One can listen to music in many different ways. There is passive listening, where music is a whirl of pleasent background noise while you are doing something else which may be studying or playing FIFA. And the other is very active, involved listening which often happens when you are discovering a band for the first time. Of course, if you are doing other tasks while listening, the level of involvement in what is being played may be very different. I sometimes have no clue what I'm listening to and sometimes I am singing along in my head.
But a weird thing I do ever since I saw my first live gig at Strawberry Fields 2008 is imagine I'm playing the song on stage. I could be a guitarist or bassist, I'm mostly a vocalist who plays guitar or bass and I'm playing the said song to the crowd at SF. This is not occassionally, I do this a lot, especially if it's some contemporary or indie alternative band I've recently started listening to, or even metal. If it's classic rock, I'm covering that song, if it's new I am performing this on stage. Especially when I hear some amazing new band, I wish it was an Indian band who wrote that song so I could see them live or even better I would be songwriter-frontman of this band who would be the toast of SF!
Unfortunately I know there is some kind of music which Indian rock audiences wouldn't really like, like indie pop or dance-punk with minimal guitar solos which kind of kept spoiling the music for me so I had to will myself to enjoy the music without imagining myself playing it.
