[Docutech]

I can think of countless times, while listening to Claude Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun or En Bateau, that I say to myself: "Hey, I never heard that before!."  I hear these pieces often and each and every time I hear them I stumble on something new. Be it in my car, home or in front of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, it never fails.  I feel that sometimes my mind often wonders away from my listening and I miss little details like that.  My audiophile training consists of paying attention, while listening to a particular piece. The sound is there, my ears hear it, but sometimes my brain doesn't fully process the whole thing.

Does that make sense?   

[jules]

Yes docutech, that makes complete sense and really captures the essence of the listening. If there's a parallel here maybe it's like any other forms of communication ... there's a difference between listening and hearing. Ear training CDs have absolutely nothing to do with appreciating music but listening to music isn't just a passive exercise.

jules

[ooheadsoo]

Buy a violin (or cello or clarinet etc) and join a community orchestra. I guarantee your sense of pitch and detail will improve enormously.

--Ethan

I've been planning to do just that for a while...buy a violin and learn how to play it at least rudimentarily, that is, not ruin  an existing orchestra.  Of all the instruments, live violin is the hardest to get just right...CD never has gotten it for me, vinyl has (but not all cartridges). 

I've gotten home from a handful of orchestral concerts in the past couple years and tried to reproduce it in my system as accurately as I (recently) remember it within 30 minutes of leaving the hall....and keep coming up with the same verdict each time: my CD or (pricey) DAC's owned in that time couldn't reproduce it, and only the Grado cartridges (of 11 cartridges, 2 are Grados) did it commendably in my vinyl set-up.

I recently read the quality of the even the Chinese $59 jobbers you can find on ebay are quite good nowadays...perhaps not Cremona quality, but it'll be good enough, I think, to have an instrument to instruct me nearby for pitch and detail.

Thanks for reminding me to do it, Ethan.  I had meant to a couple months back, but life got busy on me 

John

I've probably mentioned this before, but if you can spend $150-300 on ebay, you'll get a much nicer instrument.  Everything from quality control to generally accepted aesthetic values will be appreciably higher by even a layman. 

[samplesj]

I recently read the quality of the even the Chinese $59 jobbers you can find on ebay are quite good nowadays...perhaps not Cremona quality, but it'll be good enough, I think, to have an instrument to instruct me nearby for pitch and detail.

I've probably mentioned this before, but if you can spend $150-300 on ebay, you'll get a much nicer instrument.  Everything from quality control to generally accepted aesthetic values will be appreciably higher by even a layman. 

If you do buy local be sure to check what the store's target audience is.  Most of the places around here sell "fiddles" with exceptionally screetchy steel strings and overly bright bodies (too much shellac?).

You might also think about looking at older violins on ebay.  My favorite is an ebay special and its really nothing more than a fairly old entry level violin, but evidently they don't make them like they used to .  With the right strings (I like infeld blues) when I'm playing well (occasionally it happens) I can get a beautiful warm tone out of it that my others just can't touch.

[Ethan Winer]

Wow!  You have to be pretty brave to hop into an orchestra without knowing how to play violin!

LOL, let me repharse that:

Get a violin, get to at least a mediocre level, then join an amateur orchestra.

Okay?

--Ethan