ways of listening
various modalities and how to use them
Listening is not a passive act; it’s a way of being, a creative tool, and a relational stance within your surroundings. Whether you’re an artist, musician, producer, or engineer, learning to listen deeply can profoundly shift your relationship with sound, creativity, and the world around you.
Many of the most accomplished music producers cultivate a more nuanced relationship with listening than you might expect. They take it seriously as a practice, and they practice its various modalities. Here, we’ll explore different dimensions of listening, from mindfulness, to practical ear training, recalling the insights of Pauline Oliveros, a pioneer of experimental music and deep listening.
As Meditation
Oliveros developed Deep Listening as both a practice and philosophy, encouraging participants to listen with openness to both internal and external sounds. Her compositions, performances, and workshops focused on creating awareness of soundscapes and textures, breaking down barriers between performer and audience, between sound and silence. She draws an important distinction between listening and hearing. She writes, “listening is directing attention to what is heard, gathering meaning, interpreting, and deciding on action.”
She went further by advocating Deep Listening—a meditative practice of hearing everything possible, in every way possible, all at once. Deep Listening is about being present to sound, whether it’s the hum of an air conditioner, the rustle of leaves, or the tone of a synth. This approach requires an open focus, where the listener endeavors to take in a sound in its totality— without attachment to any specific element.
Practicing deep listening as a regular mindfulness exercise can help you to attune your ears and your mind to a state of open attention to what you’re about to hear. It can help you observe the sound of your own making from a more neutral perspective. It can make you more sensitive to the emotional impact of your music.
Artistic Practice
Oliveros framed listening as a dialectical practice, suggesting that “What is heard is changed by listening and changes the listener.” This dynamic exchange—what she called the "listening effect"—suggests that by truly listening, you shape sound as it shapes you.
She is one of many artists of the last century to develop an art practice around listening itself, using the interplay of sound and perception as its main medium. Consider Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room (1969). In this piece, Lucier recorded himself speaking, then re-recorded that recording over and over until the resonant frequencies of the room transformed his words into abstract tones. This piece is a direct engagement with listening as a means of discovering the hidden qualities of space and sound. The piece uses the machinery of listening track the process transformation from linguistic to totally abstract.
Janet Cardiff’s "audio walks" combine storytelling with immersive soundscapes, creating experiences that invite participants to listen deeply to both recorded and live sounds. Her piece The Forty Part Motet (2001), a reinstallation of a choral work by Thomas Tallis, places 40 speakers in gallery, each one playing a single singer’s voice. As listeners move around, they hear the piece shift dynamically, according to their proximity to an individual speaker.
I visited this piece at MoMA PS1 in a large gallery where the speakers were installed in a circle. You could approach each speaker to hear the individual singer in more detail. You could also stand in the center of the room to hear each voice at, more or less, the same level. In this piece, it’s the listening that creates the artwork in the mind of the audience member. The audience member becomes the artist as they play with their own perception of the sonic field in physical space.
And then of course, there’s John Cage. Cage's approach to listening radically redefined the possibilities of sound in classical composition and fine art. His piece 4'33" (1952) asks the performer to remain silent, making the ambient sounds of the space the "composition." Cage’s work posits that listening itself is a creative act and that every sound, intentional or accidental, can be music. This piece—sometimes misunderstood as a postmodernist prank—presents a real philosophical challenge to the idea of music, asking the listener to hear art in everything around them, transforming their perception of sound and silence.
I have found that cultivating a relationship to all sounds, not just music, has enriched my music practice quite a bit. Here are some practical applications of the art of listening in broader creative context:
Record Environmental Sounds: Spend 10 minutes capturing everyday sounds, then listen back with intent. What rhythms or tonal textures stand out? Found sounds frequently appear in produced music, revealing how attuned producers are to the textures around them. These sounds locate music within a specific time and space, adding layers of meaning to recorded work.
I’m thinking, here, of Fred Again.. speaking about how he finds the musicality of non-musical sound sources. He is able to listen back to a recording of spoken poetry with his hands on the piano, and find what key the speaker naturally speaks in. The resulting composition follows the musical cues he heard in the non-musical sonic material he started with.
Sound Mapping: While listening to a track, visualize its sonic landscape. What elements are in the foreground? What’s lurking in the background? How can this awareness influence your production choices or the world you build around your music? Much of the activity of a music maker, especially in electronic music, is manipulating the listeners perception of space. As a producer, you have the power to place different musical elements in different ‘places’ in an 3D ‘stereo image.’ From this perspective, simple tools like volume, reverb, delay, and panning have amazing creative potential. Think about how you manipulate sonic space creatively, within a musical composition.
This reminds me of Dijon saying that the omni directional polar pattern of his microphone was “the sound of the record” on his first LP, Absolutely. Dijon took a somewhat unconventional approach to recording. Rather than multiple sound sources going directly into microphones, he had one microphone (the AKG C414) capturing multiple sources in 360 degrees. Through a series of live and quasi-improvised takes, you can hear different elements coming in and out of focus as performers move closer and further away from the the central mic. Listening to this album—especially with headphones—is an experience similar to moving around in a Janet Cardiff installations, except, in this case, the listener is stationary in the center, and the other elements are moving around you in 3D sonic space.
Train Your Ears
Listening is the most essential skill in music production. It’s where ideas turn into arrangements, dynamics are sculpted, and mixes find their musicality. The best producers understand that listening is not just an input—it’s the feedback loop that guides every decision. Oliveros’ concept of Quantum Listening—listening to multiple realities simultaneously—holds particular relevance here.
For the producer, Quantum Listening means attuning to micro-details while keeping the macro-structure in mind. For instance:
During Mixing: Switch between monitoring systems to hear the track in multiple "realities" (e.g., studio monitors, headphones, car speakers).
Dynamic Listening: Focus on how different frequencies interact over time, whether you’re compressing drums or layering vocals. This ability to listen dynamically transforms a good mix into an immersive experience.
Focal vs. Global Listening: As Oliveros suggests, alternate between focal listening (zooming in on specific details) and global listening (absorbing the full sonic field). Balancing these perspectives can deepen your understanding of how individual elements contribute to a track’s overall feel and narrative.
It takes time to really develop your ears as a producer. As you practice listening and producing, it’s important to also give your ears a rest. When you hear the same thing over and over again, your ears become accustomed to it, and you begin to lose perspective. It is helpful to take intermittent breaks where you sit in silence, or even go outside to listen to real world ambience. This can recalibrate your sensory apparatus and allow you to return to your own work with fresh ears..
Openness
Reading Pauline Oliveros helped me to understand that listening is both a theory and a practice. It’s not about achieving a perfect state of awareness but about returning to sound with openness, again and again. Listening can be a portal to enhanced creativity, sonic clarity, and even inner peace.
Rick Rubin has some interesting thoughts on this as well:
We are openly receiving. Paying attention with no preconceived ideas. The only goal is to fully and clearly understand what is being transmitted, remaining totally present with what’s being expressed—and allowing it to be what it is.
Anything less is not only a disservice to the speaker, but also to yourself. While creating and defending a story in your own head, you miss information that might alter or evolve your current thoughts.
If we can go beyond our reflective response, we may find there is something more beneath that resonates with us or helps our understanding. The new information might reinforce an idea, slightly alter it, or completely reverse it.
Rubin seems to extend a theory of openness in listening into the realm of interpersonal communication. Rubin might be equally attuned to sounds and to the feelings of another person because so much of what he does as a producer is collaborative. He isn’t an instrumentalist or an audio engineer. He comes to each project simply as a listener, and every intervention he makes comes from that perspective. He uses this radical openness to help channel his collaborators’ artistic intent to other listeners. Rick Rubin’s prominence as a producer—and omnipresence as a creative mind—might be the ultimate testament to the value of listening.
I don’t say this to lionize Rick Rubin. I know very well that we all live in a different universe than he does, and none of us is going to achieve superproducer status by sitting cross legged on the couch and speaking in riddles. I take him as an extreme (and slightly ridiculous) example of a producer who has based his entire process around the act of listening. I mention him only to point out that listening aught to be taken seriously as an element of your creative practice, and to highlight the fact that it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Listening is a contextual phenomenon. The more you listen, the more attuned you become to the world of sound and its vast potential to inform your musical work. As Oliveros reminds us: “Listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening.”
Thank you for reading.
What I’m Listening To
10 new songs, updated weekly
Items of Interest
Doing Music - Helado Negro on the Ableton Podcast talking about Pauline Oliveros and deep listening.
Here’s a PDF of Pauline Oliveros’ Quantum Listening if you want to ‘head far out.’
My Ableton Live session template is available for free for anyone who wants to download it. It’s a helpful session layout with custom device chains, groups, color coding, and some cool utility channels I’m especially proud of. It works for all genres and styles. The current version is for Live 11.