The Chion reading was a great introduction to the type of listening that this class is going to require. We often operate during our everyday practicing causal and semantic listening. In other words, we listen to recognize a source or to understand a meaning. However, Chion encourages us to listen sounds more for what they actually are. He argues that there is a lot of emotional, physical, and aesthetic values that can be uncovered when listen to the intrinsic properties of sound.

At first sight, “reduced listening” doesn’t seem too difficult. I deem it possible to relax, close my eyes, and avoid paying attention to source or semantics. It’s kind of like observing a painting that is so abstract that all you have left to do is identify its visual properties. The hard part about this type of listening, though, is how to put words on to what you listened to. When creating my sound library, I had a hard time coming up with terminology to describe timbre, pitch, and tone. Maybe the sounds are too diverse or I don’t have enough technical knowledge. Even then, Chion says that technical descriptions are useless too.

During class, I’ve heard many people describe unknown sounds and sound pieces by the emotional reaction that they got from it. Chion would probably not consider this description be tied to the raw qualities of sound. However, I think this is still one of the best ways of turning reduced listening into a shared experience. Moreover, just because the way we talk about a sound is not directly referring to its raw properties, doesn’t mean the reaction/effect is not connected to it.