UKH

Good morning,

I've been pondering this question for ages but only thought about asking UKC about it as of today.

I write music and I've been working on compiling a album of old material  as well as some new tunes in my studio recently.

Now it takes, as you can imagine a lot of listening,  over and over and over again.   So it's best to break this up into chunks as after a while you can go a bit insane and of course inspiration only strikes if your conductive to it at the time.

Now some days I can hear what seems like every detail, sparkle , instrument etc etc.....   Yet on other days I just feel like I'm listening to it all with a bucket on my head.

Not just in my own music  but in everything I'm listening to.

The past few days I've consistently noticed stuff in music I don't think I'd ever picked up on before .  

Does anyone else find this ?

Whats it about ? 

Brain chemicals ? 

Is it  dependant on how bunged up you auditory system might be ?

Or is it just like every other muscle and sense and it's just levels of fatigue ?

I've searched but found nothing useful so far.

TWS

Not a writer but a listener, mostly folk, world and classical. My appreciation of music varies greatly according to my mood - I can hear a piece and only half listen or I can hear it and be enthralled, according to how distracted I am on the day. Good quality audio equipment makes a big difference as you hear the nuances of the music much better and can even decide you like one particular performance better than another. 

I'd imagine that the process of composing music is a bit like the process of writing where there are good days and bad days and constantly going over the same piece tires your mind, to the point where it's best to put it down and come back the next day. The brain tires easily especially when dealing with repetition; from my job in the perfume industry I know that the sense of smell tires very quickly especially when smelling cloying fatiguing molecules like vanillas and musks. There are also good days and bad days for a perfumer. I don't see any reason why more intellectual processes shouldn't suffer the same variations.

getting older is not all about downhill, uneless you are a downhill skier.   I could never whistle until my 50s when it suddenly came to me.  Revelations about the world, science, music, language, even maths can keep coming as life goes on.  Embrace and enjoy!

As for the bad days -is it worth checking for an infection in the ear nose or throat - can lead to feelings of debilitation that come and go

Oh I'd like to think this certainly .

I've a much vaster experience to draw upon at 43 than 20 .  I've seen more shades of colour,  heard more audio in good and bad surroundings, felt more emotion .

I was fighting a cold last week,  but that never got to a sore throat .

The development of ideas about embodied cognition, where the body's motor system is seen as interacting very closely with cognitive processes, suggests that physical and environmental factors will  have a central role in how we perceive music. Our mental state is also seen as having a key role, as Rigid Raider points out - something that shouldn't really come as a surprise given the close association of music and emotion.

If you want to explore this area in detail this is a really interesting paper:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3879531/

I suppose not no. 

So it's probably a silly question.

I just seem to be experiencing vast differences in sound appreciation recently.  

Then my mood has been vastly changing past few weeks.

I feel pretty great this week as opposed to last.

I don't think it's a silly question at all - the whole area of sound perception is really interesting. A bit of a rabbit hole though... could waste hours looking at this stuff.

(Good to hear you're in a good state this week btw.)