When listening to a extract of music, what features should we be looking out for?

I would suggest always working out what the time signature is (how many beats in a bar), whether the music is slow or fast, what style the music is in and the general dynamics in the extract. I would then think about what instruments are playing and how they work together in the piece; are there soloists/is it tutti (playing all together)? We can then start to notice if there are any repeating motifs in the music, such as sequences and ostinatos.It is also beneficial to think about the form of the music, is it ABA? Are there any additional features such as ornaments (trills, turns etc), scalic passages, pitch bending, use of percussive sounds, large range of pitch, brass fanfare, crescendos, caesuras... These are all interesting things to consider when listening to a new extract of music.