Music: ( A babble post mostly).
(This post will most likely not make sense, and not be in sync. Its just a rant, with bad spellings and grammar.)
I can't imagine a world without music, and I find it even harder to imagine someone who doesn't listen to it in one form or another. But what annoys me is when other people slander another's music taste.
I've been listening to drum and bass for just over 3 years, and its the only genre I've stuck to thoroughly, and whenever someone criticised me about it, I would get very protective. I then swiftly came to the decision to lecture anyone who puts people down about their music taste.
The next bit is basically how I came to discover new music. If you'd rather just skip to the conclusion, scroll down a bit.
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When I was 11, I'd got a new ipod shuffle, and before I left for school I stuck a load of music on from my itunes. When I got to school, two girls who I barely knew asked if they could listen, so I gave it them and started to get really panicked. They danced sarcastically, and I coughed up excuses like 'this isn't my ipod', 'its my friends music', 'I would never listen to this' etc etc. After that I was terribly afraid to share my music taste, and to be honest, I didn't really have one. From what I remember it was mostly artists like Moby, songs from the Eurovision song contest, and a little bit of Gatecrasher.
It evolved over the years, and I got really into the whole Japan scene, and started listening to music from anime, and artists like Utada Hikaru.
About the time when Halo 3 was released I was really psyched, and this will become clear. The night after I'd watched the trailer I found my brothers ipod and started listening to it. I came across one song that absolutely blew my mind. It was a piece of drum and bass, though I had no idea. Specifically, it was Mistabishi's - No matter what. It seemed to fit really well with the whole psyched feeling I had for the release of Halo, and thats how I remember it. I'd like to class it as one of my favourite memories, but even then I was still scared to share my thoughts.
Though I loved that song more than any other music at the time, I was never compelled to look into it, and it wasn't till about two or three years later when I actually discovered drum and bass. My friend introduced me to the hospital records podcast and the shogun audio podcast. At first I was head over heels in love, and gradually it worked its way into my life. I was listening to one particular podcast where they played a familiar sound, and the talk over it mentioned someone called Mistabishi. I was really thrilled, I can't explain why really, I just knew I'd found the genre I so loved.
I was under the impression for a year that apart from Mistabishi, this was the first lot of dnb I'd ever heard. So I began listening to fairly typical, in your ear kind of dnb, like Camo & Krooked, Mistabishi, Danny Byrd etc etc. (I know they aren't typical producers, they are definitely unique, but its the only way I can describe it).
Actually I realised I'd been listening to similar genres for a very long time, people like Pendulum, Sub Focus, High Contrast, even Burial.
Gradually I learnt of sub genres, and started listening to music from Lenzman, SPY, Spectrasoul, Dbridge, Alix Perez, Calibre, Total Science, Breakage and Marcus Intalex. Im sure theres more, but you get the picture. These artists are definitely the most outstanding in my mind, and I've never gone off them quite like I have with Camo and Krooked.
During the winter months I continually returned to artists like Unquote, Blu Mar Ten, Nu:Tone, Thinnen, Bop...Generally the Russian dnb scene - with the exception of Blu Mar Ten and Nu:tone. Anyway, without fail I have been listening to these lot every winter, and come to summer months I unwillingly start to listen to more anthem type music.
In the summer months I pretty much, accidentally look into new genres that branch off dnb. Recently I've been listening to garage, artists like Mosca and Todd Terry. Not only that but electronic soul? I guess you'd call it that. I just want to say right now that - Jenna G is possibly the most amazing singer ever, as well as Natalie Williams, Riya and Elsa Esmerelda - So yeah, soul music. B traits, Alix Perez, sometimes Lenzman kind of fall into that category, I've not searched it out enough.
ANYYWAAAYYYYY. It was a long long time before I finally spoke out to defend my music taste and I have to say dnb has made me much cockier. I'm fiercely defensive of it, and the number of people who have cussed it has experienced a good shouting down. I have to say, I am in complete belief that I have a good taste in music. I'm not saying other people don't at all, I love a lot of different music.
I had an experience once in my electronics class twoish years ago which changed my attitude to keeping quiet about my music. Our tutor was out of the class, and we decided to play some music on the speakers. We set it up so that we all chose our own song. One guy put on Bring Me The Horizon, and of course there were mutters of disgust. But what really got to me was that one guy stood up, and said, "This is really sh*t. No no, seriously, this is sh*t". And it really upset me, because I knew how it must have felt to have your music taste completely slandered like that. I didn't speak up, but after that I couldn't let similar comments go unchallenged.
Not long ago in college we did a similar thing, and though our class is small, there is a huge diversity. Everyone is completely unique in this class, and we all have very different music tastes. So I put subwave on and suddenly I had the odd person telling me it was terrible, and I needed to turn it off. I got really angry, turned round to one of the people and shouted a lot of stuff I don't remember. I'd say mostly I was lecturing in how its not that persons place to determine my music taste, and how their music taste was entirely different, and if they think they can do better come on up. I knew this person favoured chart music, which a lot of the other class wasn't keen on.
From what I know, music does have an affect on peoples emotions and to put someone down about it can really hurt. As silly as it sounds.
The only way I can justify such a put down is for generic, bad production valued music, because that stuff really is bad. I don't mean chart music at all. Though a lot of artists in the charts fall into this generic category, they aren't the only ones. For a while dnb artist Netsky used the same snares, the same tempo, the same riff in a lot of his songs. Chase and Status made some awful music after their grime years, and Camo and Krooked have began to churn out some real crap.
I don't feel like I've done enough to describe how I feel about the music I love, and I know for sure I've missed a lot out, but...its as brief as I can make it. Yep, that was brief.
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So in conclusion, unless you can justify the reasons why music is bad, don't put someone down about it. Or if you are going to, at least encourage them to justify their reasons for liking it.
For myself, I suppose some of my favourite artists are the sort of trio/duo Blu Mar Ten, Unquote, Lenzman, Spectrasoul, Calibre, Burial, Mosca, Pretty much everyone I mentioned in this post :)