The Grand Listening Project
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The Grand Listening Project means listening to my ENTIRE music collection, some 3000 titles worth, now that most composer collections have been curated, and most albums whittled. I started this project in the late summer of 2024. The process is thusly:
First, I go through my iTunes collection album by album, starting with 10CC and moving on alphabetically. I skip every album I also own on CD. Once I’ve finished with the iTunes collection, I move on to the CDs.
I’m currently on “T” and “Thomas Newman”, so I don’t have THAT many left. Maybe a couple hundred. Then I FINALLY start playing my CDs, which I haven’t done in years. Some 800-1000 worth of those, I think. So the project has a long way to go still.
Obviously, I can’t do this all the time or I will go mad. In certain composer walkthroughs, like Delerue, it gets a bit samey. When that happens, I break it up by sampling new scores or maybe an LP or something. Before I move back in.
But the question to y’all is: Have you ever attempted a systematic walkthrough of all of your music collection at any point?
(this is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me).
No, way too much… I do composer walthroughs on special occasions like birthdays or sadly deaths or if I for some reason explore a composer I didn’t listen to for ages or are not that familar with.
I did listen to a great deal of Schifrins for that reason last year but didn’t even manage everything. TOo much else to listen to and even things I never listened to…
Hehe, yes, it’s a ridiculous and anorak thing to do, really. But I wanted to try it once in my life.
I’ve often thought of doing that, because I know that there are quite a few titles in my collection which I’ll probably never be in the right mood to listen to again. But I never found myself in quite the right mood to start the walk-through either.
But I’m “kind of” doing it at the moment. After reading the Tim Greiving book, I started going through my John Williams CDs alphabetically. I’ve just finished JURASSIC PARK. Now there’s an interesting example of what I touched on before. It’s a score that I hadn’t played for years, largely because I “thought I knew it” inside out. But no. There were long stretches which I wouldn’t have been able to place if someone had played them to me blind. So it’s a worthwhile exercise… while probably being no good for weaning myself off OCD behaviour.
That’s actually a great walkthrough to be in. I’ve had maybe 5-6 complete John Williams walkthroughs myself over the years. And I have another one ahead of me as I move from iTunes to CDs (the John Williams collection is obviously placed first on the shelves).
If you’re already at JURASSIC PARK, I’d say you’re a fair way in.
But the question to y’all is: Have you ever attempted a systematic walkthrough of all of your music collection at any point?
There was obviously a time, quite some time ago, when I knew every single album I had in-and-out. When I played the few albums I had all the time, and every new album was played and played again.
But nowadays, the attempt to systematically listen to all my music would take years at the ratio that I could do that (with just a few hours listening time each day, sometimes more, sometimes less).
While I have phases where I particularly concentrate on music from a composer, and epoch, or even a particular work, that’s sporadic and happens naturally. I don’t dry to do that systematically, so the answer to the question is “no”.
Following on from what Nick mentioned – and I’m sure that Thor has mentioned it too – I also used to know every one of my CDs (LPs back then) note for note. Part of the reason was that I had so few, another perhaps is that I (we?) were absorbing everything like a sponge in the old days. It may be futile to try to recapture that, but I am of a nostalgic bent, and instead of attempting to embrace everything in all its exponential wonder I find myself tending to at least want to get back to really “knowing” what I already have.
Hence my decision to start a walkthrough, albeit only of Williams at the moment.
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