Ruth Herbert

In what ways may individual differences in personality, age and training shape subjective experiences with and of music? And how far is it possible to determine whether particular personality characteristics may predict capacity for certain subtle shifts of consciousness such as episodes of spontaneous, effortless involvement? This chapter examines the construct of Openness (the fifth and most variably defined ‘Big 5’ dimension) and the associated sub-construct of Absorption, both of which have attracted increasing attention from researchers in the last five years. Drawing on a subset of findings from a mixed method study of 10-18 year olds involvement in music in daily life, it outlines what trait and state models can and cannot reveal about the phenomenology of musical consciousness.

In what ways does listening to music shape everyday perception? Is music particularly effective in promoting shifts in consciousness? Is there any difference perceptually between contemplating one’s surroundings and experiencing a work of art?

Everyday Music Listening is the first book to focus in depth on the detailed nature of music listening episodes as lived mental experiences. Ruth Herbert uses new empirical data to explore the psychological processes involved in everyday music listening scenarios, charting interactions between music, perceiver and environment in a diverse range of real-world contexts. Findings are integrated with insights from a broad range of literature, including consciousness studies and research into altered states of consciousness, as well as ideas from ethology and evolutionary psychology suggesting that a psychobiological capacity for trancing is linked to the origins of making and receiving of art.

The term ‘trance’ is not generally associated with music listening outside ethnomusicological studies of strong experiences, yet ‘hypnotic-like’ involvements in daily life have long been recognized by hypnotherapy researchers. The author argues that multiply distributed attention – prevalent in much contemporary listening– does not necessarily indicate superficial engagement. Music emerges as a particularly effective mediator of experience. Absorption and dissociation, as manifestations of trancing, are self-regulatory processes, often operating at the level of unconscious awareness, that support an individual perception of psychological health.

This fascinating study brings together research and theory from a wide range of fields to provide a new framework for understanding the phenomenology of music listening in a way that will appeal to both specialist academic audiences and a broad general readership.

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This chapter explores varieties and qualities of everyday music listening experiences in the U.K, and what range of consciousness these may encompass. The focus is particularly on experiences lying between extremes of intense emotional involvement and apparent inattention, when music acts as a barely perceived backdrop to another activity. Data supports a model of consciousness as fluctuating and continuous (as opposed to comprising discrete, static ‘states’), functioning as a dynamic system made up of a series of interacting variables. Key factors involved in this flux are changes in: attentional focus, level of absorption, arousal, sensory awareness, experience of time, thought and sense of self. Some of the phenomena emerging accord with those in the absorption and hypnosis literature relating to the constructs of ‘trance’ and ‘trancing’, notably forms of trance defined as ‘light’, ‘weak’ or ‘natural’. Dissociation, absorption and trancing are highlighted as self-regulatory processes, often operating at the level of unconscious perception, acting to effect shifts of consciousness during everyday music listening experiences that support an individual perception of psychological balance.

Complementing the 2011 publication Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives, this edited volume of 17 essays is organized into three parts. The chapters in Part I (‘Music, consciousness, and the four Es’) question the assumption that consciousness is a matter of what is going on in individual brains, and investigate the ways in which musical consciousness arises through our embodied experience, is embedded in our social and cultural existence, extends out into world, and is manifested as we enact our relationships with and within it. Part II (‘Consciousness in musical practice’) engages with music as a corporeal and culturally embedded practice, conjoining individuals in the social sphere, and extending consciousness across actual and virtual spaces. The chapters in this part explore composition, improvisation, performance, and listening as practices, and consider how music, a paradigmatic example of meaningful action, reveals consciousness as...

Few studies of everyday musical engagement have focused on the subjective 'feel' (phenomenology) of unfolding, lived experience. Additionally, the musical experiences of children and young adolescents are currently under-represented in the literature. This paper constitutes an in-progress report of the preliminary stage of a mixed method three year empirical enquiry, designed to explore psychological characteristics of the subjective experience of young people hearing music in everyday, 'real world' scenarios in the UK. The aims of the preliminary stage were to identify varied modes of listening, to pinpoint whether these are age-related, and to explore the extent to which young people use music as a form of escape (dissociation) from self, activity, or situation. 25 participants (aged 10-18) were interviewed and subsequently kept diaries of their music-listening experiences for two weeks. Data was subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Key them...

Empirical studies of music listening in everyday life frequently frame individuals' experience of music primarily in terms of emotion and mood. Yet emotions - at least as represented by categorical and dimensional models of emotion - do not account for the totality of subjective experience. This is particularly apparent in the case of a range of so-called 'alternate' or 'altered' states of consciousness including 'flow', aesthetic and spiritual expe-riences. Some researchers have responded by highlighting the process of absorption (effortless attention) within significant experiences of music. To date however, the role of dissociation (detachment), the counter-part of absorption, has received little research attention outside ethnomusicological accounts of ritualistic trance. This paper explores the importance of dissociation to everyday musical experiences, drawing on find-ings from the author's past and ongoing empirical studies of psychological pro...

Technologically mediated solitary listening now constitutes the prevalent mode of musical engagement in the Industrialized West. Music is heard in a variety of real-world contexts, and qualities of subjective experience might similarly be expected to be wide-ranging. Yet though much is known about function (music as a behavioural resource) less research has focused on ways in which music mediates consciousness. This essay critiques conceptualizations of music listening in extant literature and explores how listening to music in daily life both informs and reflects subjectivity.

Psychological and musicological literature on music listening commonly distinguishes between autonomous and heteronomous ways of listening, associating the former with unusual and the latter with mundane, habitual listening scenarios. Empirical findings from my research, which used ethnographic methods to tap qualities of subjective experience, indicate that attentive and diffused listening do not map neatly onto 'special' and 'ordinary' contexts and that a distributed, fluctuating attentional awareness and multimodal focus are central to many experiences of hearing music. CLICK ON JOURNAL OF SONIC STUDIES LINK WHICH WILL TAKE YOU TO THE OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE

Dissociative experiences involving music have received little research attention outside the field of ethnomusicology. This paper examines the psychological characteristics of normative dissociation (detachment) across musical and non-musical experiences in ‘real world’, everyday settings. It draws upon a subset of data arising from an empirical project designed to compare transformative shifts of consciousness, with and without music in daily life, and the ways in which use of music may facilitate the processes of dissociation and absorption. Twenty participants kept unstructured diaries for two weeks, recording free descriptions of involving experiences of any kind as soon as possible after their occurrence. All descriptions were subsequently subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).

Results suggest that dissociative experiences are a familiar occurrence in everyday life. Diary entries highlight an established practice of actively sought detachment from self, surroundings or activity, suggesting that, together with absorption, the processes of derealization (altered perception of surroundings) and depersonalization (detachment from self) constitute common means of self-regulation in daily life. Music emerges as a particularly versatile facilitator of dissociative experience because of its semantic ambiguity, portability, and the variety of ways in which it may mediate perception, so facilitating an altered relationship to self and environment.

The construct of absorption (effortless engagement) has been the subject of a small number of discipline-specific studies of involvement, including music. This paper reports the results of an empirical project that compared psychological qualities of absorption in everyday music listening scenarios with characteristics of non-music-related involvement. Absorption was located in “real-world” settings, and experiences across different activities in a variety of contexts were tapped as soon as possible after they occurred. The inquiry was designed to test two assumptions that have underpinned previous absorption research: first, that certain activities are inherently particularly absorbing; second, that absorption is best conceptualized primarily as a trait as opposed to a state. Twenty participants kept diaries for two weeks, recording descriptions of involving experiences of any kind. Eight weeks after submitting descriptive reports they completed the Modified Tellegen Absorption Scale (Jamieson, 2005). Diaries indicated that different activities shared a subset of involving features, and confirmed the importance of multi-sensory perception and the imaginative faculty to absorbed experiences. Music may be a particularly effective agent in the facilitation of absorption because it affords multiple potential entry points to involvement (acoustic attributes, source specification, entrainment, emotion, fusion of modalities) and because its semantic malleability makes it adaptable to a variety of circumstances. The MODTAS provided insufficient evidence for establishing correlations between state and trait absorption. It is argued that state and trait divisions are constructs that are inherently problematic.

A small but significant body of recent research has successfully crossed the boundaries between ethnomusicology and psychology, and both disciplines are demonstrating a
growing interest in charting interactions between music, context and individual
consciousness. The phenomenon of trance is a clear example of the interaction of mind
with specific cultural contexts, and cross-disciplinary approaches would appear highly
relevant to future research. However, outside ethnomusicology and anthropology, despite
the burgeoning field of music and consciousness studies, attitudes towards the constructs
of trance and altered states of consciousness as reputable areas of scholarly enquiry are
somewhat ambivalent. One reason for this is a continued lack of academic consensus over
definitions of the terms ‘trance’ and ‘altered states’. This paper re-assesses the different
ways in which trance has been conceptualised in the literature. It argues that the
continued ethnomusicological focus on high arousal models of trance has led to the
neglect (or exclusion) of other types of trancing, particularly specific instances of
European
American secular trancing, and associated literature. I draw on my own UKbased
study of solitary musical involvement in daily life, which has been informed by
both psychological and ethnomusicological perspectives.
Keywords: Trance; Music; Altered States; Phenomenology; Psychology; Ethnomusicology;
Cross-cultural; Hypnosis

“ … Psychologists and laymen often assume that [an] explanatory model exhausts the reality in question. The model then ceases to be as if and becomes nothing but” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975: 8)

Since Gabrielsson’s pioneering study of the phenomenology of strong experiences with music (2003; 2011) there has been growing interest in mapping aspects of subjective experiences of making and receiving music that fall outside the confines of emotion models. Within the fields of music psychology and ethnomusicology a relatively small but significant body of work has addressed alternative ways of framing musical experience via exploration of alternative conceptual models, including kinds of consciousness, altered states of consciousness (ASC) and trance (e.g. Becker, 2004; Clarke, 2011; Herbert, 2011).
One recent line of enquiry, prompted by previous research concerning potential connections between personality and music preferences, has focused on the relationship between personality characteristics (commonly as captured by the Big Five Inventory (BFI)) and musical involvement (e.g. Garrido & Schubert, 2011; Corrigall et al., 2013). In essence, this work has either concentrated on aspects of personality that may predict likelihood of musical training/achievement, or aspects of personality that may shape subjective experiences of music.
The current paper examines the construct of Openness (the fifth and most variably defined ‘Big 5’ dimension) and the associated sub-construct of Absorption, both of which have attracted increasing attention from researchers in the last five years. Drawing on a subset of findings from a mixed method study of 10-18 year olds involvement in music in daily life, it outlines what trait and state models can and cannot reveal about the phenomenology of musical engagement.

Background:
The concept of an 'experience economy', originally a business philosophy (Pine & Gilmore, 1999), has exerted a growing influence during the last decade across a range of industries and organisations - including the Arts, Leisure and Retail. Key is the notion that consumers (particularly in affluent societies) value multimodal experiences rather than material objects (of which they have plenty). Multimodal experiences involving music are nothing new, but advances in digital technologies have allowed for a rich interaction between processes of mind and a range of communication media.  Such experiences  pervade everyday life, yet have received relatively little attention within the field of music psychology.

Aims:
This paper explores and compares qualities and psychological characteristics present in three instances of technologically mediated experiences with music: solitary music listening, sound art installations, multisensory experiential marketing.

Method:
Phenomenological findings (deriving from semi-structured interviews and unstructured diaries) from an empirical nationwide study of  10-18 year olds [N=59] music listening experiences were compared with published documented accounts of the creation and reception of sound art plus uses of music in multisensory commercial contexts; specifically from the burgeoning field of Experience Design, a practice located at the intersection between the aesthetic and the mundane.

Results:
Results support an understanding of multimodal subjective experiences with music as systemic, characterised by an informal blending of selective external phenomena - auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, gustatory - with internal thoughts/imaginings. The emphasis may be on mediation of immediate 'real-world' environment or on immersion in alternative or virtual scenarios/worlds.


Conclusions:
Within the field of music psychology, music experiences in everyday life are often framed as experiences of  rather than with music. If the role of music is privileged above other components of experience the contributory importance and interaction between the different components of experience (as subjectively perceived) may be indiscernible.

Keywords:
Multimodal experience -  everyday life -  multimedia

What is it like to experience music as a teen or tween? Do age, gender, personality and training shape personal experiences of music? Young people clearly use music to negotiate ways of being in the world (e.g. the use of music to frame routines) and experiencing the world (e.g. the use of music to mediate perception). Yet, the study of the subjective 'feel' (phenomenology) of children and adolescent's unfolding, lived experiences of music is still relatively recent. This paper focuses on findings from a three year nationwide empirical study of the psychological characteristics of 10 to 18 year olds subjective experiences of music. This was a mixed-method three-phase enquiry, utilizing semi-structured interviews, diaries of music listening experiences (Total number = 34) a web-based questionnaire (Total number = 511) and web-based listening study (Total number = 84) to tap the phenomenology of everyday musical experiences and examine the relationship between musical engagement and personality characteristics, age and gender. Findings indicate that music affords an important means of self-regulation for young people, and that the adoption of strategies to manage aspects of self and identity is evident in prepubescence. Individuals adopt particular modes of experiencing music (e.g. a tendency towards imaginative involvement or dissociative experience), some of which are age-related.

Empirical studies of music listening in everyday life frequently frame individuals' experience of music primarily in terms of emotion and mood. Yet emotions - at least as represented by categorical and dimensional models of emotion - do not account for the totality of subjective experience. This is particularly apparent in the case of a range of so-called 'alternate' or 'altered' states of consciousness including 'flow', aesthetic and spiritual experiences. Some researchers have responded by highlighting the process of absorption (effortless attention) within significant experiences of music. To date however, the role of dissociation (detachment), the counterpart of absorption, has received little research attention outside ethnomusicological accounts of ritualistic trance. This paper explores the importance of dissociation to everyday musical experiences, drawing on findings from the author's past and ongoing empirical studies of psychological processes of everyday involvement with music in 'real-world' UK contexts. Free phenomenological reports from unstructured diaries compiled by participants aged 9-85 indicate dissociation from self, surroundings or activity in conjunction with music is a common occurrence in everyday life, particularly for teenagers. Significantly, a number of experiences appear to possess neither positive nor negative valence, instead functioning to offer a relief from aspects of self (emotion and thought). 
Dissociation and Absorption are accepted characteristics of trance in hypnotherapeutic literature. Results from the data discussed here suggest that moves away from a perceived baseline state of consciousness in conjunction with hearing music in daily life are a common phenomenon and that such experiences may facilitate freedom from emotion.

Aims: This paper reports the initial findings from the main phase of a nationwide study exploring the psychological characteristics of the subjective experience of young people (aged between 10 and 18 years) engaging with music in everyday scenarios in the UK. The aims were to identify varied modes of listening; to highlight the ways in which individuals informally use music to facilitate psychological self-regulation and a subjective sense of wellbeing; to examine the impact of age, personality and musical training upon the ways young people engage with music.

Methods:  30 participants (recruited via purposive sampling) completed semi-structured interviews, and recorded experiences of listening to music in an unstructured diary for a two-week period. Data was subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to gather emergent themes.

Outcomes: Analysis of diaries and interviews revealed an established if often unconsciously managed practice of musical self-regulation. Emergent themes included the use of music to dissociate from aspects of self and/or situation, to feel relaxed, to feel 'connected' to frame and support everyday routines, to articulate moods and emotions and to provide a framework through which to explore emotions vicariously. Data provided some support for the hypothesis that the ways in which music is subjectively experienced alter between pre-pubescence and early adolescence.

Implications: Understanding of the varied ways in which young people informally interact with music in daily life are highly relevant to the promotion of public health. Findings may usefully inform the practice of health professionals and teachers working with children and teenagers, notably in supporting the development of metacognitive skills necessary to engage with music across the lifespan in ways that are beneficial to a sense of wellbeing (Hallam, 2012).

Reference:
Hallam, S. (2012). The effects of background music on health and wellbeing. In R. Macdonald, G. Kreutz & L. Mitchell (Eds.), Music, Health & Wellbeing (pp. 491-501). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Aesthetic objects (including music) do not constitute complete sensory virtual worlds. Neither is any experience of music entirely autonomous. Listening is inevitably performative; sensory and meaning 'gaps' are 'filled in' through a range of cognitive, sensory and affective responses (e.g. imagining, blending of the visual with the aural). This accords with an ecological model of listening in which experience is the sum of the interaction between perceiver, environment and stimulus attributes of music.
Heteronomous, multimodal listening is a common model of listening in daily life, yet one that is often dismissed by scholars as superficial. This paper further develops a central theme of my book Everyday Music Listening,  that synthesis of different components of experience in multimodal everyday listening episodes affords consciousness transformation in a manner similar to that of a formal hypnotherapeutic induction. Moreover, the phenomenology of such episodes corresponds with what the influential 20th century clinical psychologist Milton Erickson identified as the "common everyday trance."
I draw on recent findings from my ongoing empirical studies of the psychological processes present in real-world, technologically mediated solitary experiences of music. Phenomenological report (free description and interview data) supports a model of consciousness during everyday music listening as a dynamic system, made up of a series of interacting variables. If music is privileged above other components of experience (by framing everyday music listening episodes primarily as experiences of music) the contributory importance and interaction between the different components of experience (as subjectively perceived) is skewed  and the totality of experience obscured.
Music is a versatile, non-prescriptive multifaceted stimulus. It provides a diverse range of potential entry points for consciousness transformation via the multiple foci for attention that it affords and is frequently present in what Erickson recognized as instances of spontaneous trance in everyday life.

Keywords: Multimodal Listening; Trance; Erickson; Everyday.

Listening to music has been consistently identified as one of young people's most popular activities, serving to enhance routine tasks and activities, increase levels of enjoyment, modulate mood, pass the time, provide a forum for the negotiation of self-concept or identity and facilitate social relations. Music also provides a prime means by which cultural values and behaviours are acquired. Due to the rapid proliferation of digital and mobile technologies, diverse musics are now encountered in a variety of contexts, suggesting that the ways in which music is experienced are similarly broad-ranging. Yet few studies have focused on the subjective 'feel' (phenomenology) of unfolding, lived experience. Additionally, the experiences of children and young adolescents are currently under-represented in the literature. 

The study reported here is part of a mixed method three year empirical enquiry, designed to explore psychological characteristics of the subjective experience of young people hearing music in everyday, 'real world’ scenarios in the UK. The aims were to identify varied modes of listening, to pinpoint whether these are age-related, to explore the extent to which young people use music as a form of escape (dissociation) from self, activity, or situation, to assess the effect of digital technologies on ways in which music is experienced, and to examine whether a high level of involvement in making music affects the subjective experience of listening to music. 25 participants (aged 10-18) were interviewed and subsequently kept diaries of their music-listening experiences for two weeks. Data was subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).

Key themes identified include the use of music to create a sense of momentum and excitement to mundane scenarios, to detach or 'zone out' from aspects of self and/or situation, to feel energized, relaxed or 'connected’, to articulate moods, to aid daydreams/imaginative fantasies and to provide a framework through which to explore emotions vicariously, using music as a template for modelling future emotional experience. Subjective experience was frequently characterised by a fusion of modalities.

Children and young adolescents are less consciously aware than older teenagers of the ways in which they engage with music. Research concerning the informal listening practices of this age group can enrich understanding of the role of music in subjective experience within daily life and has particular relevance for professionals in music education, music therapy and those involved in the health and wellbeing of young people.

Keywords: Everyday Life, subjective experience, music, young people, self-regulation

Background

Empirical studies of everyday listening often frame the way individuals experience music primarily in terms of emotion and mood. Yet emotions - at least as represented by categorical and dimensional models of emotion  - do not account for the entirety of subjective experience.  The term 'musical affect' may equally relate to aesthetic, spiritual, and 'flow' experiences, in addition to a range of altered states of consciousness (Juslin & Sloboda, 2010), including the construct of trance.

Aims and Main Contribution

Alternative ways of conceptualising and mapping experience suggest new understandings of the subjective, frequently multimodal, experience of music in daily life. This poster explores categorizations of aspects of conscious experience, such as checklists of basic dimensions of characteristics of transformations of consciousness (e.g. Pekala's Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI), or Gabrielsson and Lindström Wik's descriptive system for strong experiences with music (SEM-DSM), together with the potential impact of specific kinds of consciousness upon experience (e.g. the notion of present centred (core or primary), and autobiographical (extended/higher order) forms of consciousness (Damasio, 1999, Edelman, 1989).Three recent empirical studies (Herbert, 2011) which used unstructured diaries and semi-structured interviews to explore the psychological processes of everyday involving experiences with music in a range of 'real-world' UK scenarios are discussed.

Implications

Free phenomenological report is highlighted as a valuable, if partial means of charting subjective experience. Importantly, it constitutes a method that provides insight into the totality of experience, so enabling researchers to move beyond the confines of emotion.

References

Damasio, A. (1999). The Feeling Of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the
Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.

Edelman, G. (1989). The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness. New York: Basic Books.

Gabrielsson, A. (2011). Strong Experiences with Music. Trans R. Bradbury
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Herbert, R. (2011). Everyday Music Listening: Absorption, Dissociation and Trancing. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Juslin, P.N., & Sloboda, J.A. (eds) (2010). Handbook of Music and Emotion:
Theory, Research, Applications. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Pekala, R.J. (1991) Quantifying Consciousness: An Empirical Approach. New York: Plenum Press.

Keywords: Phenomenology, Emotion, Consciousness, Everyday Life, Listening

Uses of recorded music as an everyday 'health technology' have attracted increased research attention over the past decade, reflecting moves towards the promotion of healthcare as ideally preventative i.e. concerned with well-being, as opposed to pathology. To date however, detailed data relating to the subjective 'feel' of experiences of informal health musicking - particularly those of older adults and children - is tantalisingly sparse.
This paper analyses the phenomenology of everyday 'lay-therapeutic' uses of music, and the ways in which music facilitates a sense of wellbeing. It draws on data from recent and ongoing empirical research projects concerning the psychological nature of musical and non-musical involvement. Findings are linked to psychobiological perspectives relating to consciousness transformation and ultradian studies.
Understanding of the varied ways in which individuals informally interact with music in daily life may usefully inform therapeutic uses of music across a range of health and social care settings.

Objectives: Studies of everyday experiences of music commonly tap emotional response, rather than a broader range of experiential qualia. This paper analyses the phenomenology of everyday experiences of listening to music, and the ways in which music may facilitate the psychological processes of dissociation (detachment) and absorption (effortless involvement).

Design: The study employed free phenomenological report to access the subjective perception of unfolding experience in conjunction with listening to music in a variety of 'real world' settings.

Methods: 24 adults recruited via purposive sampling (age range 16-85 years) kept unstructured diaries for two weeks, recording descriptions of involving experiences of listening to music. Data was subsequently analysed idiographically using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).

Results: Free written descriptions highlighted an established if 'hidden' practice of self-regulation, often appearing to operate at the level of unconscious perception. Episodes displayed a subtle move away from ordinary modes of experiencing, occurring spontaneously or volitionally. Two phenomenological categories of experience emerged: 1. Episodes in which experience felt primarily integrative. 2. Episodes featuring benign depersonalization and /or derealization.

Conclusions: Everyday listening experiences, in common with strong experiences of music, feature transformations in consciousness that demonstrate changes in attentional focus, sensory awareness, arousal, experience of time, thought processes and sense of self. Music emerges as a versatile mediator of absorbed and dissociative experience, its semantic malleability, variety of attentional loci and portability making it a particularly effective means of effecting shifts of consciousness that support an individual’s sense of daily psychological balance.

In what ways does listening to music shape everyday perception, cognition and affect? Studies of music in Western everyday life have tended to focus on music’s function rather than qualities of individual experience. The proliferation of portable technologies means that music is often listened to in conjunction with other activities, and because attention is divided between different sources it is possible to infer (inaccurately) that it is therefore necessarily superficially perceived. Music-related pleasure may be more readily associated with strongly emotional experiences of music in live contexts; with aesthetic appreciation involving a concentrated focus on music, or with the activity of playing an instrument. Such assumptions reveal a latent trivial/transcendent dualistic attitude to the experience of music.

This paper focuses on the subjective experience of listening to music in daily life, drawing on findings from three new empirical studies that examine the psychological processes present in everyday involvement. It chart interactions between music, perceiver and environment in a range of ‘real-world’ UK scenarios, illustrating how music is used to mediate individual experience, making it more pleasurable (absorbing) on the one hand, and more bearable (detached/dissociative) on the other. Although everyday absorption may be strongly emotionally arousing and intense, more common is a low arousal type of absorbed experience which is often multi-modal in nature; the listener spontaneously engages in a performative blending of sights, sounds and activities. In this way music becomes one of several impacts which, when combined, afford experiences which are potentially richly pleasurable.

Although music is not intrinsically more pleasurable or engaging than other art forms (or everyday objects and activities), as a semantically malleable, embedded, temporal and portable medium it is easily customized by individual listeners. I end by considering whether music can function as a particularly effective site of pleasurable involvement in daily life.

This paper draws on the preliminary findings of an initial study designed to explore varieties and qualities of everyday music listening experiences, and what range of consciousness these may encompass. The study is idiographic and qualitative in emphasis, employing analysis of semi-structured interviews as its basis. It centres on case studies of six participants with a declared high involvement with music, as players and/or listeners. A tentative theoretical model of consciousness during music listening as fluctuating and continuous (as opposed to comprising discrete, static ‘states’) is suggested. Key factors involved in this flux are changes in: attentional focus, level of absorption, arousal, sensory awareness, experience of time, thought and sense of self. Some of the phenomena emerging accord with those in the absorption and hypnosis literature relating to the constructs of ‘trance’ and ‘trancing’, notably forms of trance defined as ‘light’ or ‘weak’.

Consciousness has been described as one of the most mysterious things in the universe. Scientists, philosophers, and commentators from a whole range of disciplines can't seem to agree on what it is, generating a sizeable field of contemporary research known as consciousness studies.

Following its forebear Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives (OUP, 2011), this volume argues that music can provide a valuable route to understanding consciousness, and also that consciousness opens up new perspectives for the study of music. It argues that consciousness extends beyond the brain, and is fundamentally related to selves engaged in the world, culture, and society.

The book brings together an interdisciplinary line up of authors covering topics as wide ranging as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, philosophy and phenomenology, aesthetics, sociology, ethnography, and performance studies and musical styles from classic to rock, trance to Daoism, jazz to tabla, and deep listening to free improvisation. Music and Consciousness 2 will be fascinating reading for those studying or working in the field of musicology, those researching consciousness as well as cultural theorists, psychologists, and philosophers.