I used to listen to technical death metal when I was a bit younger because I thought it was awesome to be purely technical and I was of course an angsty teen) Emotion was really lacking but that changed over time. I guess that's why now, my favorite composers are from the romantic era because of how dramatic and over emotional they are. As well as my dislike (I of course have appreciation and admiration but rather not listen to) for Bach. It is so technical and really phenomenal in the writing aspect and can be very beautiful but I fell it lacks emotional depth. Something I now crave for within music.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

The emotional depth of Bach's St. John Passion BWV 245 is almost overwhelming.


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## Minori Aiko (Sep 2, 2017)

JeffD said:


> The emotional depth of Bach's St. John Passion BWV 245 is almost overwhelming.


Of course there are certain fantastic pieces by Bach with great emotional depth but I'm just speaking in general and in my own opinion. Part of it is probably due to the fact that I am still very young. For me, there's something in Chopin's music that I can't find anywhere else. Like some kind of connection that I don't get most elsewhere.

My piano teacher's favorite is Bach and he always has me working on at least some piece by Bach in the midst of whatever else I'm working on or doing. This has gave me a great appreciation for Bach and in no way am I saying Bach is anything besides fantastic, but something in his music just doesn't do it for me. (Generally speaking, of course there are exceptions etc. such as that you listed)

In the end, it is subjective though. Someone can hate Bach and that's their own valid opinion. Although you may or may not talk to that person anymore after you find that out :lol:


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Minori Aiko said:


> In the end, it is subjective though. Someone can hate Bach and that's their own valid opinion. Although you may or may not talk to that person anymore after you find that out :lol:


It is subjective. And sometimes (often) it is hard to pin down why one composer or work moves you and another doesn't quite.


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## Dumbo (Sep 3, 2017)

Improbus said:


> To answer the OP: I sometimes fear that I _over-feel_ music, to the point of it being harmful, but then at least I hurt myself in an enjoyable and refined manner.


Same. I had to stop listening to Das Lied years ago, I became so obsessed with it. I felt like it was messing up my head. I still listen to it sometimes when I come across it.

More than just over-feeling... Sometimes things like certain musical pieces become like that abyss Nietzche talked about. "If you stare too long into the abyss, it will stare back." I feel like if I just listen toit a LITTLE more closely, just one more time, that it, whatever "it" is, will become all clear. Mahler's good for evoking that fee!ing.


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## Dumbo (Sep 3, 2017)

Most classical isn't good for weed listening. The larger structures, like in Beethoven, get lost in all the immediacy of the sound.

I recommend Zappa's Uncle Meat as my ultimate best weed album. It's not soothing and hypnotic like Pink F!oyd. It's a sonic experience,best heard "in the moment."

That would be a good subject for a thread: Best records specifically for stoned listening.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Joe B said:


> If your over thinking is getting in the way of your enjoyment.........................CUT IT OUT! Music is to feed the soul first; challenging the brain at best should be a distant second place.





Captainnumber36 said:


> I know. Easier said than done, though!


This is a sort of anti-intellectualism which I think is unjustifiable and unbalanced. Of course music is to feed the soul, and of course it challenges the brain. But why on earth should the latter be in second place?

I like my soul and I like my brain, I like them equally.

Let me give you an example. Today I was listening to Krystian Zimerman play Schubert's D960. Very enjoyable -- it's soul food. He does it in a most unusual way and I wonder why -- it's brain food.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I didn't know you could over-think classical music. Personally, the fun of this genre is discovering its intricacies. Today I had the development section of Bruckner's 4th symphony running through my head, and instead of being annoyed, I just concentrated on how each motif connected to the next. That's the kind of thing I miss when I just let the music fly by.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Dumbo said:


> That would be a good subject for a thread: Best records specifically for stoned listening.


There are several websites that post what they consider the best music for stoned listening. I haven't found any that listed music I like.


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## Honegger (Sep 8, 2017)

I tend to under-think music!


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