Attentional Control Within More Complex Textures

Much of the music we interact with every day has multiple things going on at once. There might be any number of melodies and harmonizing lines, perhaps a chord progression, drums, and more.

For most people, when there’s more than one thing going on in music, the easiest part of the texture to focus on is either the melody or the highest layer of the texture (often, these are the same). Thus, most of the attentional challenges we face in music are from situations where it would be useful to focus on some element of the music that is not the melody.

Several factors can make it more difficult to follow non-melody lines. First, we may have a natural inclination to listen to the highest “voice.” Second, some parts of the texture—notably, bass lines—are more likely to leap around and therefore difficult to hear as a single melody. Third, other parts—notably, inner parts—may be less attention-grabbing because they do not have as many interesting movements, satisfying shapes, and more. Finally, most of us have sung or played plenty of melodies and thus have a certain amount of “feeling” for what kinds of things they will do, but the patterns and tendencies of inner voices and bass lines may be less familiar.

Fortunately, the same strategies we used above for simply paying close attention to single melodies can also help direct our attention around a texture. The activities presented here are intended to give you practice and scaffolding for the skill of listening to different parts of a texture.