Michel Chion: Starting With The Modes Of Listening

Starting with the modes of listening. Michel Chion, identifies three listening modes, casual listening, semantic listening and reduced listening. Reduced listening is a term derived from Pierre Schaeffer to indicate the kind of listening that emphasis on the characteristics of the sound itself independent of any causal listening or semantic listening.

Billie Holiday, an American jazz singer that had a great career and was know for having one of the most distinctive voices of all time. Holiday sang of incomprehension, she sang of hate, and racist violence. Holiday sang low and mystified. Her very own personal style inspired and still inspires many artists. What distinguished her from others was that She had this great ability to convey emotion through her voice. Reduced listening focuses on the traits of the sound itself independent on the cause of the sound or the

When we take Sound as an object, by itself, and observe it, we don’t need to shuttle between the sounds content, source and meaning. “Reduced listening requires the fixing of sounds, which thus obtain the status of veritable objects, the sound recording.” (Chion 1) What made Holidays style very fascinating is the emotions she conveyed through it. The songs she sang mirrored the circumstances and what she went through in her life, and here, artist’s personal experiences play a huge role in the way they convey and deliver their emotions. It depends on the artist and the way they are able to bring their experiences to life in their voices in such a way that the audience will also be living them as well. Reduced listening is also identifying the pitch of a tone, or the gap between two consecutive tones. It is about opening up the ears and modeling the power of