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by wheels 2137 days ago
Knowing what music you like would be helpful in a discussion like this. (Context: I've spent a lot of my career working in music or music software.)

It's difficult to expand your musical horizons just by shooting in the dark at things you should like. But often you can build bridges to new things by exploring their musical ancestors and descendants. Like classic rock? Start listening to some blues, then go from there to jazz. Like hip hop? Move backwards through disco, funk, soul, and, well, there we're back to jazz.

Classical music is a somewhat harder nut to crack if you don't gravitate towards it. What I've found, however is that some people think they don't like classical because they don't like Mozart, but then you play something a bit more modern (say, Stravinsky or so) and that grabs their attention.

If you like electronic stuff, one great book that I read years back, and have since passed on to several people is this:

https://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Experimental-Music-Technol...

It does a very good job of drawing a line from musique concrète and impressionism all the way through modern stuff like DJ Spooky. There are older editions of the book that are cheaper used and should be just fine.

If you list some of the things you do like, then it'd be easier for riff off of that to give you some suggestions for what might expand your horizon. There's no shame in having unsophisticated tastes at first. I remember having a student who started off wanting to learn Limp Bizket, and we worked from there to Rage Against the Machine, then from there to things like King Crimson and eventually a couple years later he was into pretty sophisticated fusion stuff.

(Edit: fixed the link)

5 comments

for classical music there was a really cool site I stumbled over years ago called getintoclassical exactly for that purpose, it somehow vanished from the internet, but it still is on archive.org.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140313070112/http://www.getint...

My musical taste is pretty underdeveloped and surface-level and that is why it is not bound by any particular genre. I can barely differentiate genres, to be honest. But from what I have noticed my preferences gravitate towards electronic music. I can share my favorite albums if that'll help you: Abyss (Chelsea Wolfe), Dummy (Portishead), Ones and Sixes (Low), Ege Bamyasi (Can), Mystere (La Femme), Sirens (Nicolas Jaar), Big Fish Theory (Vince Staples), My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Kanye), Awaken, My Love! (Childish Gambino), Soft Animals (Sofi Tukker), Modal Soul (Nujabes), Your Queen Is a Reptile (Sons of Kemet).
This is a solid answer, but I'd also add - there are very few general music buffs.

Maybe I'd count, with years in pro music performance, degree in Jazz and a lifetime of listing to and performing an insanely wide variety of genres... but not a buff for all styles.

Computer systems are actually not a bad analogy. How many people do you know that have an in-depth knowledge of Assembly in different systems (including the oldest ones), GPUs, ML, Python, JS, Haskell, C++, Rust, ALGOL, Compilers, Hardware development, etc. Then add into the mix having an in-depth knowledge of the creators of those things, what else they did, failures, influences, their mentors.

You always have the choice of breadth versus depth, within your time constraints. I think learning about a single artist or band, looking up the producer, label, members and following up on all those leads to see what else they have done - and see if you like it is a great beginning.

Some genres like jazz might seem difficult to get into, and that's fine. No need to delve in until you find a hook that peaks your interest. And then when you find out about a genre (and jazz is an excellent example) - you'll find sub-genres you like, and don't and maybe you are interested in the evolution - like many people love bebop, but don't listen to "dixieland jazz" or big band swing, or modern fusion.

You will never hear all the music. But depth (in my opinion) breads a lot more passion than breadth just for the sake of it. So rather than listening to all the top 40 singles of the last decades, you'd probably be better off listening to some whole albums, and exploring from there.

Spotify (and similar) make it very easy for breadth, and can help discover new music you like - but you'll need to put work into delving in deep yourself.

As you do have a passion for film I'd suggest this.

For interesting modern music Quentin Tarantino files always deliver.

Danny Elfman has some interesting stuff (like this Simpsons theme which is a great example of the Lydian mode...)

John Williams & Hans Zimmer have made loads of epic soundtracks, and if you like them - look up Holst, Tchaikovsky and Wagner

If you want a weirder launching off point, watch koyaanisqatsi and look up Philip Glass who made the soundtrack - that's an interesting avenue, albeit not very mainstream.

Another epic film score is 28 Days Later, John Murphey - parts of which have been used in loads of other huge features like Kick Ass...

You could also go a different route, and look up how the pre-classical Pachelbel's Canon contains the chord progression that is arguably the most popular of all time and watch this mash up of songs that use it (or the first part) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ

Hahahaha, I could go on forever! I hope you find something you love, and actually want to go deeper into.

> If you want a weirder launching off point, watch koyaanisqatsi and look up Philip Glass who made the soundtrack - that's an interesting avenue, albeit not very mainstream.

Omg that film is absolutely amazing (maybe the best thing I've seen in the past 10 years) and easily half of the effect is the music.

For epic scores you can't also go wrong with "Requiem for a Dream"...

For people looking for an “in” into classical music I tend to recommend Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9.
(thanks - note, link doesn't seem to work? )
Looks like this one: https://smile.amazon.com/Thom-Holmes-dp-1138365467/dp/113836...

Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture by Thom Holmes.

I'll add a few other resources:

1) Soundcloud (the free version) is the best way I have found to find new music: https://soundcloud.com/

2) NPR's All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts are also excellent:

https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/

https://www.npr.org/series/tiny-desk-concerts/

https://www.npr.org/series/761983313/tiny-desk-playlists

3) Bandcamp has a surprising amount of music from around the world and you can almost always listen to everything before you buy. When I find music via bandcamp it is usually via small labels I found via someone I found out about elsewhere (small labels are not usually the "sign your life away" type so one artist is frequently on a bunch of small labels that have similar music). The website is not that great, look for label links in the upper left of the page (and when you go to a particular album it will often go to the artist's page outside the label and you can find their music on other labels from there). In addition to the Bandcamp Weekly that someone else mentioned they have a bunch of lists with short (meh quality) articles and a bunch of music that you can listen to right there. Note: beware of excessive PayPal currency conversion fees if you buy something in a different currency, either use a credit card if those fees are reasonable or transfer money to PayPal and convert to different currencies on the wallet page and use those pre-converted funds.

https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/electronic-folklore-list

https://ostinatorecords.bandcamp.com/

https://zzkrecords.bandcamp.com/

https://wonderwheelrecordings.bandcamp.com/

https://palenquerecords.bandcamp.com/

https://galletascalientesrecords.bandcamp.com/

https://analogafrica.bandcamp.com/

https://sahelsounds.bandcamp.com/

https://theoutlawocean.bandcamp.com/

Also, the history of music can be broken down into the history of instruments and of the movement of people.