I generally listen to about 3-4 hours of music at work, on headphones. Then I tend to listen to 2-3 hours at home, on a decent stereo set-up. I tend to be sat at a computer, playing games, or surfing the net, but I only tend to play games which don't require sound, they're just something to occupy me whilst I'm listening.

Reading to music is cool if it's late at night, and you've got some nice ambient atmospheric tunes, it can add a bit to the book, imo. Reading Moby Dick, and listening to NWW's Salt Marie Celeste was something else.

Btw, Equinox, if you are RH Kirk, why did you go crap in the mid '80s?

hehe ... 1:0 for you seba aethiad

I happen to like my material as Sandoz, thank you very much, and also, not to mention I was a part of the first release on Warp...

I have noticed that if the book you are reading is engaging enough, you would ignore/block out whatever music is playing in the background anyway. it happens to me quite often.

If the music's up front, and with vocals, I tend to blank it out, but a nice ambientce can help. Something like Main seems to block out all background noise too.

Sorry Mr Kirk , but I can't forgive you for "Black Jesus Voice". That's one ugly, clunky album you made. Those beats ...

fine, just be a cheesehead

...and by the way, I just obtained 2 Main albums "Hz" and "Tau"...gonna check them out later tonight

i agree with Twerkish Maticknish.

listening to music while doing a task is really defeating the purpose of the music. nothing against what anyone is doing, because we all approach it differently. but really, i tend to think that the person who does multitasking while listening is putting the music in the backseat. in my opinion, the music should be the total focus to experience it.

i keep repeating myself. sorry.

I'll add in that I do agree that music should be experienced with the utmost attention and respect, free of external distractions (( I'd say it should resemble meditation, really... )), but this only happens in the most ideal of circumstances, and we live in a noisy, busy world; conditions like that seem pretty rare these days (( for me anyway )).

That said, I'll listen to music in the background while doing other things because I'm usually listening to music all day long anyway, so it's just natural to have it going, regardless of what I'm doing. I'd like to think that on an unconscious level its really at the forefront of my mind while everything else just seems to be.

By the way, wouldn't this do better in the General Music section?

it would actually, but since Zlatko (whom posts primarily about electronic music) started it, I figured he was talking about electronic music, but that is bad of me to assume, right? ...Consider it moved.