Your (music-related) confessions....

[Jazzyspoon]

hmmm.

- In my top 5 of all time favorite albums, I would put a country CD (Edith frost - Telescopic)
- I also was one of the only people in America to actually like the CD "American Life" by Madonna.(and not one single other recording by her ever)
- The name Jazzyspoon is a spin off of my name: Jason. JAzzySpoON. 13 years or so ago, I started making music solo (dumped my band) and handed a lot of (terrible) CDs to people. But I noticed that the response I got from those who thought I was still in the band (and that the recordings were done with them) was considerably more favorable than those that I told I was doing it all myself. So, I started inventing band members based on my name to list on the CD jackets as an experiment. Jbone played bass, Jason sang and played guitar, and Jazzyspoon was on the turntables/keyboards, etc. (edit: it worked, btw) Years down the road, when looking for an electronic moniker that wouldn't be taken too seriously (so i could feel free to experiment in any direction and also not take it too seriously myself, I suppose), Jazzyspoon just seemed playful enough. As things have gotten more 'serious' over the yaers, I am still working with a name no one can take seriously and I'm okay with it.
- My girlfriends love me for my musical soul, and also tend to leave me because of it.

- I have been playing guitar, both live and in the studio, for 12 years and still suck at it.
- I have so many songs in the works, that I regularly lose them on my drives. Only to discover them years later when 'cleaning up'.
- At least 95% of my musical friendships and projects are with people I have never met in person.
- If I didn't work retail all of these years and have terrible pop music piped down my ear canals all day, I would probably be inclined to write more music in a pop fashion. But instead, I come home and just want to write everything I didn't hear all day.

ah, the shame of confession is truly a release.

[shamann]

neverfall brought up some good stuff, so I'm going to add a few response confessions:

- I'm only aware of Katy Perry from checking out her videos on Youtube after someone mentioned her recently on an end-of-year list. I have very little exposure to Top 40 music in my life.

- I don't know what a Jigga is.

- I had no idea what the R in R. Kelly stood for.

- I really like R. Kelly, mostly because of Trapped in a Closet, which is a rare, crazy kind of awesome. Before sitting down to watch Trapped in a Closet, I had dismissed R. Kelly entirely. After watching, I had new found admiration for much of his other stuff.

- I have never had any opinion of Biggie's music, good or bad or otherwise, or of anyone else from that era of hip hop (Jay-Z, Tupac, most Death Row things). The whole thing completely passed me by. I went from PE and De La to Pharcyde and Roots to Black Star and Mad Lib and Aesop Rock. I think that shows I'm a chin-stroking white boy as much as anything.

- Speaking of male R&B singers, I miss D'Angelo, and I wish the world had more D'Angelo in it.

[neverfall]

neverfall brought up some good stuff, so I'm going to add a few response confessions:

- I'm only aware of Katy Perry from checking out her videos on Youtube after someone mentioned her recently on an end-of-year list. I have very little exposure to Top 40 music in my life.

- I don't know what a Jigga is.

- I had no idea what the R in R. Kelly stood for.

- I really like R. Kelly, mostly because of Trapped in a Closet, which is a rare, crazy kind of awesome. Before sitting down to watch Trapped in a Closet, I had dismissed R. Kelly entirely. After watching, I had new found admiration for much of his other stuff.

- I have never had any opinion of Biggie's music, good or bad or otherwise, or of anyone else from that era of hip hop (Jay-Z, Tupac, most Death Row things). The whole thing completely passed me by. I went from PE and De La to Pharcyde and Roots to Black Star and Mad Lib and Aesop Rock. I think that shows I'm a chin-stroking white boy as much as anything.

- Speaking of male R&B singers, I miss D'Angelo, and I wish the world had more D'Angelo in it.

Jigga is one of Jay-Z's nicknames.


One of my best friends(a chin stroking white boy ) introduced me to Biggie.

D-Angelo was another great.



I'm absolutely convinced that the industry has no interest in signing R&B artists who resemble a man's man in the least. Every male pop, R&B and rapper has to be so feminine nowadays. Sorta like how we've gone from Sylvester or Arnold to Robert Pattinson as an action hero.


I mean who the f**k makes a vampire movie...where the vampires have no fangs?


*No disrespect to females of course*...I just really miss the days when I didn't have to turn on a video game console just to see a lil bit of blood, sweat, and major kick ass.

[Chuck E. Jesus]

[*]I'm a sucker for indie girl post-Spector fuzz pop e.g. Raveonettes, Black Tambourine, Primitives, etc. Take 60s Wall-of-Sound style pop, run it through fuzz pedals and spring reverb, add a singing girl, and I'll likely buy your album.

check out Vivian Girls if you haven't...i love their song "Where Do You Run?"

[shamann]

Jigga is one of Jay-Z's nicknames.

See what I mean about the whole thing having passed me right by.

[shamann]

check out Vivian Girls if you haven't...i love their song "Where Do You Run?"

You rock, Ross. That's what I'm talking about right there.

[justin3am]

check out Vivian Girls if you haven't...i love their song "Where Do You Run?"

You rock, Ross. That's what I'm talking about right there.

Nice!

I'm the same way but with the likes of The Dresden Dolls, Regina Spector, that chick from Zero7 Sia Furler.

[sven303]

O' father i have sinned....

1. I regularly enjoy belting out 'take that' songs when no one is around to hear me

2. I kept an atari and cubase that was lent by atari for a tour in japan

3. Traded my mates yamaha synth for a matrix 1000, although to this day he never asked what happened to the synth

and finally

4. I once shagged my studio bosses wife on the neve desk after too much drink during a recording session.....not sure how many cardinal sins that incurred...adultery, drink & drugs, violating the equipment and showing no remorse until now 15 years later!!!

God that feels good to get that off my chest

[dan_s]

I like Eiffel 65, "im blue dabodedabedadedbidie"

[emdot_ambient]

* I find Blues Rock to be incredibly and tediously over with. Yet the only Jethro Tull I really want to hear is their early blues based stuff (New Day Yesterday, Cry You A Song, Nothing Is Easy, etc.).

* It drives me crazy that doing blues, which everyone's been copying since the 1920s is pretty much A-OK with most folks. But if you do Berlin School, the same people are like, "Oh, listen, he wants to be Tangerine Dream. Why don't you do something original?" Grrrrrrrrrrr.

* I can't seem to listen to music with the same concentration I have while reading a book. Used to be I'd spend hours doing nothing but listening. Can't muster that kind of concentration anymore.

* I dreamed once that I could play piano like Fats Waller...I mean, I literally felt like I was actually doing it...total coordination. All the patterns and rhythm and timing were like reflexive responses; I could feel my hand move, my fingers hitting the keys with absolute authroity, my mind was free of conscious effort, yet was directing my hands on the keys and feet on the pedals...The best musical moment of my life and it happened while I was asleep and couldn't share it with anyone. And then I woke up and it was over; lost forever

* I went to a Terry Riley concert once. Riley is/was a musical hero of mine (Shri Camel, Rainbow In Curved Air, In C, Descending Moonshine Dervishes, etc). I hated the concert, was totally bored throughout. When I left, Terry Riley himself stepped out into the hallway and looked at me as if he was expecting me to gush all over him...I didn't want to tell him it sucked or that I hated it, but I was so pissed off that it had that all I could think of doing was nodding my head and saying, "Uh...hi..." and then biffing off. Looking back, it was really pretty rude of me.

* I also saw Tangerine Dream live in the mid 80s...boring.

* Saw Jethro Tull in the late, late 80s...just okay.

* Saw Yes live on their Going For The One concert...disappointing songs but well played.

* The point of those last several was simply this: Why is it I always seemed to see my musical heroes live just as they were getting past it? This thread is starting to make me feel all emo

[emdot_ambient]

...I once shagged my studio bosses wife on the neve desk...God that feels good to get that off my chest

It probably felt a lot better for the bosses wife to get the mixer's knobs and sliders off her back...not the most romantic place to **ahem** mix it up.

[Voidoid Surrealist]

[*]Some days I'm inclined to put all the noisedrone aside and just make songs that sound like Casiotone for the Painfully Alone.

I'd still dig it...so long as you made a track about dandelions that uses bells.

[Lunatique]

But I noticed that the response I got from those who thought I was still in the band (and that the recordings were done with them) was considerably more favorable than those that I told I was doing it all myself.

That's really odd! Anyone else have this experience?

[Plug]

Confessions eh...

1) I dislike most music with lyrics. Some is okay.
Sometimes I feel like a perfectly good piece of music is tainted by attaching someone elses emotions and ideas on it. There are of course exceptions.

2) While there's modern electronic music I enjoy - i'm extremely dissapointed by the scene at the moment. It's amazing that such a versatile medium could be shoeboxed so badly.

It seems like everything that made me fall in love with the stuff is mostly missing - WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO MELODIES? I mean... REAL SOARING MELODIES that aren't just groove accompaniments? I'd even settle for quality cookie cutter trance arpegiattor stuff and virus leads. There seems to be nothing exciting out there anymore. It makes me so sad.

3) I cannot stand the overuse of music-arrangement conventions/trends. Case in point is the 'minimal drop' (which is currently the most popular thing in electro/house atm) where a track builds up, occasionally a singer or melody will play to keep things interesting - and then the main groove comes back with no sight of the melody or any other excitement.

Just the groove.

This can be amazing for the right piece of music - but not if EVERYONE does it. UGH. Listening to a set of this stuff can be like having sex but never making it to the end. Seriously.

This is obviously the opposite trend to the standard 'buildup, drop, buildup, drop' convention seen in anthem trance stuff - which is tiring, but is a hell of alot more interesting.

4) The loudness war doesn't bother me as much as it should.

5) I think people who complain about 320kbps mp3 encoding are idiots.

6) While I appreciate there's skill required to mix vinyl records, I think it's a dinosaur waiting for a meteor. I think people that can't let go of records and embrace the (digital) future are fools.

I think people who look up to Dj's that mix vinyl back to back are misguided. The most important thing when playing other people's music live is a well crafted playlist. It has nothing to do with how well someone can move their hands to sync up a couple of tracks. Please.
Get over this old paradigm and buy Ableton live and tell me you can't craft a more creative and interesting set of music.

7) I use copious amounts of fx in my tracks, and I simply couldn't make my music without them. I consider mixing and writing music to be intrinsically bonded.

Most drum samples I use are free downloads off the net. The sound of my music nearly depends on it. Finding dirty bits and pieces and sticking them together is what I do. I have much less success using stuff like vengeance exclusively.

9) I think the pop-music industry is disgusting, but I'd love to contribute to it in some kind of positive way. I'd probably sell out if given the chance

10) I love Roland x0x boxes and I sometimes fantasise about writing an album full of repetetive acid. It's so much fun!

And ok now a big one!:

11) Alot of the time I exclusively listen to my own music because nothing else satisfies me. I honestly believe (and I swear i'm a humble guy!) that my music is very special and needs to be heard.



Thanks for reading this stupidly long post. I really got into it

[Lunatique]

More from me:

I can't stand the fact that mainstream pop is so much about sexual attractiveness and the videos all look like softcore porn, but at the same time I have a hard time watching videos of ugly singers.

I actually really liked Yanni's early albums when I was a teenager (up to the Chameleon Days album) because he was all synth and actually had some pretty funky electronic tracks back then that wasn't boring. But even back then, I could hear the limitations in his musical knowledge--his stuff is catchy but so easy to compose.

I own one Kenny G live album only for a track that contains a nice bass solo, not because I think Gorlick's lameass playing deserves a space in my CD rack.

I sometimes wish my wife wasn't so clueless about music or so passionless about music. At the same time, I'm glad that I can blast any style of music (from classical to rap to death metal) and she won't bat an eyelash or complain. She'd never fight me for the CD player remote or the radio station dial. She basically would never interfere with me musically and supports me in everything I do.

I once accidentally stiffed a recording studio (the check bounced) and I'm glad it happened because the owner of the studio was a major douche bag. I went there to record the vocals of a few demo songs I'd written/arranged/performed--he was hired only to record the vocals and master the demo's. He refused to record one of my songs because he wanted me to make a chord change. He said "This song you wrote is too f**king good to be recorded with that one weird chord progression--I will not record it unless you change it." When I refused he turned all the equipment off and just sat there motionless like a pouting child. I had to sweet talk him into recording "his" version along with mine so that in case the record company liked "his" version better I'd use it (of course I never played "his" version).

I can actually sing like a muthafucka (way better than that one track on my website with me singing--that was before I learned to sing properly) but I don't seem to have the drive to write songs for myself to sing and prefer to write for female vocalists.

I lust for really expensive mp3 players and in-ear headphones, but I rarely get to use them (I'm currently freelancing at home and very rarely go out).

I always read in the bathroom--usually musician mags, pro audio catalogs, manuals, music theory books, instrument instruction books, or fiction.

I carry a handheld recorder with me wherever I go so I can hum/beatbox into it to record musical ideas, but I'm always embarrassed to do it in public.

I think ambient drones/soundscapes/glitchy weirdness are only respectable if they aren't the ONLY styles that a person can do, and instead are but only one aspect of one's musical creativity (for example, Ryuichi Sakamoto).

I have far more respect for musicians that can compose/arrange/perform in multiple musical styles instead of only knowing one. (A matter of how open-minded and versatile a person is.)

I care a lot whether someone's a good person, and to me it overshadows how talented/successful they are.

I think singing dogs are hilarious, and I always try to get a dog to sing on purpose (play an instrument near it, or start singing to it).

Now at almost 36, I still haven't settled into one career yet. Music and film/television and writing are the ideal, but I still end up making money with art instead.

All the amazing bedroom musicians on youtube make me feel like a lost cause. It's utterly amazing how many unknown talented people exist in this world, and there are many more who would never make a video of themselves--that just boggles the mind! When some kid is smoking on the guiar or bass or drums or keyboard, you just want to hang yourself.

Lyrics matter a lot to me. If a song has great music but the lyrics are lame, it just kills the song for me. The reverse however is not true (I guess this is the writer side of me peeking out).

I could never really hate any of you here on KVR, not matter how much of a douche bag some of you sometimes can be. I can only really hate someone if they are truly evil and hurt others.