Two-Week Program: Fundamentals of Listening

This two-week program is designed to prepare newcomers to classical music for a trip to the concert hall to see a full concert.
It is important to listen to the podcasts required before doing the tasks below, as they will serve as guides for the techniques to be used.
After two weeks, you will feel confident and comfortable in your listening ability, and ready to conquer your first concert!
If you want to track your progress by hand, click here for a printable/downloadable schedule.

Week One: Building Blocks
 
Day 1: 5-10 minutes.
 
Technique: Attentive Listening
Podcasts required: Episode #1
 
Task: Find a piece of music on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, etc. and listen attentively. Work in manageable chunks, pausing or going back as often as you need. Listening attentively is mentally tiring, especially at first, and it is easy to get distracted. The important thing is to engage the attention as fully as possible, and attempt to hear as many details of the music you are listening to. If you need suggestions for possible pieces to listen to, search for something by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, or Bach. Really anything will do!
 

Day 2: 5-10 minutes.
 
Technique: Attentive Listening
Podcasts required: Episode #1
 
Task: Take the same piece you listened to yesterday, and listen attentively again. Try pausing a little less, and allowing new details that you may have missed to catch your attention. Start trying to notice what your attention gravitates towards (is it quality of sound, specific instruments, motion, repetition, something else?) and take note of that.


Day 3: 10 minutes.
 
Technique: Attentive Listening
Podcasts required: Episode #1
 
Task: Find a new piece to listen to, preferably by the same composer that you listened to the past two days. Recall what your attention seemed to gravitate towards when you listen, and try to direct it lightly towards something else – the quality of the sound, the changing motion of the music, the nature of any repetitions, whatever else you please. Again, pause or go back as much as needed.

 
Day 4: 5-10 minutes.
 
Techniques: Attentive Listening, Noting Ideas
Podcasts required: Episode #1, #2
 
Task: After listening to Podcast 2, try starting to hear where musical ideas start and end. If you need a suggestion for a piece, try Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1st Movement. Pause and go back on the recording as much as you need, and listen to the same portion of music as much as it takes to feel comfortable that you can hear ideas’ starting and ending points. Once you have done that, listen to the entire clip of music that you focused on one time through attentively, and see if you catch the ideas that you heard while pausing and going back.
 

Day 5: 10 minutes.
 
Techniques: Attentive Listening, Noting Ideas
Podcasts required: Episode #1, #2
 
Task: Find a new piece, or continue on further in Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and continue the process of noting where ideas start and end. If you can manage, try pausing a little less, and listening in slightly larger chunks. If that means dropping your attention for a few seconds and jumping back in, that is fine. If you happen to hear one or two ideas that really speak to you, try assigning them an adjective to describe how they sound.
 
 
Day 6: 10 minutes.
 
Techniques: Attentive Listening, Noting Ideas
Podcasts required: Episode #1, #2
 
Task: Find a new piece that you want to listen to, and focus on the first 1-2 minutes. Listen as many times as you need to feel where the ideas start and stop, and then do the exercise we did in the podcast: Assign them each an adjective, food, color, image, or whatever else pops to mind. Then re-listen to the full clip of music attentively, and observe how you hear it differently.
 

Day 7: 20 minutes.
 
Techniques: Attentive Listening, Noting Ideas
Podcasts required: Episode #1, #2
 
Task: Choose a piece (or go back to a piece) that you want to listen to, and just listen for fun! Try to not multi-task; engage the attention as much as you can without it feeling like an exercise, and allow yourself to hear ideas if that is what naturally happens.
 
 
Week 2: Working Outward
 
Day 1: 10-15 minutes.
 
Techniques: Attentive Listening, Noting Ideas
Podcasts required: Episode #1, #2
 
Task: Listen to the first movement of Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 1 (recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDFjWoIPztM) and try to note as many ideas as you can. This will be very challenging – the piece moves quickly, and you likely will not catch everything! Still, try doing this without pausing. It may help to have a piece of paper and jot your notes down as they pass. If you want to listen to the whole thing twice, even better!
 
 
Day 2: 10-15 minutes.
 
Techniques: Attentive Listening, Noting Ideas, Grouping
Podcasts required: Episode #1-3
 
Task: Listen to the first movement of Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 1 again, this time pausing as needed to really solidify your concept of the musical ideas. Then, start trying to move your focus outward, to begin grouping some of these ideas together through their similarities and differences. Take the first two minutes or so and really focus on those, if this proves to be challenging.
 

Day 3: 15 minutes.
 
Techniques: Attentive Listening, Noting Ideas, Grouping
Podcasts required: Episode #1-3
 
Task: Find a piece that you want to listen to, preferably from the Classical Era (Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven) and listen to the first 3-5 minutes several times attentively. Begin by noting ideas, and move more towards hearing in groupings with each successive listen. On the last listen, try to hear all the groupings that you have come up with.
 

Day 4: 15 minutes.
 
Techniques: Attentive Listening, Noting Ideas, Grouping
Podcasts required: Episode #1-3
 
Task: Go back to Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 1 once more, and attempt to re-hear groupings that you came up with. With each grouping, try to assign each group a note of an adjective, color, food, etc. Once you have given each group a note, listen once more all the way through and refine your grouping notes.
 
 
Day 5: 15 minutes.
 
Techniques: Attentive Listening, Noting Ideas, Grouping, Mapping
Podcasts required: Episode #1-4
 
Task: Find any piece you are interested in and listen to 5-7 minutes, pausing or going back occasionally if you need, listening for landmark points. Try to identify the main landmark points and the groups that lead to those points, and then listen to the entire clip of music, listening for how the composer leads to those landmark points, and seeing if you change your mind on any of them.
 

Day 6: 15 minutes.
 
Techniques: Attentive Listening, Noting Ideas, Grouping, Mapping
Podcasts required: Episode #1-4
 
Task: Take the same piece you listened to yesterday, and listen again, starting to form a map of the clip of music that you listen to. As you form the map, start to get more specific; how does the composer move from one landmark to the next? How many groups are there, and how would you note those groups? If you feel you are hearing groups of ideas well, move even smaller, and try to note individual ideas.
 
​
Day 7: 30 minutes.
 
Techniques: Attentive Listening, Noting Ideas, Grouping, Mapping
Podcasts required: Episode #1-4
 
Task: Find a classical concert that you can go to in your area, and look at what is being performed. Take one piece (or multiple) and listen to it in advance, pausing if need be, with attention. If you find yourself trying to note ideas, grouping, or mapping, great! Keep engaging the attention throughout, and discovering as much as you can about the piece.
 
 
Congrats! You made it!