Which albums or artists have inspired you the most to learn music?

[werp]

Rolling Stones, pink Floyd, smashing pumpkins and Linkin park.
I'd better not leave out the cult or they'll come around and drink me out of house and home.

[werp]

Left U2 out for the eighties motivation. Whoops.

[arkmabat]

Yes, U2, Leftfield, Darude, Rush, Blink 182, Daft Punk (don't laugh, I'm just being honest haha)

[debra1rlo]

The most? Well I always had an interest in performing music and new wave bands like Cars, Pretenders, The Police & Flock of Seagulls piqued my interest in my formative years certainly but probably REM's Murmur, that was the one that pushed me off the couch and in front of an instrument in an effort to find my own style & voice.

[Taoist]

Trentemoller, Apparat, Ulrich Schnauss, Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Sun Kil Moon, Radiohead, the Album Leaf, Telefon tel Aviv, and definitely NIN as well.

[thecontrolcentre]

The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, Sex Pistols, The Cure, The Smiths, Joy Division/New Order, Pixies, Zion Train, Underworld ...

[Sendy]

Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, Ben Daglish, David Whittaker

Rob Playford, Remarc, Photek, T-Power, Arcon One

Soft Cell, Alphaville, Nik Kershaw, Vangelis, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, The Orb

[Jace-BeOS]

I was interested in making music from the first time i touched a piano, but the biggest influence was Nine Inch Nails. The ear candy/confusing sounds and beautiful noise combined with traditional song structure and passionate words/quality of singing just cemented it for me in my early teens. There were other influences, like REM and Depeche Mode (I learned to sing to all three of these entities), but NIN is the clear core influence and interest.

Edit: oh and classic Doctor Who soundtracks!

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

this…practically wore out my parent's c-60 when i was very young

[Taoist]

I was left inspired for years and years by this song. Not much maybe by today's standards, but I have to admit that when I first heard it around the turn of the millennium it was, in my opinion at the time, the most moving piece of electronic music I had ever heard. Also, wanted to include in my prior list Trifonic, Boards of Canada and Unkle. There are many more but those were a necessity.

[spaceman]

The album that eventually made me want to make music on the computer was
76 14 by Global Communication.



A production yardstick

[ariston]

Not learning music, but there are three artists that inspired me to write music:

Genesis (especially everything from Foxtrot to Wind & Wuthering). As a result, my first self-written song was a 6-minute monster with four parts, two time signature changes, a pretentious lyric and earnest singing. Really awful, but I was 17.

Mike Oldfield's Amarok made me stick two tape recorders together and overdub-dub-dub til the cows came home. I wrote the sheet music while on vacation with my parents, and used a 100$ keyboard, a grand canyon souvenir drum, my mother's 150$ guitar, and a clay flute made for tourists from Chile to record. It certainly had lots of analog goodness (and that wonderful "human" element), wow and flutter and warbly warbly, but it sounded like a symphony to me. Still have that tape lying around somewhere...

And Pearl Jam inspired me to write songs.

[fedexnman]

Ned's atomic dustbin - God fodder , brainbloodvolume .
Jesus Jones - I'm a little bit embarrassed on this one .
Supreme Lovegods supreme love gods .
Julianna Hatfield 3 - become what you are.
Ani Difranco - living in clip
Moby - Play
Massive Attack - mazzine
Depeche Mode - all of it up until Violator which I liked as well . Black Celebrations my favorite .
Cat Stevens - aka yusef Islam best of
Bob Marley - legend
Led Zeppelin -
The Beatles
Pantera - vulgar display of power
Korn - Korn , life is peachy
Luscious Jackson - fever something ? Its the album with " Naked Eye " I really dug the whole album better than that hit of there's .
Sneaker Pimps - can't rember the album but its got a green cover that looks like a circuit board .
Kings of Leon ... For a more recent pick " only by night ? ". Can't remember album name but what a great Rock album .
These are all great albums I like , so they inspire me some how ?

[Hink]

I would love to answer this question but it would be a long post even for me...what first inspired me? Probably seeing "The Sound of Music" when I was about six or maybe romper room when I was younger and taking a shoebox and rubber bands as they did on the show to make an instrument. My school department allowed you to start instruments in the 5th grade unless it was violin which they started you a year earlier, I wanted to play the violin but my parents were not sure of my ability and urged me to wait until 5th grade where I started playing trumpet. When I was eight I learned three chords on guitar and played "down in the valley", "Jimmy crack corn" and stuff like that but I do not consider my start date as a guitar player to be then (I couldn't nor was allowed to tune the guitar). I say I started when I was 12, got my first guitar(s) and stared lessons which didn't last long because my mother wouldn't keep paying for lessons because my teacher she thought was stringing me along learning useless things I would never use (the biggest thing he was stringing me along with was blues bars ).

Where it ends is anyone's guess, but along the way so many artists and albums have inspired me. You could look at it like tiers tbh, as I grew I moved on to different things as I discovered myself as a musician...I'm not going to list them A-Z, my biggest inspiration was and still is simply my passion for music. I do appreciate all the artists that I consider to be influences for the lessons I learned...but I cannot single any out as the 'most'...I mean even after almost 43 years I am still learning, still discovering new artists, new music and new directions so who is to say the 'most' has even come along yet.

Ironically the guitar players I get compared to the most are players that have not influenced me nor do I own music by (or ever have)

[Mushy Mushy]

The Proclaimers.
I'm currently at 99 in case anybody is interested.