# Time spent listening to music



## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

I was looking through some of my classical collection recently, and I realized something: I've spent one heck of a lot of time listening to classical music!! In terms of just new music alone, I've listened to several hundred, maybe even a thousand+, hours! And that isn't even counting repeat listens of things, which I'm sure accounts for a solid 60% or more! 

It isn't difficult either. I mean, one "St. Matthew's Passion" and you're out 3 hours, one Wagner Ring cycle is what, 16 hours? Of course, I can think of far worse things I could be doing in my spare time .

So how many hours, days, months, or years of your life have you spent listening to music?


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

2 hrs per day = 700 hrs per yr = 35 000 hrs total during my life.
Not enough if you ask me. 

Malcolm Gladwell talked about the 10 000 hr rule, history shows you need to spend 10 000 hrs doing something to be accomplished at it. I'm pretty good at listening to music.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Certainly not enough.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I only spend a few hours a week exclusively listening attentively to music. Much of the time it's "background" music that I'm only half paying attention to. I know this is a questionable practice - a good definition of "art music" is that it's music that rewards an educated listener's attention - but I would defend it: I find that even when I'm not paying any conscious attention at all to the music, I'm still getting to know it better. (I used to listen to music in my sleep as well, just in case that would work, though I have no evidence that it did; but since I've gotten married my wife has nixed that because the music keeps her up.)


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

No clue...

Usually, I listen to two CDs per day, but in reality, that means 2-3 playings of each of the two daily CDs, and on weekends, I might even do 4 CDs each day.

I got my first transistor radio in about 1966, began collecting 45s in about 1967, bought my first LP in about 1969 and have been avidly listening to and collecting music ever since.

I couldn't begin to extrapolate.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Many tens of thousands of hours, but usually I'm doing something else when listening (often reading or writing). I have a hard time "just listening." (I also dislike being read to.)


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

There are different levels of listening. I use music at work to remind me there is still beauty in the world and sometimes to drown out my noisy coworkers. About 4 hours per day, 5 days a week. While I can enjoy and focus briefly on certain aspects of it, it is still often just ambiance. A couple of nights a week I will do the same while working on artwork. Say 28 hours per week total, not all of it classical.

Then I have deep listening session of strictly classical on the weekends, usually about 2 hours which should count double as I give it my undivided attention.

If I consider this an average, adding all that together and considering I started listening in earnest at about age 11 and taking my alarming age into account, that's 105 984 hours! 

That's probably not too accurate.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

A ton.  :tiphat:


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## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

I can't stand listening to music as ambiance; I have to be focused on it to the exclusion of everything else to enjoy it. With that said, I can still claim I'm past the 10,000 hr. mark.

I think a better metric for classical music lovers is when you can't listen just one more time to the warhorses. I think all I have to do is hear a few notes of any of them and the rest plays in my head, which makes listening to them redundant, unless I want to consciously study this or that section more closely. In which case, waiting to get to those is like waiting for my wife to finish shopping.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Copperears said:


> I can't stand listening to music as ambiance; I have to be focused on it to the exclusion of everything else to enjoy it. With that said, I can still claim I'm past the 10,000 hr. mark.
> 
> I think a better metric for classical music lovers is when you can't listen just one more time to the warhorses. I think all I have to do is hear a few notes of any of them and the rest plays in my head, which makes listening to them redundant, unless I want to consciously study this or that section more closely. In which case, waiting to get to those is like waiting for my wife to finish shopping.


Maybe I haven't listened to the warhorses enough, but even the works most familiar to me - probably Beethoven's 5th and Mozart's 40th symphonies - I always hear something in them if I'm paying attention.

Tonight I heard (as an encore) a performance of the prelude from Bach's first cello suite, a work I could almost hum from memory. But of course what struck me wasn't anything like, "I know this melody," but "Oh, he held that note just a touch longer and I liked the way that felt," and, "Oh, he played that note just a bit louder and I liked the way that felt." It was a satisfying performance! But it was different than I've heard it - it wasn't the same way Fournier or Starker or Suzuki plays it. The differences made it new, but even if it hadn't been new, likely enough I would have noticed something that I hadn't noticed previously. I've heard Fournier the most, and I'm practically guaranteed to find something new - new and good - next time I hear it again.

Literature, the field of art in which I have the most insight, first awakened me to this aspect of art. Take Orwell's _1984_: it's a very good book, extraordinarily insightful, but I've read it about ten times and the last five or so times I read it I've found more stuff in it, and none of it good. As I get to know it better now, I still find all of the excellence I found the first half dozen times I read it, but increasingly I become aware of flaws (like artificial dialogue, careless selection of detail, or heavy-handed characterization). By contrast, Fitzgerald's _The Great Gatsby_, I've read perhaps twenty times, I have almost memorized whole sections of it, but when I re-read it now I still find more excellence, excellence that I hadn't noticed before, and never yet anything I could really call a definite flaw. Sentence by sentence, word by word, it's a masterpiece of excellence of a greater depth than I'll probably ever plumb, even if I read it a hundred more times. Of course Orwell's genius was political and Fitzgerald's was literary - both of them far above anything I'll ever accomplish. But the point is that even after twenty readings, _Gatsby_ still has more to offer me, which makes it in that sense at least a greater artistic accomplishment than _1984_.

I don't have the kind of musical insight that could find compositional flaws in music the way I do in literature, so in the realm of music I'm like the kind of reader who'll never notice anything wooden in Orwell. That means I'll inevitably miss out on some of the finer points, unless someone shows them to me. But it also means that I'll probably never wear out the masterpieces. I might get fatigued of them - but that tells you about a failure in my psychology, not about a depth of insight I've attained.

Anyway, I even doubt I'll get fatigued of them. I actually don't understand how that can happen, unless you're a performer on tour so that you have to practice and play a particular work hundreds of times in a year. If you're just a listener...

I haven't heard, say, Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_ for a long time... at least a year. It may be two years since I've heard Rimsky-Korsakov's _Scheherazade_ or Strauss's _Four Last Songs_.

There are even warhorses I really love, like Brahms' first symphony or Schubert's D 960 sonata or Bartók's string quartets, that I haven't had time to hear in probably six months.

Meanwhile there are works I've never even heard (or seen) once... Prokofiev's _Cinderella_, Prokofiev's _The Love for Three Oranges_, Berlioz' _Les Troyens_...

And works I've heard only a few times... Berlioz' _Harold in Italy_... Rachmaninoff's Symphony #2... Haydn's cello concertos... Purcell's _The Fairy Queen_... Handel's _Solomon_... Prokofiev's _War and Peace_... Bach's _Orgelbuchlein_...

And that's just the "warhorses," the most famous works of the most famous composers. Get just a tiny bit off the beaten path, into some Paderewski or Schütz or Taneyev or Vasks or Kurtág or Henze or Locatelli or Mouton or Adams or Litolff or Glinka or Bridge or Hartmann or Victoria....

And that's without getting even a bit obscure - the likes of Veress or Kilar or Anerio or Schoendorff...

With all that out there, most of it better than I'll ever be able to appreciate anyway, plus the variations from performance to performance, I simply can't imagine myself in a position to get tired of any particular thing.


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## Dusan (Nov 13, 2013)

I listen 5h per day 1780h per year and about 30.000 till now xD


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## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

Be it musical score or literary work, true, there's always further interpretation.

The thing I like about coming back to a work after a long absence, particularly if it's at a different period of my life, is that I am now looking for something different from it. Whereas when I was young, I was listening for bold, moving melodies and dramatic harmonic effects, now that I'm old I am more intrigued by delicacy and poise and balance. So, whether it's choice of repertoire to listen to, or choice of recording of familiar repertoire, or approach to listening, yes, I find different things, too.

I guess it's more the phenomenon of "oh no, they're going to play Gershwin's 'American in Paris' AGAIN on the radio" that I react to. Too many radio stations, even the good ones, have a limited repertoire of what they cycle through and at least for me, it turns into tedium. Particularly if it's ambient rather than chosen listening (my wife likes to have it in the background).

The worst is when a radio station I tune to to wake up to as alarm in the morning starts the day off with what my unconscious disparagingly labels "oom-pah music," waltzes and such by minor German composers. I'm tired and groggy enough to feel like I'm waking up in the concentration camp and I wish they'd choose, I dunno, Xenakis instead so I don't feel like I'm having to wake up to pass through the gates of "arbeit macht frei."  Better Xenakis than the 15th cousin of Joseph Strauss!


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Copperears said:


> I can't stand listening to music as ambiance; I have to be focused on it to the exclusion of everything else to enjoy it. With that said, I can still claim I'm past the 10,000 hr. mark.
> 
> I think a better metric for classical music lovers is when you can't listen just one more time to the warhorses. I think all I have to do is hear a few notes of any of them and the rest plays in my head, which makes listening to them redundant, unless I want to consciously study this or that section more closely. In which case, waiting to get to those is like waiting for my wife to finish shopping.


This is the only way to listen to serious music,I don't include Strauss waltzes and such.


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## Guest (Nov 13, 2013)

Wait a minute! Do you mean to say that there are other things besides music to spend time on?

I did not know that.

I'm fascinated, but cautious.

(True story, if I may: When I was in therapy, my psychologist wanted to try out some biofeedback on me. Sounded like a hoot to me, too, so I said sure. He kept getting anomalous results, though. And it's a tribute to his massive intelligence that he actually figured it out, too, I think. "When you're all hooked up and such, are you playing music in your head?"

"Uh. Yes?"

"Can you stop doing that?"

"Sure. It's not going to interfere with my ability to keep doing that outside your office, though, is it?"

"Nope."

So I stopped playing music in my head (while hooked up) and he started getting the results that made sense.

It was a great moment for American psychotherapy.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

That's surprisingly interesting.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

some guy said:


> ...He kept getting anomalous results, though...


Maybe there were too many accidentals?


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## Quartetfore (May 19, 2010)

About an hour a day to some Chamber work (daily vitamim) I`m lucky in as much as I work out of my home a good part of the day, but I have a very good radio and I must listen to another 3-4 hours a day.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

The question for me, if answered, would be a bit scary... 

My rationale to excuse the listening time is that I have not lived with a television in my digs since I moved out of the family home in my late teens, so there is, for Americans, an average of near eight hours per day where the idiot box / boob tube is running, watched or not, which I spend doing something else


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## Jos (Oct 14, 2013)

2 or 3 records every day for serious listening, mostly in the evening. 
I agree with PetrB that not having a television in one's living/listeningroom is great. ( I do have a tv but it's in a dedicated room, my children seem to like it, much to my amazement)

Cheers,
Jos


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

In my short life, I've listened to at least 1000 hours of Russian music alone. But I've probably listened to thousands more of radio and other recordings. Nowadays, I only actually listen to an hour or 2 of classical a day, sometimes no time at all. Now as to _hearing _music (that I'm producing on my flute and hearing in rehearsals), that's much more than the music I listen to for fun nowadays.


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## Bas (Jul 24, 2012)

When working from home or in the weekends 4-8 records a day. About 2 of them - the evening ones, or the ones I listen to in the bus/train, can be considered as serious listening, while paying only attention to the music (reading a long lyrics, score) and the rest is background for work - sometimes becoming foreground, spontaneously, as I like to say: Music is not the background for my life, my life is a background for my music listening!


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

I couldn't measure it! I spend all my spare time listening to music, so that my headphone tips have to be rotated constantly so that they do not bend out of shape. Which they have regardless. 

A year ago, I had to stop listening to so much music because I was having auditory hallucinations of (classical) music. Bad, I know, but surprisingly nice to wake up and hear a Chopin Scherzo as if it were live.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

mstar said:


> A year ago, I had to stop listening to so much music because I was having auditory hallucinations of (classical) music. Bad, I know, but surprisingly nice to wake up and hear a Chopin Scherzo as if it were live.


No, not bad! Maybe occasionally annoying or distracting, but not bad! I love when my dreams have perfectly recalled musical hallucinations, it goes to show how deeply buried the stuff is within me.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

By now, perhaps one larger and one smaller work of classical music a week. I treat it like watching a film, meaning I give it undivided attention. Most of it is done in the living room, using my father's sound system, which he himself rarely uses. 

I do listen to background-music occasionally, but no longer 'serious' classical music. A tuneful little Viennese concerto from a second-rate composer or something similar shows up once in a while, but generally I restrain myself. Using music basically intended as background-music as background-music is, unsurprisingly, far more effective.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

I listen to classical radio almost all the time i spend on my pc...


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

About 5 hours every day.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

shangoyal said:


> About 5 hours every day.


I'm also in the 5 hours per day category, but I never listen to classical music as background.


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## Gilberto (Sep 12, 2013)

brotagonist said:


> I got my first transistor radio in about 1966, began collecting 45s in about 1967, bought my first LP in about 1969 and have been avidly listening to and collecting music ever since.
> 
> I couldn't begin to extrapolate.


Same here. And my 1973-85 was spending 40-60 hours a week as a manager/buyer in a record shop. I can't bring myself to multiply out that time period...so much of the music we HAD to play was horrible.


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## Conor71 (Feb 19, 2009)

Im in the 5 hour category too - if i have time on the weekend I will listen for up to 12 hours


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

I don't know how anyone can spend five hours a day listening to music. For me it's a luxury to spend a few hours on a day off but I haven't had time to listen for five hours a day since I was a teenager. I have a job, a wife, friends, and other responsibilities to attend to. If I had 35 hours a week extra a week to spend listening to music I think I would feel guilty being so self-indulgent. I guess you guys must be single or if not you will be soon! 

To answer the OP I probably average between one and two hours a day. Most of my listening has to take place at night once my wife goes to bed and with high quality headphones. She needs an average of about 8 to 9 hours sleep a day to function and I only need around 6 to 7 (and sometimes I'm willing to stay up really late and get by on 5). Occasionally on a weekend I can get a little extra listening time in but I usually have to play things in the more standard repertoire for my wife to enjoy it. 

Kevin


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## Conor71 (Feb 19, 2009)

^^I like to wake up early and usually clock up a few hours before work and listen on my lunch breaks and stuff as well. Luckily my Wife seems to understand my obsession with Music and hasnt told me off about it (yet) :lol:


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Kevin Pearson said:


> I don't know how anyone can spend five hours a day listening to music.
> Kevin


Being retired helps.


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

Bulldog said:


> Being retired helps.


Even if I was retired I wouldn't have time for five hours a day unless I was bedridden. Too much living to do!

Kevin


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## SarahO (Nov 16, 2013)

I listen in the evenings while reviewing/tweaking my investment portfolio. About 4 hours/day. I generally listen to Chopin nocturnes to unwind.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Kevin Pearson said:


> Even if I was retired I wouldn't have time for five hours a day unless I was bedridden. Too much living to do!
> 
> Kevin


People have different ideas of what living is, you know.


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