Josiah Gaiter Ann Cornish Eng 122-503 6/22/2013 How to Truly Listen In her TED talk given in Monterey

California February 2003 Evelyn Glenni discusses How to truly listen. Glenni is an internationally known percussionist but with her presentation she tries to target the non musicians who may never attend her concerts and help them understand the value of sound and how to truly hear it. She explains that sound can be received through different parts of our bodies such as our eyes or by feeling the vibrations in our feet, hands, stomach, ECT She also explains the importance of interpretations of sound. With our human emotions we can interpret instructions and turn sound into music. Glennie mentions that we should be able to relate our feelings to our music and our practice. She questions teaching approaches that concentrate on technique without musicality because there is no emotional connection. She also talks about how one should feel music and experience the entire journey of sound and music. Glennie uses pathos very effectively throughout her speech whether it is through her musical examples or her word choice she appeals to the audiences emotions. She is very humble and does not mention her credentials directly but because she is a deaf musician people see her automatically as a reliable source because she has obviously found a new way to listen. Her use

of logos and logical appeal were lacking in certain areas. This makes it difficult to find a way to make a plan and implement some of her ideas. Glennie starts her speech by explaining that we can read music just like a book and then demonstrates what the piece sounds like when she literally reads the instructions. Then she plays the piece again but interprets the instructions and uses expressions and emotions to bring the music to life. She uses this tactic several times throughout her speech to make an emotional appeal to her audience. This allows the audience to choose between two options and decide which is more emotionally appealing. Is one more exciting, sad, warming, soothing, tear jerking, angering, or cold than the other? When she interprets each example and intentionally adds more expression and emotion she allows the audience to truly hear the difference that they may have never known. Glennie talks about how we hear with our eyes and during this presentation one of the most effective ways she communicates emotion to the audience is through her body language. She adds emotional appeal by the level enthusiasm she approaches each musical example. The very first musical example she plays she intentionally shows little emotional and looks almost bored. She then plays it again and there is radically more emotion shown through her body movements, which is all part of emotionally connecting with her audience. Glennie makes use of pathos and ethos at the same time throughout this presentation. She talks about her childhood and how some of the steps she went through to learn how to play. Her sharing these hardships appeals to the audience emotionally because we all know what it is like to have to work hard for something and to face problems on the way. This also shows her credibility because we now know she has been working on this skill for a long time and that it was not easy for her to master which means she may have had to learn about more than just the conventional methods which makes her more qualified than the average percussionist. She uses

these same appeals when she discusses her entrance into the royal academy. Once the audience realizes that Glennie is deaf, if they did not before, this also gives her some automatic credibility. Because sound is simply vibrations entering your ear and sending a signal to your brain then your brain telling you what you are actually hearing there is no reason you couldnt feel those vibrations through another part of your body. Our ears are made specifically for this ability so we may have to work harder to do the same thing with our hands but it is often found that when one sense is lost others are increased. Glennie spent time developing a strong sense of touch and therefore knew what each sound felt like in different parts of her body. Once you understand all of this the automatic credibility she brings just by being a deaf musician is incredible. This is effective because it is pathos that speaks for itself she does not have to use time in her speech explaining all of this. One area of her speech I though could use some improvement was her logical appeal. She mentions in her speech that students should not be given exercises just to learn control but that they should be given music that has the same discipline in it so that they will be invested and have a connection to the skill. This may seem logical but maybe not sustainable when we think about the broad spectrum of music that musicians have to play. We play exercises so that we can use them in varied settings and that when a piece of music asks us to use a hard technique we are able to simply apply it to that specific piece but all of the skills for that technique exist because of the non musical exercises. If we only learned techniques through music we would be limited because maybe that piece of music only asks you to use a technique at very low volumes so it would be difficult for you to use that technique at higher volumes. There is not enough time for us to learn enough pieces to cover the different applications of all the techniques. This is the reason that we have non musical exercises that build control. These exercises also allows us to

learn music more quickly. Instead of learning new techniques with many pieces we simply apply the exercises we already know to a piece we do not. There have been great strides towards trying to make exercises effective and still musical but, the argument Glennie made was not detailed enough and did not appeal logically to convince me that she was correct. Glennie introduces a fresh perspective on how to listen to music and even everyday sound. While there were some areas to improve this presentation to more effectively communicate I still thought she effectively communicated with the average person how to listen in a new, deeper, more satisfying way.

Works Cited Glennie, Evelyn. "How to Truly Listen." Ted.com. TED Talks, 1 Apr. 2004. Web. 22 June 2013. <http://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html>.