When I first listen to a song, sometimes it takes a while before I can decide whether I like it or not. Sometimes it happens that the songs I like on the first listen will not endure as much as a song that takes me a while to get into.

Inevitably, there comes a point when you’ve heard a song enough times to say you’ve heard it enough. After several listens of a song, even a song a like, I will become less curious about it since I’ve gotten used to the melody, beats, voices, and whatnot. It’s not that I’m sick of it (just yet) but it’s not as interesting anymore. When that happens I always do this. I scroll down my playlist and I go to select the song, but before I press play I think to myself that I’m going to focus on this particular aspect of the song – the drums, the guitar, the vocals, the bass, whatever. Then while I listen to the song, I will listen to, say, the drums (kind of) separately from the rest of the instruments. However it doesn’t always go as planned. At times, I’ll forget that I wanted to listen to a particular element and listen to the song as a whole. When that happens, as soon as I remember, I re-select the song and listen to it again.

I wonder if this sort of thing could be applied in cinema. For example, if there is a particular dialogue that I’m hellbent on, I would like to slowly drown out all the other noise and music there is until it’s just the characters voice.