I am a Listener

Who is Daniel Shorb the Listener?

I am a listener. My ears are sensitive. Anything but soft talking in a restaurant bothers me. If someone sneezes repeatedly, I must cover my ears. It almost hurts when the winners scream on The Price Is Right. When I am still, I hear a lot of things that the average person doesn’t hear. At night I hear the battery-powered clock that supposedly silently ticks the seconds. I hear every rattle and squeak in my truck. I hear a dripping faucet. Musically, I can hear the harmonics of a piano string through the sixth partial. At a concert, I hear every cough. When I play in a recital, I hear every whisper and every program rustle. Heaven forbid if someone enters the hall while I am playing. When I was young, I used to be able to identify any single key played on a piano without looking. When I was a kid I was able to sing/screech pitch all the way to the top key on our piano. And I used to be able to hear a frequency so low that I could hear the individual vibrations. I could identify any interval, triad, or four-note chord played on a piano. I can extemporaneously play hundreds of hymns in four-part harmony. 

Today I listen to music a lot. All kinds. It is not unusual for me to listen to Bananarama and Bach in the same listening session. I’ve been trying to catch up on all I missed when I was too busy teaching and ministering. And I missed a lot. I have to listen with headphones. Good-quality headphones is a good investment. I’m sometimes asked, “Why do you listen to music so loud?” The answer is, “that’s the way the music was mixed.” The old-fashioned recording studio guy would play the music at full blast during the mixing process. Otherwise he couldn’t hear everything. 

I listen to music differently than most. I acquire musical enjoyment differently than most. I have a Master’s degree in Music Theory and I taught Music Theory for several years. I consider myself an expert on common-practice tonal harmony. As a music theorist, I am listening to the musical elements—the melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, and form of the composition, and analyzing how effectively they are employed. I am listening to the performers, and evaluating their timbre, intonation, phrasing, balance, breath control or playing execution, expression, and ensemble with the other musicians and the conductor. I am thinking about the writers of the music, the composers, almost as much as the performers. I am responding to the structure of the composition and thinking about what the composer had in mind. I am following the song writer’s use of motives, sequences, and progressions and their development from beginning to end. In popular music the performer reigns. No one seems to know or even care who wrote the song, except me. So, it is how the elements of music are used, and how the music is performed—that is what I enjoy and appreciate. And sometimes, whether I like the music or not doesn’t matter. I’ve made a list of the top 100 greatest pop songs of the 20th century according to my methods of listening. I love to analyze them as a theorist. 

I listen to the same song over and over and over…dozens of times. I challenge myself to hear something new every time I listen. And I always do. Have you ever tried to count the tracks of a good pop song? It’s harder than you think. The human ear and its connection to the brain is truly astounding. For me, it is imperative to utilize this amazing gift to the fullest.