Hyewon’s blog entry from last fall, “Deep Attention and Hyper Attention,” resonated with me. I constantly encounter the “hyper attention” issue each week in the Music and Western Civilization class where I teach listening skills to undergraduates. The 3-minute popular song has founded these students’ musical experience. Most students can’t imagine sitting still and listening to a 2.5-hour concert, much less, a concert where there are no words!

The students have a wide range of musical “skills:” some have no musical experience, while others have had a couple of years of piano or violin. On quizzes, it is required that the students be able to discern elements of music of an unknown piece of music: instrumentation, meter (duple/triple), melody (major/minor), and texture (the interaction of musical melodies). From these components, they must engage with what they have hear to determine the genre, composer, year, and historical context of the piece. For example, if they hear a homophonic vocal piece accompanied by a harpsichord with an regular meter, they could determine that the music was an aria from an early Baroque opera possibly composed by Monteverdi. (with practice! this can be done!)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnzXbx97_UI[/youtube]

You might ask, “what is the point of such a listening exercise where students need to learn components of music from a different century and time?” In Rebecca Shafir’s book, “The Zen of Listening,” she not only connects “mindful” listening to increased attention spans, but also to higher grades, better negotiation skills, a stronger knowledge base, and more fulfilling family, social, and professional relationships. Besides the obvious of expanding students’ musical horizons, I see this skill as one that can actually increase their attention span and refocus them from hyper listening to deep listening … from hyper attention to deep attention.