It’s an interesting question, and one with countless answers. When you hear a song for the first time, what captures you first? Is it the rhythm, is it the words, is it the harmonies? Do you try and relate it to other songs to make sense of it? Or do you simply let it move you, without a thought entering your mind? We take in music as we take in the world, and everyone’s process is different.

I asked this question on a forum and got a huge variety of answers. I gave an example of an analytical process whereby I might listen for the tonic, try to get an idea of the key and the song structure, and then try to understand the harmonies involved in terms of intervals/chords, and the responses surprised me… It turns out, most people don’t think about music theory at all when they’re trying to decipher a new song!

Most of the responses alluded to that one word that we’ve all heard other players say: feel. They get a feel for the music without trying to categorise or label what they are hearing. It’s one of the trickiest things to try and teach to a novice, because it’s so vague and ethereal, yet it’s the primary mechanism by which most of my responders seemed to analyse music. So let’s break it down a little.

Feel is zooming out, rather than zooming in. If you’re doing a deep harmonic analysis on a song you’re zooming in on specific sections at a time, looking at the micro level of the note, and the way two or more notes harmonise together, and how that fits in with the movement of the song on a technical level. Whereas when you are thinking in terms of pure feel, you’re zooming out and looking at the big picture. What is the macro structure, where does the energy rise and fall, where does the song match your expectations, and where does it subvert them? Perhaps these are more pertinent questions to ask on a first listen.

Another interesting point someone made is that modern music is less about complex harmonic movement, and more about rhythmic variation. If you listen to a lot of modern music, you might notice it all seems very repetitive, but somehow it still keeps us captivated. I’ve thought this about some of the music I listen to. We don’t hear the kind of harmonic variation that the likes of Bach or Beethoven would have approved of, but instead we have ostinatos being varied rhythmically to develop songs. You can hear this in rap, rock, drum and bass, a lot of the heavier styles of modern music, particularly where build ups and drops are used.

So perhaps our way of analysing music has changed because the music has changed, or perhaps no one actually uses theory outside of Berkley, who knows, but have a think about how you listen to and interpret music and try to put your finger on it. It might make you think about music differently…