[discussion] Why do you love the music you love?

[Sebasty]

Hey 🙂

The title 🔼

This track you're currently enjoying - why do you love it and where do you feel your appreciation to something like this could have sprouted from?

I'm curious to hear hour stories on why you like the some elements, whole songs and maybe entire genres and the possible / speculated origins of your love for them. 👀

Have a lovely day!

[AdamDam]

Hi @Sebasty,

It’s difficult for me to tell why I love the music that I love; usually I listen to a song, and if it sounds pleasant, then I save it to my Spotify library and sometimes add it to a playlist if it fits there. The reasons why music sounds pleasant to me are hard to determine, however I think that there are a couple of ways of thinking about this: one way is by looking back at past experiences that have shaped the music that I still enjoy listening to currently, and another way is by looking at the common attributes among genres of music that I listen to the most.

Considering my previous experiences with music, I think that the strongest effect on my listening habits has been friends who I met and hung out with, living in a cooperative house during my last 3 years in undergraduate college. During my first year in college, I already was a fan of some progressive rock bands such as Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, and Yes, which I had discovered on iTunes in high school. I had also heard of the Grateful Dead, since they originated where I grew up, in the Bay Area of California, and was curious to listen to their music as well, so I downloaded the Cornell 5/8/77 show during my first year in college there in 2009. Listening to the extended jamming/improvisation between Scarlet Begonias -> Fire on the Mountain really got me interested in listening to more of the Grateful Dead (which I’m currently listening to as I’m writing this) as well as other jam bands.

So when I moved from a dorm building to the cooperative house where I lived the rest of my time in college, and one of my roommates was big fan of jam bands, I was immediately introduced to Phish, as well as to jazz, which was also new to my ears and quite a welcome discovery. I liked how the instruments improvise during solos in both jam bands and jazz music, and especially enjoyed collecting downloads of Phish and Grateful Dead concerts in my iTunes library, since each version of a given song would be different depending on the concert date that I would choose to listen to.

I was also invited to my first Phish concert on 11/22/2009 by friend and roommate from the cooperative house as well as some of his friends at Ithaca College. It was my first time going to a concert at all, so perhaps it made a favorable impression for this reason, but I was nonetheless quite impressed by the diversity of musical styles and extended jamming during this concert. My favorite track was probably the opener, “David Bowie,” for which I remember the light board (controlled by Chris Kuroda, sometimes referred to as the 5th member of Phish) synchronizing really well with the conflagration of rapid-fire guitar notes towards the end of the song. I would later go to another show in 2010 with this friend of mine and his Ithaca College friends, which is available on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/6CBrmbwOds4Uh6m51zrtt4?si=JZEY7zfoS3euGU7pLfW6Cg

I remember one of my friends who came with us said it was his favorite Phish concert he’d been to, and I enojyed this one even more than the Syracuse 2009 show. Highlights for me included “Vultures” and “Sand,” two of my favorite Phish songs.

I was invited to another Phish concert during summer of 2011 in Watkins Glen, called Super Ball IX, which was probably my favorite concert that I’ve been to yet; I didn’t have a car ride there, so I made the adventure of biking there from Ithaca; it was a lot of fun riding my bike on the way there, and while I was somewhat tired during the first night’s concert, I made it there on time fortunately and was greeted by a raging “Possum” and then “Peaches en Regalia” to start the concert, which put me in a nice mindset. The next two days of the festival were wonderful as well, with some of my favorite tracks (including a “2001” > “Harry Hood” on the second day).

Then, during my last summer in college, I noticed that someone in my Art History class had a “Harry Hood” shirt, so I complimented him on it and we immediately became good friends (and still are, even though we live on opposite coasts), going to a couple of shows in Saratoga Springs in 2012 that were quite wonderful as well. Highlights of these two shows for me include a “Ghost” on the first day and then a really funny cover encore on the second day of “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys, with Trey apparently trying to sound angry (which I thought was hilarious).

In summary of this way of considering why I like certain types of music, I think that having friends in college who also liked jam bands, as well as going to Phish concerts, really facilitated an appreciation of Phish’s music (and is probably why I chose this Spotify Community username), as well as the Grateful Dead and jazz music.

I still love these genres, as I did back in college. However, looking at my most recent Last.fm Tag Timeline, I see that there are some more recent developments in other types of music that I like, namely an appreciation for stoner rock, psychedelic rock, and doom metal (which have lately been my top 3 genres):

In an effort to get to what it is about these genres that I like in general, I’ll quote Wikipedia’s descriptions of them:

Stoner rock: “Stoner rock, also known as stoner metal or stoner doom, is a rock music fusion genre that combines elements of heavy metal and/or doom metal with psychedelic rock and acid rock… Stoner rock is typically slow-to-mid tempo and features a heavily distorted, groove-laden bass-heavy sound, melodic vocals, and 'retro' production.”

Psychedelic rock: “Psychedelic rock, also referred to as psychedelia, is a diverse style of rock music inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelic culture, which is centred on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music is intended to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs, most notably LSD. Many psychedelic groups differ in style, and the label is often applied spuriously”

Doom metal: “Doom metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music that typically uses slower tempos, low-tuned guitars and a much ‘thicker’ or ‘heavier’ sound than other heavy metal genres… Guitarists and bassists often downtune their instruments to very low notes and make use of large amounts of distortion, thus producing a very ‘thick’ or ‘heavy’ guitar tone, which is one of the defining characteristics of the genre. Along with the usual heavy metal compositional technique of guitars and bass playing the same riff in unison, this creates a loud and bass-heavy wall of sound. Another defining characteristic is the consistent focus on slow tempos and minor tonality with much use of dissonance (especially in the form of the tritone), employing the usage of repetitive rhythms with little regard to harmonic progression and musical structure.”

Unfortunately, Wikipedia’s description of psychedelic rock is not very informative for my purposes here, as psychedelic experiences are likely widely varying and I’m not sure what musical attributes they correspond to; this might explain why “many psychedelic groups differ in style.” Indeed, in my psychedelic rock playlist, there are a wide variety of styles, ranging from heavy to ethereal sounds. It seems that stoner rock and doom metal share some common identifiable musical attributes, though, such as heavy distortion, a bass-heavy sound (or low-tuned guitars), and slow tempos. I’m not sure why I would enjoy slower, bass-heavy, and highly distorted music, as oppose to faster-tempo, treble-heavy, clean-toned music. However, I did use to play bass more than guitar when I was in college, and jammed with one of my friends (who would play guitar) quite a bit, so perhaps that was conducive to a continuing appreciation of bass and perhaps down-tuned guitars as well. I would also guess that I enjoy distortion because the timbres that it can produce vary so widely depending on the setup of the guitarist or bassist, and I like the uniqueness of a given band’s sound. And perhaps I enjoy slower-tempo music because it feels less rushed and more relaxing to my ears than faster-tempo music. However, these are just guesses.

Cheers!