the acquisition of a 'taste'

[tomg]

I find it bizarre that I can really love "In The Depths Of R'lyeh" by Catacombs, or the whole Nile, Evoken, Confessor, Anathema, Electric Wizard catalogs, etc. And so many more. And yet I know people who really seem incapable of ever appreciating any of it--it departs from 'the norm' too much. They can't even attempt to appreciate it. What stops them? What makes me devour new experiences like this and align my life so that I can seek them out more efficiently?

You now know at least one more. If I had to listen to this kind of stuff all day I would shoot myself. I've heard it all before. In small doses it's effective in setting a mood but this is taking one small musical idea and not just running it into the ground but burying the f**ker. I honestly couldn't tell one song (I use the term loosely) from another.

From what I can tell, if this is your cup of tea you don't want a "new experience" you are driven to acquire the same one over and over again. Then again.... I hardly ever know what I'm talking about... My 2 penny's.

[BB']

Ok

I'll have a go at this one.
I am currently doing some reading for research and one of the journal articles I came across in Psychology of Music, was done recently - 2007 - that people (students for my research) will have or gravitate towards a certain style of music as it also represents who they want to be in a social sense. "Lifestyle correlates of musical preference". The research runs a lot deeper than that, however musical taste - mentioned in original post - also has a correlate to lifestyle.
Just a thought.

kind regards
Bronnie

[nuffink]

In the doom-y stuff I work on from time to time there's a distinct drive to abandon technique or any pretense of playing skill. I just want raw emotion to erupt out of a rudimentary form and complex timbres. I gravitate toward ABAB forms with some sort of weird low-end gravity. I love bass sounds. Sadly, I don't have to work very hard to abandon harmonic complexity because I've never really assimilated Western music in the way a 'songwriter' would do it. I just find poles of intervals that I can hang ideas on.

I worshipped Rush when I was 13 or 14 years old, and most of what people think of as classic rock--Pink Floyd, Sabbath, Ozzy, etc. I can't really hear any Rush in the stew of ideas in the exerpt below. It's really kind of an 'art brut' approach:

http://www.box.net/shared/static/8uwkt61b4g.mp3

But there's probably some Jimmy Page in there in a very obtuse way. Definitely an Evoken influence in there, which is a relatively new infatuation.

The early-influence idea intrigues me, though. Maybe I was drawn to the dramatic power of riffing more than complex forms (even though both Rush and Zeppelin had some fairly complex songs). I think I ultimately do appreciate mood more than formal construction.

To you these bands represent a wide spectrum of music. I've got a pal who's never seriously listened to any music other than (what's usually termed) classical. He couldn't tell the difference between rush, pink floyd, the arctic monkeys or any other rock band. To him it's all slight variations on a very boring theme.

It's the same with dance music. What seems, to the 15 year old tracne fan, like a vast gulf between pys and goat is a tiny stylistic nuance.

If the world of music were drawn round a clockface there would be, what, a few seconds between rush and pink floyd? The whole ambit of rock would cover possibly a couple of minutes. Tracne less than a second.

Your taste hasn't changed. It's stuck, as tapper mike (quoting BB King) says, at about the time your balls dropped.

[tapper mike]

I'd say that research was short sighted.

What does growing up in an english middle class environment and blues have in common?
Mick Jagger was the whitebread of whitebread and yet he sought out music that had no connection to his social environment. Instead he listen to Blues which was not very hip for his time or the culture all around him. the culture came to the rolling stones.

Eddie Rabbit was a New York Jew born and bread. He not only had a successful string of county hits for himself he also wrote.

Lieber and Stoller wrote more r&b hits then anyone else during the 50's

None of the above mentioned wrote to fit "thier lifestyle identity"

If anything artists feel liberated not being chained to a branding identity as was the case in the past. Check out what this veteran rocker says about style (Most of it comes up in the latter half)


When I'm writing a song I don't prejudge saying "Is This Me" or "Who am I marketing to"

[Benedict]

I'd say that research was short sighted.

What does growing up in an english middle class environment and blues have in common?
Mick Jagger was the whitebread of whitebread and yet he sought out music that had no connection to his social environment. Instead he listen to Blues which was not very hip for his time or the culture all around him. the culture came to the rolling stones.

Eddie Rabbit was a New York Jew born and bread. He not only had a successful string of county hits for himself he also wrote.

Lieber and Stoller wrote more r&b hits then anyone else during the 50's

None of the above mentioned wrote to fit "thier lifestyle identity"

If anything artists feel liberated not being chained to a branding identity as was the case in the past. Check out what this veteran rocker says about style (Most of it comes up in the latter half)


When I'm writing a song I don't prejudge saying "Is This Me" or "Who am I marketing to"

Ah but we choose to listen to music that suits who we would like to be. Performers don't always choose the style that finds them.

Beyond that there is something in certain styles of composing that resonates with us on a deeper emotional level than the purely "I want the local rubber children to like me so I better decide to like trnace choonz". This we fall back on as we get older and more true to ourselves.

[jancivil]

. And yet I know people who really seem incapable of ever appreciating any of it--it departs from 'the norm' too much. They can't even attempt to appreciate it. What stops them? What makes me devour new experiences like this and align my life so that I can seek them out more efficiently?

I.

there is an old Genesis song, has a lyric, goes: I know what I like, I like what I know, which repeats and repeats (the character that's behind that line, I seem to remember was an idiot, basically)...
it's circular, a loop. most people are incapable of getting past it.

it can be frustrating; one is up against this, hard, when trying to get a music to market.

[ouroboros]

By early influence, I wasn't referring to "the music that was around us at that time"
-I see Benedict has expressed it more succinctly!

Beyond that there is something in certain styles of composing that resonates with us on a deeper emotional level

The fun is figuring out why the styles hold attraction.
Shane, I think your doom-y side must be an early-Barthian streak.

[jancivil]

When I'm writing a song I don't prejudge saying "Is This Me" or "Who am I marketing to"

Ah but we choose to listen to music that suits who we would like to be.

No, I choose music based on something less subjective than that, because it tickles my ear.
IE: I might like to be prettier and more materially comfortable and more loved.
I don't choose music that 'sounds' like these qualifications. Not. at. all.

the other thing seems to be a decoration for a style of life that one might best flatter oneself by. Honestly. Unless you mean one chooses music that is musically superior to one's own abilities, in order to stretch, I do that one.

[ughnonumus]

I suppose what I'm saying is "Isn't being an artist a phenomenal happenstance?"

It is if you say that it is. Personally, I believe that everything happens for a reason.

The occult explanation of phenomena is quite different from that which materialists and spiritualists pose.

I mean, here you are, a bundle of tissue and consciousness, projecting your mind into fantastical arrangements of sound and light or whatever. Trippy.

Unless one can bring the abstract into the concrete in a real living way, one will profit very little...if at all.

[mauseoleum]

The beat is feeling.

it sure is.

[Shane Sanders]

I'm still reading posts (thanks so much to everyone for chiming in...I think it's a great discussion), but wanted to note that my music collection is huge and diverse. I have John Cage, Madonna (just the one album she did with William Orbit), gamelan music, Eno, blues, music that was derived from a sine wave, and so much more. The range of it is overwhelmingly eclectic. I have a dozen or so performances of Rite of Spring, and all sorts of more classical 'classical' music. And the whole collection is nearly 300 gigs worth when conceived of as mp3s. I even have Freddy Fender songs!

But I do tend to just write in three broad swathes: ambient/experimental, rock/pop, and extreme metal. Weird. Of course, there are exceptions to those even in my own catalog of output.

[Shane Sanders]

To you these bands represent a wide spectrum of music. I've got a pal who's never seriously listened to any music other than (what's usually termed) classical. He couldn't tell the difference between rush, pink floyd, the arctic monkeys or any other rock band. To him it's all slight variations on a very boring theme.

It's the same with dance music. What seems, to the 15 year old tracne fan, like a vast gulf between pys and goat is a tiny stylistic nuance.

If the world of music were drawn round a clockface there would be, what, a few seconds between rush and pink floyd? The whole ambit of rock would cover possibly a couple of minutes. Tracne less than a second.

Your taste hasn't changed. It's stuck, as tapper mike (quoting BB King) says, at about the time your balls dropped.

That's probably true. I do make much finer stylistic distinctions in metal than the regular music press would bother with.

And if I think about it, it could be argued that while my listening tastes are very broad, I tend to kill and drag home elements of what I listen to and try to fit them into those three stylistic categories I mentioned before.

[Shane Sanders]

I find it bizarre that I can really love "In The Depths Of R'lyeh" by Catacombs, or the whole Nile, Evoken, Confessor, Anathema, Electric Wizard catalogs, etc. And so many more. And yet I know people who really seem incapable of ever appreciating any of it--it departs from 'the norm' too much. They can't even attempt to appreciate it. What stops them? What makes me devour new experiences like this and align my life so that I can seek them out more efficiently?

You now know at least one more. If I had to listen to this kind of stuff all day I would shoot myself. I've heard it all before. In small doses it's effective in setting a mood but this is taking one small musical idea and not just running it into the ground but burying the f**ker. I honestly couldn't tell one song (I use the term loosely) from another.

From what I can tell, if this is your cup of tea you don't want a "new experience" you are driven to acquire the same one over and over again. Then again.... I hardly ever know what I'm talking about... My 2 penny's.

I can understand the revulsion to listening to it exclusively. As these sorts of songs progress, there is usually some light/shadow in the timbres. Usually. Of course, there's some stuff that's very much a drone, and is designed that way.

[Shane Sanders]

yes, I tend to think of it as an emotional attachment/personal meaning issue. It seems there is a sort of tipping point though for some in which the technique and awareness of structure, etc., becomes the point, or at least as crucial as the sentiment being expressed. I'm sure much has been written on this elsewhere and I am only poorly parroting things, but I don't know how elese to justify my utter fondness for some really bad stuff And so corporate advertising can be post-modern and authentic through concentrated "viral marketing", por ejemplo.

I like some really bad stuff, too, on occasion. Usually there is a hot chick fronting the band. Lots of people rag on Evanescence, but I really like some of their songs.

[Shane Sanders]

I suppose what I'm saying is "Isn't being an artist a phenomenal happenstance?"

It is if you say that it is. Personally, I believe that everything happens for a reason.

The occult explanation of phenomena is quite different from that which materialists and spiritualists pose.

I mean, here you are, a bundle of tissue and consciousness, projecting your mind into fantastical arrangements of sound and light or whatever. Trippy.

Unless one can bring the abstract into the concrete in a real living way, one will profit very little...if at all.

I was offering that up more in a celebratory manner than really making an observation about the underlying reality of it. But I do sense the formal structure of reality around us has a reason, but the specifics are sometimes very random-y-pandemonium-y to me.