GG: Improving Your Perceptions through Glenn Gould

["Anne M. Marble" <amarble@abs.net>]

Does anybody else feel as if their sense of hearing has improved ever
since they started listening to Glenn Gould? While I'm not saying that
my hearing itself has improved, I believe that I have become a better
listener.

I guess it started because I knew he was supposed to have hummed on
his recordings, but at first, I couldn't hear the humming. (It didn't
help that I was listening to his CDs on a computer with tiny speakers
or on a stereo at the other end of the room.)

I remember when I first heard the humming. It was on a Beethoven
sonata, and I made my mother come over and listen. Then, I started to
pick out the sounds. Shortly after that, I played the 1981 Goldbergs
and was *stunned* at the amount of humming. How had I missed all that
before? (While listening to it in the past, I used to blame the guy in
the apartment above me for some of the funny noises I heard. I guess I
thought he was sitting in a squeaky chair and moaning out loud...)

I didn't think I could get used to it after that. But as you might
guess, I did. :-> And boy, am I glad. Listening to the humming made it
easier for me to "latch on to" the other, more important, sounds.
(It's also a great way to test the sensitivity of audio equipment!)

Yes, there's more than humming to be heard. And my new-found
perception of sound could now pick up aspects of the songs that I had
never heard before. (You know, those things called notes. :->)
Listening for the humming gave me the skills to detect the other
things.

Of course, this new perception can get in the way when I try to go to
sleep, and I can hear all those annoying noises around me. The walls
creaking, plastic bags crinkling, the guy in the apartment above me
sitting in a squeaky chair and making funny noises, etc. My next
apartment will have thicker walls!