Physicality of music

I heard a band recently — band, as in: tubas, trumpets, clarinets, percussion and the like.

As I sat in the auditorium, I was reminded: listening is physical.

I don’t just mean that the sound waves vibrated my eardrums and the small bones and hairs inside my ears.

I mean that I could feel the music vibrating in my chest. The sound enveloped me in a beautiful, analog way. My physical presence in the concert hall changed how I experienced the music.

With everything that’s available digitally and miniaturized to fit into an earbud, sometimes it’s refreshing to feel music in its raw form … uncompressed, unfiltered, and unhindered.