Do you know that musicians and non-musicians differ in how they listen to music?  If you are not a musician you probably do not know that there's a difference in how you listen to music from how a musician takes in music. Non-musicians tend to listen to a piece of music as one particular whole, like looking at a painting and seeing the whole painting. Musicians do not listen to music that way; musicians tend to hear every instrument playing in a musical piece as an individual, with its own movement, and see how these individual movements create patterns that if viewed from afar create a big picture. It's like looking at a painting and seeing every brush stroke, every daub of color on the canvas and how all of these form the whole painting. 

I can still remember how I used to listen to music as a non-musician. When i was a child I listened to music and saw it as one whole set of emotions moving as one. But after I learned to play a musical instrument, and after I gained experience playing in a band, I lost the ability to listen to music like the way I used to listen to it as a child. Now, every time I listen to music I could not avoid hearing the bass guitar, or one particular instrument, and seeing it "swim" or "surf" the sea of movements that are created by the other instruments. I could also shift the focus from one instrument to the other, the instrument that is in focus will become the one , in my view, to be surfing or floating in the sea of other sounds that the other instruments in the background are making together. 

Even if there is an instrument doing the solo I can still choose to make it part of the background if I choose to focus to another instrument. This is what I do every time I listen to music. I wish I could learn how to go back to listening to music like back when I was a non-musician, I want to see the kind of emotions that that kind of listening would bring to me now that I am older.

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