3.23.2005
Listening
I just got some rechargeable batteries and have been listening to a walkman every night on walks with the dog. It would be nice to have an iPod in the same way that it would be nice to have a Mini Cooper (ain't gonna happen). I love singing along with music when I'm alone or anonymous, and I can be found walking through my neighborhood singing to myself. I have barely sung at all since I moved home from Oregon, and my ear-voice coordination was getting pretty terrible; now, 2 weeks after my daily dose of music went way up, I'm thrilled to hear it coming back together again.
I have had slightly patchy hearing all my life (probably from having hippie parents. As an infant, I participated in the Colorado live music scene from a corduroy baby-cocoon). These days, I have to watch tv 20% louder than I would like to avoid missing a lot of dialog, and I don't do much better hearing speech in person.
On the other hand, I have good pitch, and my hearing is better-than-normal in some ways. My college roommate was impressed by my feats of aural identification - "sounds like soap," I mumbled in my sleep, half-awoken by a clattering crash one morning - and turned it into a stupid human trick for the amusement of our neighbors.
I'm taking a psych class right now and drinking in neurobiology and the mapping of perception in the brain. I have such a defined problem getting dynamics right whenever I take music lessons, I am suddenly wondering if my ear/mind/brain, which developed around incomplete hearing, has an incomplete ability to hear dynamics. It's a much friendlier theory than the one that says I'm too dumb or lazy to get it right.
I have had slightly patchy hearing all my life (probably from having hippie parents. As an infant, I participated in the Colorado live music scene from a corduroy baby-cocoon). These days, I have to watch tv 20% louder than I would like to avoid missing a lot of dialog, and I don't do much better hearing speech in person.
On the other hand, I have good pitch, and my hearing is better-than-normal in some ways. My college roommate was impressed by my feats of aural identification - "sounds like soap," I mumbled in my sleep, half-awoken by a clattering crash one morning - and turned it into a stupid human trick for the amusement of our neighbors.
I'm taking a psych class right now and drinking in neurobiology and the mapping of perception in the brain. I have such a defined problem getting dynamics right whenever I take music lessons, I am suddenly wondering if my ear/mind/brain, which developed around incomplete hearing, has an incomplete ability to hear dynamics. It's a much friendlier theory than the one that says I'm too dumb or lazy to get it right.
