Aging & Wisdom Quote by Trevor Dunn

There is a quiet embarrassment baked into Trevor Dunn's admission: he loved music before he could actually hear it. The bass, that low-end architecture everyone takes for granted, was effectively invisible to him until someone forced his attention downward. That turn - from passive consumption to trained listening - is the real subject here, not the instrument.

Dunn frames the revelation as a before-and-after. "Private lessons" and "learning bass lines" aren't just technical milestones; they're a reprogramming of perception. The subtext is anti-mystical: musical "taste" isn't only a personality trait, it's a skill you can acquire. He isn't romanticizing genius; he's describing the moment the brain starts sorting a familiar world into new categories. Suddenly the songs he thought he knew contain an entire hidden conversation.

The phrase "noticed bass" lands because it's so blunt. It punctures the pop-cultural illusion that listening is effortless, that the best fans are born with golden ears. In most rock and pop narratives, bass is the dependable worker: felt more than heard, praised mostly when absent. Dunn flips that hierarchy by admitting he was like everyone else - until training gave him access to the structural layer that makes the rest make sense.

"My ears were blown wide open" is exuberant, but not vague. It's the euphoric shock of realizing that attention changes art. Same tracks, different listener; the upgrade is internal.