I go through periods of "studying" particular records or musicians. It comes easily and naturally to me, despite my large collection. Studying is often related

I go through periods of "studying" particular records or musicians. It comes easily and naturally to me, despite my large collection. Studying is often related to my guitar playing, though, so it's often not a regular listen - it's the act of jamming along, or rewinding and relistening to particular passages to figure them out. For the past couple of weeks, I've been on a massive Miles Davis kick - particularly the Agharta album (which, in the author's terms, is one of the ten albums for me, that thing you want all other music to be). I'm trying hard to grok certain Miles phrases harmonically, and capture the tonality of his trumpet with a guitar, which is very challenging. Work has given me a 300 mile each way commute this week, so I decided to spend the long highway hours listening to the collected works of Wilco (I have every Wilco album), beginning to end. This gets me listening to albums I usually ignore, like A.M., and hearing the evolution of the music. Highway drives are also a good time to dig into progressive rock albums - the musical equivalent of 800 page novels, that reward close, long listens.