You're waiting at a red light. Suddenly, you notice a familiar face in the car next to you. You take a better look and WHAT. THE. F##K! It's Taylor Swift—in all her majesty! While you're recovering from the frenzy, your ears pick up something weird: you're not only looking at Taylor Swift, you're also listening to Taylor Swift. But wait, your radio is not playing Taylor Swift. Are you tripping? Has the excitement flummoxed your senses? Is Taylor such an all-encompassing presence? No, no, and definitely no. You actually are listening to Taylor Swift. And it turns out it's coming from the car with Taylor Swift in it. But wait a minute! That must then mean that Taylor Swift is listening to... Taylor Swift..?
Some people would characterize this as ridiculously narcissistic and self-obsessed. I mean come on Taylor, you're great (or not) and we should all love ourselves and stuff, but that's a bit too much. “Hold on!” says a devoted fan. “She may have just been listening to her performances to identify weak spots and improve herself”. They even mention many other reasons which don't seem weird. But what if we asked Taylor and she told us “No, I listen to my music because I like my music”? Now, that's a puzzle.
Most of us would probably think “on the one hand it's obvious and expected that an artist like their music...”. But, “... on the other hand, it's still weird to listen to your music”. I think part of the reason it seems weird is that consuming your music (or generally, your art) is different from consuming other kinds of your creations. For example, if I told you that today I made marinated chicken and I ate it, it wouldn't be weird. Most of us eat our own food. Even if I tell you that I usually eat food I made because I like my cooking better than e.g., a restaurant's, it's still not that weird. I think one reason these two are different is because eating is a basic need; you have to eat. Also, eating out is usually more expensive and many times less healthy. But still, this doesn't quite explain why listening to your music is weird.
In this essay I will argue that listening to your own music is not, in fact, weird. There's a simple reason why: the most important thing for many musicians is the end product, not who created it. Let me put it differently. Let's say Maria is a musician. The reason Maria composes and then plays a piece is because she wants to listen to that piece! And the reason she records that piece is because she wants to listen to it again and again. In fact, Maria usually has a very specific idea of how she wants to listen to this piece get performed. But it's hard to achieve it. She has to do many takes. She records all of them so that when she arrives at the “perfect” take,1 it won't get lost.
The fact that it's Maria who's doing all that is, for many Marias-musicians, irrelevant. What Maria cares about is to listen to that particular piece in that particular take. But, unfortunately for Maria (and many musicians), since only Maria knows what this piece and take is (because it's initially only inside her head), only she can create it.
For better or worse, music is a peculiar case because it's impossible to describe music to people with words. Imagine that you want a very particular croissant. You go to the closest croissanterie2 and you start describing in excruciating detail how you want your croissant. To your surprise, they get it exactly right. You absolutely love that sh#t, so you now go every day to get the same exact croissant. Well, that's what Maria wants too, except she cares about music pieces, not croissants.3 But, sadly for her, she has to face two unfortunate facts.
First, she doesn't have access to musicians the way you have to croissanteries. Who has the money to hire a musician? And even if you can, who can have access to them 24hr/day? Because, for most musicians, the craving to listen to a melody can come any time and it can be incredibly strong. But secondly and most importantly, music pieces can't be described like croissants! In fact, they can't be described with words—period. A partitur is a much better medium, but still absolutely inaccurate.4 For example, there is an endless list of electric guitar vibratos that you simply can't describe in a partitur (except very crudely). And we still haven't talked about tone, timbre, etc.
In short, forget it. If you can't play the piece, you will never listen to the piece. That's why many musicians became musicians in the first place: to play the pieces they want to listen to. Of course, if what you want to listen to requires an orchestra, then, for most of us, tough luck :) Thankfully, technology is helping tremendously with that! For example, nowadays you can open up Reaper and easily record your rhythm track, then your lead track, and boom! You don't need 4 hands anymore!5
