My relationship with music:
7 year old me really liked Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
It was one of the only video games in the house.
There was an electric keyboard, I hit some keys, and figured out that I could play all the OoT "songs" by ear.
I decided that I would save up for a guitar.
After 5 years, I had saved every dollar humanly possible and done every random odd job available for a few dollars in order to amass the $220 I needed for a guitar.
Age 12, I started playing guitar, eventually I acquired a bass, played in a horrible church band for 3.5 years, acquired a steel tongue drum, kalimba, glockenspiel, ehru, dizi, duduk, and idr what else, because while I didn't have an abundance of money, I had previously discovered how absurdly cheap products from Chinese wholesalers are (though the duduk obviously came from Armenia, thanks to ebay).
Having all of those, that doesn't mean that I could actually play all of those.
The ehru being absurdly sensitive to pressure, and the strings having no contact with a fingerboard as is the case with the violin, I always wished I could convert a sanxian into an erhu, or possibly just build my own.
In 2014 I released an awkward experimental electronic/dubstep album on a piece of shit laptop and a lot of torrented software, which was largely just a project to teach myself music production.
I've also sung for basically my entire life, but never keep recordings.
I have music plans for some upcoming projects, but being a hobby those are on the shelf.
As far as what I look for in music, there are a lot of things I think about.
Complexity, to some degree, though not everything I listen to is complex.
Repetition is something that can easily annoy me.
Not all repetition is annoying, but excess repetition frustrates the shit out of me.
When I listen to a song I examine and mentally record the pattern of each instrument as I listen.
If a song is overly simple in its construction, it's kind of like a group of people saying the same thing over and over again.
The homogeneity within genres also makes it difficult at times.
Sometimes certain sound, vst preset, drum groove (a great example being the "Amen Break" used prominently in Jungle music), style, and/or progression becomes trendy and noticing it makes it stick out all the more, which can be annoying.
I like music that stands out within its genre.
Oh yeah, good lyrics are something I can respect, but do not expect or pay enough attention to care, unless they are excruciatingly bad. (See: Blood On The Dancefloor)
Genres I dislike: folk, country, bluegrass, anything southern US, most classic rock, classic metal, butt rock.
Songs I really enjoy nested below.
Topic: Misha C. (Read 2064 times)