Learning how to listen to music is one of the most rewarding, and interesting, hobbies you can take up.
It makes you look smart, and it can actually MAKE YOU SMARTER.
But while it's not hard, it does takes a little effort.
You need to ACTIVELY LISTEN, as opposed to passively listen.
Passively listening is like when you put music on in the background, and barely register what it is. It can provide mood, or make you feel a certain way, but it's not your main focus.
Actively Listening requires you to focus on the music, on the melody, on the flow of the music, whether it goes up, or down.
If you have the sheet music, I HIGHLY recommend reading it as you listen.
And like any hobby, it requires a little practice.
Check out this video to go into more detail about why listening to classical music is important.
Here it a great video that talks about emotion in music . It talks about how we often connect extra-musical ideas (like memories, or people, or places) to music, and about how some musical has intrinsic ideas written into the flow of the notes.
Some composers use the same notes used over and over to represent a person, place, or idea. These patterns of notes are called Motifs.
This video helps you identify motives and musical ideas that represent something else.
There are several way to organize music notes into what we think of as music. These structures are collectively referred to as form.
Form
Start with this video, as it breaks down every classical musical forms. Understanding the structure of the music will help you understand the formula, in the same way that understanding a television show formula can help you predict what is going to happen, or be surprised.
Here is another video that breaks down Sonata Form. A shortened version of this form is used in almost all pop songs.
Another common form of classical music is the concerto, where a specific instrument is showed off. A concerto usually has four movements, one fast, one slow, one moderately fast, and one very fast. To deep drive into concertos, watch this video
So as you can tell, there is way more to explain about how to identify music that I can teach in this post, but hopefully this will get you started!
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