Thread: What is Music to You?

I think music can be whatever you want/need it to be. If I am feeling relaxed I might listen to Dire Straits, Clapton or Fleetwood Mac. I also enjoy Rachmaninov.

If I am wound up, or trying to fire myself up I'll listen to very heavy aggressive music like Shadows Fall, Arch Enemy or Children of Bodom.

I listen to a lot of prog metal as well, like Dream Theatre and Symphony X.

I also play guitar and I am, I suppose, what you might call a technical guitar player so I listen to players who play that sort of thing like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert, Yngwie Malmsteen plus some of the modern super-shredders like Rusty Cooley and Michael Angelo Batio. When I play myself, I tend to play a weird fusion of prog rock, metal, shred guitar and 80's hard rock with some blues thrown in!

I also listen to blues players like Walter Trout, SRV and Joe Bonnamassa so I definately have a wide (but largely guitar based) listening palette!

I think it was Bach who said "Melody is music and music is melody" so as long as the tune has a strong melody its good!

But music, for me, really is soul food. Its definately the thing I am most passionate about and I can spend hours playing guitar. Fortunately I have tolerant neighbours!

My favorite music to me is the sound of my little girls laughter. My wife singing in the bathroom or while doing chores when she is not aware that I am listening. My oldest boys voice over the phone when he says "Hi daddy". My middle boy when he is telling a story about his day or says to his sister "I'll help you" when she is doing something a tad difficult for her.
I love the rooster crow in the morning and the bleats of the goats when they see me or the sounds of the chickens when you give them a bit of some leftovers from breakfast that they particularly like.


...I could go on and on...

Open header(s) at redline.

A full hollow popping hairs.

That (expletive) nut or bolt finally breaking free.

Genuine laughter from a loved one.

Breaking waves.

Of course, conventional music as well.

Gimme some raw, nasty blues. Some cool jazz. Some aggressive thrash metal. Some mournful old country. Some downtempo dub. Damn near anything, really, as long as it has soul.

I love all sorts of different music. Every thing from black metal to classic, it depends on my mood.

I like lots of genres, but between his live stuff and the studio recordings, I keep coming back to Jimi Hendrix. If there's been a constant in the trajectory of my musical taste, that's it.

I'm all over the place with my musical tastes. I prefer noise/EBM/industrial but also dig old punk/goth, old electro and hip-hop, doo-wop, '80s synth and '90s grunge, along with some other stuff that I'm probably forgetting.

In the early 1900s, Luigi Russolo said:

At first the art of music sought purity, limpidity and sweetness of sound. Then different sounds were amalgamated, care being taken, however, to caress the ear with gentle harmonies. Today music, as it becomes continually more complicated, strives to amalgamate the most dissonant, strange and harsh sounds. In this way we come ever closer to noise-sound.