I'm amazed by pretty much everything. Taking a moment to consider almost anything about the world leaves me utterly confused and scared and fascinated. Even that recursive ability to consider my consideration is startling. Consequently, I'm utterly bowled over by my ability to perceive music, and I'm baffled that my perception and experience can change listen to listening and even moment to moment. Whenever you see footage of hippies listening to music, be they Woodstock hippies or Dead Heads or Phish Heads, they always have their eyes closed or close their eyes shortly after the camera focuses or are opening their eyes. It's accompanied by awkward swaying. It tends to look silly from the outside, but they are on to something. I know next to nothing about out cognition of music (or much about any other sensual experience (or experience in general)), so I can't tell you what happens in a person's brain when they close their eyes and listen to music versus when they open their eyes and listen to music. But I am lucky enough to have a brain and to use it to experience things and I can tell you from my own experiments that closing my eyes has a profound effect on how I hear music. Now, I wish I could tell you that I have incredible experience of synesthesia, but I don't. I do, however, get some kind of imagery in my head sometimes when I close my eyes. In particular I remember listening to the Otis Redding version of "Change is Gonna Come" in a Philosophy of Music class and closing my eyes and getting kind of vision of Fantasia-like fireworks when the horns come in. I also know that when I hear Beethoven I follow the harmonies better when I close my eyes but I loose much of my fear of the music and miss melodies. Maybe I use more brain power to deal with the music when my eyes don't have to do any work. There's probably a well documented answer to that, but I'm not sure I need to know. I'm just putting my plug for closing your eyes while listening. Don't do it while driving, but do it when you're in your room. Or better yet, do it in a concert hall. Then you get to feel the music and hear it but not see it. Can't beat feeling music.