Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with listening

Can I learn to be a better writer?

mokeydraws — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:50:27 -0800

How can I be a better writer? My value at work would increase if my ability to write formally improves. I'm an admin in the IT department and don't realy understand the technology or procedures that I have to write about. I think that part of the problem is that I am just not that great at communicating in general. I don't talk a lot, hate leaving vm's. And even writing an email can leave me frozen, constantly worrying saying the wrong thing and/or not being understood. I just started school again and am taking 2 writing intensive courses. This is slightly easier since it is based on my interpretation of the text.

The people I work with are pretty good at trying to explain things to me. Another issue is that even after one of these sessions the information is not sticking. It will make sense and I think I understand but when I get back to my desk I'm blank. My boss has noticed this and asked me to basically prove I understood him by repeating it all back to him.

So I guess my question is two-fold.

-How can I improve my listening/understanding skills and retain important information?

-How do I become a better formal/informal writer even when I am not an expert on the topic?

Singers who listen to other songs?

Brody's chum — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:18:13 -0800

I'm looking for songs in which the singer specifically references listening to another musician, song or album. Please help? I don't want songs about singers or songs about songs and I don't even want songs that reference seeing other musicians in concert or on stage.
Three examples:
* "Thrift Store Chair" by Everclear has the line "Gonna put a John Prine record on"
* "Runnin' Down a Dream" by Tom Petty has the line "me and Del were singin' Little Runaway" which works because he is in the car listening to the radio, not in a studio singing along with Del Shannon in person.
* "Brian Wilson" by Barenaked Ladies works only because of the line "Just listenin' and re-listenin' to Smiley Smile" not because it mentions Brian Wilson.

I'm not looking for songs that simply mention other musicians or songs. There has to be active listening involved.

I know the examples I gave are very middle-of-the-road artists, but I'm interested in anything you can think of from any genre that fits the bill.
Thanks so much for any help you can give!

Music - Rockin Rockin Music

orville sash — Thu, 21 May 2009 07:01:11 -0800

Why don't I pay attention to lyrics? I am a huge music fan, as well as being a musician. As long as I can remember I have had a serious infatuation with music, and I generally like to have it on during all waking hours. Which is why I am wondering - why don't I pay attention to lyrics? Unlike most music fans, I generally couldn't tell you the lyrics to a lot of my favorite songs. I even listen to a ton of hip-hop, but generally don't remember the lyrics (Enter the 36 Chambers excepted, as I've probably listened to that album more than any other album ever.)

My questions:

1.) Is this a known phenomenon?
2.) Does it have to do with conditioning, or is this how my brain was wired?

How do you get someone to listen?

Anonymous — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:18:23 -0800

Why am I constantly be dismissed in conversation? In the last few months I've found myself in situations where people are just ignoring, or explicitly dismissing my opinion out of hand (you are too young, you don't get it, you are weird - or worse, the knowing glance and the roll of the eyes), and basically working around me. Each time, I feel totally powerless, frustrated and generally angry.

What I don't know how do is to give my opinion enough force in the conversation that this stops or at the individual(s) have to at least give it a fair shake - but doing that without becoming a screaming lunatic.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a generally a introverted soft spoken person. I don't generally want to beat people into my point of view, and am totally willing to follow the crowd if thats how it ends up. But in these groups (all different), there are these strong figures who are suddenly ignoring every word that I say and I'm struggling with the need to attack them to be heard. I'm not sure what to do.

How should I choose and enjoy music for my workday?

davebush — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:43:02 -0800

How should I choose and enjoy music for my workday? I work at home, at a desk for many hours each day. I have a giant collection of CDs and MP3s that I listen to all day. I don't like shuffled music, I prefer what I call "long listening" - one artist (album by album) or genre all day. A typical day would see me loading up an 8 hour playlist of Pete Namlook or Steve Roach.

My problem is that I'm always thinking "is this the most satisfying thing I can listen to right now?" I often feel like I have too much music and that I'd enjoy it more if I only had 50 CD's. I need help feeling content with whatever I choose to listen to, almost to the point of using a system. Although using shuffle might seem like a logical solution, I really want my music to sustain a somewhat singular mood for the entire day. Any ideas?

I realize this might seem like a trivial thing, but it really does nag at me.

"One more time! Yeah!"

TheSecretDecoderRing — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:43:29 -0800

For those of you like me who still insist on listening to entire albums: How long does it take you to realize how awesome that album really is? Recently I started listening to a rock album, and while some songs seemed okay the first couple of times, I was starting to think it may have been a disappointment. Gradually, the album got better and better with each listen until I got hooked on the whole thing and could listen to it every day.

It's rare that I ever listen to an album and take a liking to it quickly. I suppose a lot of it has to do with becoming familiar with the different parts of a song, to the point that I can tap along to it.

But it also has me thinking if there were albums in the past I might've given up on too early, and would've ended up loving if I'd only listened to them, oh, a few more thousand times. I do know there are albums from my favorite artists that I simply won't like, no matter how hard I try.

So I'm left with this overwhelming feeling of "What took me so long?" and "What else am I missing out on?" Is this fairly common, or should I take a different approach to new music, like first listening to a couple songs at a time, to better isolate each one so they're not mixed in the jumble? Reading the lyrics right away? Picking out the drumbeat or guitar lines?

For what it's worth, I like stuff ranging from Sinatra, Elvis, Motown, Beatles, disco, new wave, and pop punk. And I know music is extremely subjective, but some examples of stuff that's highly thought of but something I can't quite "get" are Led Zeppelin and (after a recent Johnny Marr thread here) The Smiths.

What's she saying?

ShameSpiral — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 06:21:56 -0800

Please watch about ten seconds of this youtube video to help me understand what is being said. The video is 'cued up' to the right place, so you needn't watch the whole thing. It's a scene from the film 'Mrs Miniver', featuring an elderly woman, her granddaughter and the granddaughter's boyfriend. The grandmother is upset because a rose named after the boyfriend's mother has been entered in a local flower-show. She insults the boyfriend by suggesting that his mother is too undistinguished to have a rose named after her, and she gives examples of the sort of names roses 'should' have. The first name is 'Marshal Niel' and the last is 'Duchess of Argyll', but I cannot understand what she says between these two names. I assume it's the name of a famous rose cultivar, but I have listened and listened and it's unintelligible to me. I googled it, but the only result was an error-filled transcript of the film that I don't trust to be accurate. Please listen and tell me what you think. Any wild stab in the dark is welcome!

Hey, listen to this (and that's it)!

Rykey — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:18:33 -0800

Please help me turn a Windows XP machine into a public listening station to show off our library's music CD collection. Kinda long, sorry Public librarian here. I have an XP machine that will serve as a dedicated standalone station to play snippets of songs from our CD collection (the goal being to increase checkouts of our music CDs, and increase the "cool" factor of our library in general). I'll be ripping a song or two off a given CD from the collection, which will then be displayed in a playlist on a desktop audio player for patrons to listen to. The top of the listening station will only have a mouse for picking songs, headphones for listening, and a monitor to see the player (the rest of the system will live inside the stand, locked up).

For the purposes of this question, let's assume that the listening station must live on the XP desktop (we can't buy a different machine, or just have a CD player for people to pop our CDs into to listen to, for example).

Here are the main challenges:

1) Whatever audio player I use (WMP, iTunes, etc.) must be able to be very customizable. I want to be able to pare the user's options down to just playing songs from playlists, and I'd like to be able to customize the names of the columns (I know how to choose which columns I want to display, but I want to add a column for library call number, for example). If possible, I want to hide every other button or option. Setting Start/End points in songs a la iTunes is also a must.

2) I need to be able to lock the player such that no changes to playlists, settings, etc. can take place (choosing a track, play/pause, rewind/ff, and volume are the only choices). Also, the player window should not be able to be closed or resized. I can lock the rest of the desktop/menus via admin privileges, if that matters.

3) It would be cool to be able to have the player automatically fetch the album art for the currently playing track, and we can connect the machine to the internet to do this. However, this is only an added attraction, and we can forgo this step if necessary.

I'm fine with downloading players, plug-ins, hacks, etc. to allow me to do this, as long as it's legal and legit. Really I just need to make the desktop unchangeable and idiot-proof in the ways I describe above.

Which player, and how to pimp it just so?

70's and 80's songs to play in a business.

ptsampras14 — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:15:49 -0800

What are some good 70's and 80's songs suitable for playing in a pharmacy? My father owns a family pharmacy and we have an iPod with nice 70's and 80's songs set to play for the customers. Can you tell me some that I can add to the playlist? Remember nice calm easy listening ones are best, and no dirty or bad songs about dying etc.. To get an idea of some of the songs I have here's a link to the playlist so far. Specific songs are great, but I will also take artists. Try not to give duplicates. If 10 people give 10 songs that's 100 new songs! Thanks!

How can I learn to understand and produce speech in a foreign language as well as I can write it?

SuperNova — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:09:57 -0800

I'm learning a new language (Italian), and as with other languages I've learned, I have no trouble with the written form. But, as with the others, the spoken variety gives me trouble. The front page part may be all you need, but in case it helps, here are some specifics. I'm starting to learn Italian through a university course. I already know a fair amount of Spanish (4 years of high school) and a little Portuguese (one semester in college) so I took the accelerated course that moves faster than the typical intro. FWIW, probably 4/5 of the class is majoring in another Romance language; I am not. (This probably doesn't matter other than they have more experience with a course not being in English.)

I'm not sure if I buy into the whole visual/auditory learner distinction, but I do know that in every language I "know" (including, to a lesser degree, English), I am much more proficient at reading/writing than listening/speaking.

This is the first course I've had that is given almost exclusively in a foreign language, so it's also the first time this has really been an issue. I've got a pretty good handle on conjugations, vocabulary, and the like when I write it, but when I speak, I get all tangled up. It's not primarily a pronunciation thing -- I know how most of the letters sound (even if I throw in some Portuguese-style long Es at times) -- but just can't get the words right, like throwing in a gli for an i, etc.

I got some good info from this thread but it seemed more applicable to non-academic settings. (While having a beer before my lunchtime class isn't out of the question, it's not really a solution for me.)

I'm in my last year, so the grade isn't really a big deal. (If it was, I might not even worry about this!) I'm taking the class because I'd like to actually learn Italian. So, polyglots of MeFi, how can I become better at comprehending and producing a spoken foreign language?

music

gregb1007 — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:04:44 -0800

I want to expand my familiarity with contemporary music. Where do I start? [More Inside] I've realized recently that I am not all familiar with most of the bands/artists of the last 50 years or so. I blank when people mention a band to me because I most likely don't know it. Anyhow, I am looking for some listening recommendations.

If it helps to know, what things appeal to me, I'll list some stuff. I used to like really melancholy stuff, like Carly Simon's Coming Around Again, Marc Cohn's Walking in Memphis, and some of the songs by the BareNaked Ladies and Matchbox 20. (I don't like Bob Dylan though, judging by one or two songs of his that I've heard.) Recently, I've heard some music at a café that I never thought would appeal to me but it did: groups like Neutral Milk Hotel, Dreamtheater.. I should also mention that I do like classical music a lot and listen to it often, but I am really looking for tips about popular music.

Now, I know I've dropped some names here and there, but what I know of music is still very limited and I do want to hear some new stuff and get to know new artists. Hopefully I can get some good tips here.

lend me your ear(phone)s

luriete — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:28:31 -0800

headphone choice for non symmetrical hearing: my father is mostly-deaf in one ear. He wears an in-ear hearing aid that works well. He would like to find the following... either over-ear noise-cancellation headphones that will work with a hearing aid (so far, every type he's tried gives him huge amounts of deafening feedback when it interacts with the hearing aid), or a pair of in-ear headphones that have separate right/left volume controls, or some combination of the two.

My uncle got out his soldering iron and made him a pair using ipod earbuds and a home-made volume control, but they're not too sturdy, and he'd like something more comfortable to wear in his ear.

Ideally, comfortable over or in-ear 'phones with the volume controls - i think that noise reduction is secondary, although he likes the idea of it if they are over-the-ear models.

Any ideas? We've looked high and low and haven't found any headphones except for giant studio sets that have independent volume controls.

Do you "read" an audio book?

jdroth — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 11:10:50 -0800

I'm new to audio books. After I've listened to a book, can I say that I've "read" the book? What's the common parlance? Or must I draw a distinction between the books I've read and those I've heard? Why or why not? (And what about Braille? Are blind people said to have "read" books?)