Blog #1 - Victor Barrios

Victor Barrios

February 1, 2017
Christina Ivey

Communication 160

Blog Post #1

            The sentence I choose from Compassionate Critical Listening chapter was “Modes of listening can help us consider the ways context, personal experience, and cultural expectations might shape the way we engage as listeners.” After learning more in depth about what mode of listening is I found it interesting how we practically select what we want to listen to even though we don't try. It is interesting how are emotions and culture affects that. When, where and why we to listen to music. I definitely do feel it at time, now thinking about how I pick or choose my music whether it be based on my emotion, who I'm surrounded by and where I’m at that specific moment whether it be as a person or just location. It is interesting that we pick and choose without thinking to much about it.

            Ola Stockfelt (1997, pp. 132-137) stated that “different musical genres invite us to listen in different ways and that, as listener, we can work to develop different modes of listening for different musical styles, situation, or contexts.” To me this quote tells me we all have a different form of hearing/listening to music. That we actually interpret the music, before we actually get to enjoy it. It is basically judging a book by its cover, but in this example judging a tone by the way it starts which I'm guilty of as well. I remember in the summer when Closer by The Chainsmoker came out and I just didn't really like it because of the first beat that came out of it and I would just change the station. But then it came on so many time that I just decided to listen to it and appreciate the beat of it. And like everyone else I fell in love.

            Another thing from the reading that stood out to me was the social and cultural context of mode of listening. And I kind of just thought about how I’m from two culture which is Mexican-American and how they are different when it comes to speaking and especially listening to it. In example from the reading it was talking about how a punk rock concert wouldn't be acceptable at an opera house. For me its kind how Spanish music wouldn't be appropriate at an American party or English music at a Mexican party. It would just be weird and awkward if you didn't know both of the language at either end, luckily I do. Also the environment says a lot about mode of listening, an example could be if you're studying at school you're probably trying to listen to slow music and quiet music. Compare to a BBQ at a park you would be listening to some loud type of music which ever you prefer. For my family BBQ it would be loud Spanish music.

Modes of listening is just way’s we take the stuff we hear around us, how we use it and how we basically draw away from it at times. It is interesting to understand what is appropriate in our culture’s and to think about how people would listen to something that they are not use to. For example Spanish or the English language. And trying to figure out what people are saying and how to take it all in. Chris McRae stated “We use different modes of listening or engaging for different kinds of communication.” It make sense that we process what we are listening to, whether it be in context, experience or knowledge. It just way’s to help us. I found this link of four ways of listening that I found interesting on the different ways we can listen.