Music multitasking: How 'background' listening enhances life

One of the prevailing trends in audiophile circles is the notion that, to fully appreciate music, you have to stop doing anything else and just listen. I disagree.

There's an attitude, particularly among those who style themselves dedicated audiophiles, that boils down to judging others for how they listen to music. It says that people who stop all else and do nothing but listen, are somehow more righteous than those who don't. That it's not possible to be a true music fan if you do other stuff all else while listening.

Rubbish. Worse, offensive. Here's why.

The mindset is this: In order to appreciate music, you have to do nothing but listen. That anyone who would deign to do anything else somehow blasphemes the holy temple of the song. Oh, the horror if someone dared to go about their daily lives, with "background music," not listening, not appreciating.

But who's to say we're not listening. Not appreciating? Not an audiophile?

I am firmly, proudly, in the opposite camp from the sit-and-listeners. I don't understand people who don't listen to music all the time. I listen while I'm working. I listen in the car. I listen while walking to the store or walking in a foreign city. I find music enhances almost everything I do. When you're getting ready for a party, don't you want to crank the perfect song? When you're heartbroken, don't you want that perfect angry (or melancholy) track to ease the pain?

What is music but the soundtrack to our lives? Music has the ability to raise our spirits, soothe our souls, comfort and coddle, excite and enhance the experiences of life.

The thought that somehow I and others appreciate the music less, just because we're also doing something else, is insane. As a recovering musician, I can tell you we're doing a lot more than just listening up on that stage. Listening is a key part, of course, but so is the very act of playing, or reading the music, or remembering what comes next, watching for visual clues from other players, and so on.

Even a soloist, pure in the moment, tapping into that great muse so perfectly -- they're not just listening. They're feeling.

It seems to me that's the common ground. The Feeling. It seems to me what we all want is the emotion of the song. To some, perhaps, they need a dark room, the glow of the tubes, and an envelopment of nothing but music to get the full effect.

This is not a judgment, and that's what annoys me the most. In my view, the point of music is to get enjoyment out of it, however you can. To condescend that "some people" don't enjoy music as much as you do because they enjoy it differently from you, not only spectacularly misses the point, but sets up a sad and vicious rift. A rift where one shouldn't exist.

Because music should be something that unites us, not divides us.