It's that music thread!

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It's that music thread!

Postby Bragatyr » Thu Jan 31, '13, 11:58 pm

Yup, I did that Phantasy Star music thread a while back, and learned a lot, and now I feel the need to ask everyone about their own musical journey. We've been doing a lot of awesome discussion about music in general here recently, so I figured now was the time. I just wanted a place for everyone to be able to chat about their whole musical experience, from their favorite bands, to what instruments they play or would like to play, their best concert experiences, and just about everything else.

I know a little about some of you, musically, but I want to hear from everyone. I love Aeroprism's remixes, for example, and I've never had a chance to ask him about his favorite bands, so I'm asking now! For everyone reading this, I want to hear about what brought you to music, and what games you think have the best soundtracks, and that sort of thing. Tell me everything about you, musically! We will even get into the esoteric discussion of music theory and obscure doo-wop bands, so don't be afraid!

I'll start off by saying my favorite band is King Crimson. Got into them in college, and still really dig them. Now I want to hear from all of you.
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Re: It's that music thread!

Postby Wolf Bird » Fri Feb 1, '13, 3:57 am

Everything you could want to know about me musically can be found right here: http://www.last.fm/user/WolfBird324

I grew up largely on classic rock from my dad and the classical masters (like Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky) from my mom, with some celtic folk music sprinkled in. Growing up, there was pretty much always music at least in the background. But now, I'm a metalhead more than anything else. Got into metal probably in late middle school (so age 12-13) with Symphony X. Discovered tons and tons of new bands and subgenres since then, and now I listen to just about any metal, though I still prefer power, progressive and death metal above all others. I refuse to name any one band above all others, but favorites include Sabaton (also my best concert experience so far), Sonata Arctica (seen them live twice now), Opeth (first concert experience), Gojira (seeing them live February 15th), Symphony X, Amon Amarth, Nile (maybe seeing them in March), Eluveitie...I could go on. But I like other genres too, like classic rock, progressive rock (especially anything from Steven Wilson, who I'm seeing live in April) indie rock, EBM, folk music and the classical masters sometimes (Tchaikovsky is probably my favorite of them, I love Romantic era music).
Last edited by Wolf Bird on Fri Feb 1, '13, 3:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: It's that music thread!

Postby Bragatyr » Fri Feb 1, '13, 5:01 am

WOLF BIRD! I was hoping you would post! I got really into music through metal, too. I pretty much didn't listen to anything but Metallica for years and years. I have a friend who's huge into Symphony X, actually. He likes the classically oriented prog metal. I actually like Sonata Arctica a lot, too. I've gotta ask you how that live experience was.

And I see that you've been listening to some King Crimson, the Happy with What You Have to Be Happy With EP!

I have to say, too, I was struck by the number of very Norse band names (like Nifelheim) in your recent listening; those Scandinavians are crazy about their black metal and folk metal! I love it.
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Re: It's that music thread!

Postby Aeroprism » Fri Feb 1, '13, 5:11 pm

Well, first of all, I know that this topic was mostly born from the exchanges of taste between different people concerning classical music; similar exchanges were done on my board many months ago and I did not participate for one simple reason: I have zero classical education. Though I have historical knowledge of the well kown names, I have no idea what they wrote, why they were better than the other etc. I understand that classical music is complex, requires talent and intelligence and is generally considered "better" that contemporary music. Still, to me, music is about feelings and emotions and classical has never, ever done anything to me. To me, it's always been "that stuff I put on the radio when my car CD player doesn't work and I don't want to listen to the engine."

So, onto the meat of the post. Whenever I inquire about someone's tastes, especially concerning music, I much prefer asking them what they don't like. "What music do you like?" Will almost always prompt: "Oh you know, a bit of everything" AKA, a useless, non descriptive answer. So let's start with what I do not like.

I do not like Rap and hip-hop. In fact, I hate those. I do not care for country music either, but I would not call it hate. When I visit my mechanic and he blares it on his speakers, I will tap my foot along with the melody, I will not cringe, but I will not listen to it on my own. I don't like most popular music. This includes pretty much every auto-tuned teenager band/half-naked bimbo that's currently out there.

On occasion, I enjoy big-band music, some classical rock and metal but not too much, not too often. Like prerry much every bullied kid of the 80's, I had my Metallica phase but I do not care for everything they did after the black album.

Now onto what I like.

I like epic metal. I love bands like Rhapsody of Fire, Nightwish, Epica, Luca Turilli and Blind Guardian. Bands that combine metal to electronic sounds like Machina Supremacy are also something I love. I enjoy bands that specialize in making movies or game soundtracks like Immediate Music and Globus.

Like a lot of people here, I love video game music. I tend to prefer old school material (up to and including most of the fifth generation consoles) but I do enjoy some of the modern artists. Well, today, video game music is hardly a "genre" anymore since games play MP3s, anythng and everything can be found in a game. My favorite game music artist is probably Motoi Sakuraba.

When I want to relax with my wife, I enjoy some trip-hop bands like Cinephile, Portishead and Massive Attack. I will also enjoy new age stuff to relax; Robert Haig Coxon is a favorite of mine. To relax alone, completely alone in my basement sanctuary, I listen to 8-bit music and chiptunes made with Amiga, Comodore 64 and PC-88 consoles. This is clearly not for everyone and I do not like sharing this experience anyways.

During the early 90s, this sort of music evolved into a genre that completely changed my life: demoscene music made with trackers and sequencers, a movement born in Western Europe. Word can hardly convey how deeply in love with this music I am. The idea of a "demo" was to create an executable program that pushed the computer to its limits by playing visual effects synced over a music track using as few ressources as possible. In short, it was a meeting of geeks and artists in a contest of skill. So many extremely talented artists out there but my heart goes to guys like Skaven, Purple-Motion and Ellwood who created songs that I will love forever. It's hard to describe unless experienced first so if you're really curious, check this out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtCW-axRJV8 If is implied that if you do not care for electronic music, you will hate this. This sort of music was the genesis of Nekoprism. Trackers: my dream started there.

Obviously, I love electronic music to no end, but that love is complicated. There is an awful lot of terribly unimaginative, repetitive and boring electronic music done, especially these last few years. In the 90's, the dance-club genre was unimaginative but at least it was catchy, alive and fun. I still enjoy it quite a lot once every few months. The trance movement is the worst victim of this recent stretch of mediocrity, especially since it stopped being hipster music and became popular. Everyone and their deaf sisters can whip out a mixer and do trance. Stretches of 64-128 beats where all you get is a bassdrum and a cheap bassline if you're lucky. Abuses of poorly created voice clips. Unimaginative buildups that don't deliver. It can be a mess. I also cannot digest dubstep, it is extremely annoying to me.

Fortunately, there are very talented guys out there doing trance, house and techno. Naming electro-artists I like would be awkward, everyone keeps remixing everything everyone else does. This is how we roll and we like it like that. Everyone does stuff I like, everyone does stuff I don't like and in the eyes of any electro-music fan, this completely includes Nekoprism. Over the years, the span of what I wrote and remixed is so wide, opinions will be all over the place. You'll notice however that Nekoprism songs (originals and remixes) always try to feature powerful passages and imposing melodies: this is how I picture electronic music should be. Involving, not repetitive. Imposing, not shy. It has tools that I consider vastly more powerful than classical instruments and if you put half an effort into it, you can create moments where emotions overflow. Add some good chorus to that and you get unending silicon-chip love.

Edit: typos.
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Re: It's that music thread!

Postby augmentedfourth » Fri Feb 1, '13, 7:38 pm

I should preface this post by stating that if it's come out in the past ten years, I most likely haven't heard it. :D Seriously, though, I am woefully ignorant of today's music, and if I've heard of a current artist, it's due to celebrity gossip and not anything they've done musically. (Bit of a tangent: In a way, while I do appreciate the convenience, I almost think that the advent of iTunes and the like have actually made me more picky with my tastes, rather than expanding my horizons. In the past, if you heard a song that you liked, you frequently had to buy the entire album. These days if I hear something, I can - and do - just buy that one track. I really think the last full album I bought that wasn't a soundtrack to something or a classical piece was Radiohead's "OK Computer", and that was a long time ago.)

So. Music. It's probably known by now that I'm a classically-trained musician, and as such, I do love a lot of "classical" music. (Insert Uppity Musician's rant here about how "classical" really just refers to the time period of Hadyn and Mozart. :mrgreen: ) My favorite era is probably the Romantic era. (Though 20th century stuff was GREAT for teaching!) If I had to narrow down a list of my favorite composers, I'd pick Aaron Copland, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Gustav Holst.

From a music theory standpoint, Copland has such a distinct sound due to the intervals he favors. (Lots of open 4ths and 5ths, for example.) He also knew how to use every single instrument to its true potential, and even in works such as the "Old American Songs" (which I LOVE), the accompaniments to the vocalist are still so complex and textured and amazing. Rimsky-Korsakov is just one of many Russian Romantic composers I like, but he gets the mention because of my immense love for "Scheherazade" and "Capriccio Espagnol" (the latter of which almost makes me which I played the violin!). Holst gets a mention because in addition to his orchestral works ("The Planets" is probably his most well-known; the chorale from "Jupiter" is one of the most beautiful things ever written, and you will never convince me otherwise), he was one of the first composers to write for concert band/wind ensemble.

That brings me to my next paragraph. A lesser-known subset of instrumental music is "wind literature", and it's one that I love. While I do have some orchestral experience, a lot of my time spent playing in ensembles was in a band setting. I'll spare you the entire history lesson, but let's just say it took the world some time to accept that violins were not necessary in everything. :wink: I bring it up here because if I were forced to pick my most favorite piece of music that was ever written in the history of mankind, it would be a wind lit piece - Alfred Reed's "Russian Christmas Music". (Last I checked, there were no decent performances/recording on Youtube, so don't look it up there!) I first heard, played, and fell madly in love with the piece in college, and as time marched on, it reappeared at some significant times in my life, and I also got a chance to really study and know the score inside and out. I could wax poetic about the piece for another five pages, but it truly has touched me, to the point where when I'm listening to it (especially the last five minutes), I can feel it inside me. (I do have a live recording available to email, if anyone's that interested! :) )

Lest I sound like I listen to nothing but dead people, there are some more contemporary artists I enjoy. I'm a big Simon & Garfunkel fan, and I love pop music from the 60s in general (the station I leave on in the car is hits from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and I am not ashamed of that!). Anything overly electronic and repetitive bores me and doesn't stimulate my musical soul. I don't listen to much music outside my car these days; if I'm reading or writing or trying to do something else that requires concentration and I try putting music on, my brain goes right to the music instead of what I should be doing!
Last edited by augmentedfourth on Fri Feb 1, '13, 7:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: It's that music thread!

Postby Wolf Bird » Fri Feb 1, '13, 11:31 pm

Bragatyr wrote:WOLF BIRD! I was hoping you would post! I got really into music through metal, too. I pretty much didn't listen to anything but Metallica for years and years. I have a friend who's huge into Symphony X, actually. He likes the classically oriented prog metal. I actually like Sonata Arctica a lot, too. I've gotta ask you how that live experience was.


Well...you're welcome! All those bands are good, I listen to Metallica occasionally, and the other bands that more or less originated metal. The two Sonata live experiences have been fantastic. They are wonderful life, quite lively on stage, they sound very good. They played Last Amazing Grays at the December show I went to and I nearly had a heart attack. It was THAT GOOD.

Bragatyr wrote:I have to say, too, I was struck by the number of very Norse band names (like Nifelheim) in your recent listening; those Scandinavians are crazy about their black metal and folk metal! I love it.


Metal is big in Scandinavia, and Europe in general, especially when compared to the US. A LOT of the metal bands I listen to are from Finland and Sweden, but the spread is worldwide. I find Sweden is good with death metal, and Finland is good with power metal.

I'll go into what I don't like: rap, country, pop. Don't like any of them. Lukewarm at best on dubstep. When I want to relax, I also enjoy some post-rock, trip-hop, and ambience.

And as I write this, I'm playing 'Liquid Fire' off the album L'Enfant sauvage by Gojira (progressive death metal).
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Re: It's that music thread!

Postby Bragatyr » Sat Feb 2, '13, 2:53 am

I actually kind of got into a few Scandinavian metal bands just sort of tangentially because I have a Norse myth obsession. I think it's kind of funny that just about every other band from any Scandinavian country, including the Faroe Islands, it seems like, writes about Odin and Thor and the whole gang. It's awesome. That's how I got into a few songs by Morifade and Einherjar. "Odin Owns Ye All" makes me feel like a Viking. But speaking of the earlier metal bands, how do you feel about Black Sabbath?

Aeroprism, I actually really like something about the concept of electronic music, too. It's kind of liberating, in a way, because obviously there are things you can do with it that aren't possible or feasible with human players or traditional instrumentation. One of the factors that I think was really ignored historically in music was timbre, just that sheer immediacy and texture that music can create. I'm not necessarily into really avant-garde "noise" music, but I like pushing the envelope with unusual sounds and textures. And also video game composers who just create really inhuman runs with insanely fast triplets and cross-rhythms and that kind of thing!

augmentedfourth, I have to very much agree with the choice of Holst. The Planets is easily one of my favorite large-scale orchestral works. I really like "Mars", "Venus" (probably the most beautiful one) and "Neptune", possibly my fave, because I like eerie, cosmic stuff. I remember a really good trombonist friend of mine from high school was telling me that the band director tried to do "Mars" at one point, and there were roughly a handful of kids in the school who could even play a few bars of it, simply because of the whole 5/4 thing. I remember that kind of boggled my mind. That's one of the reasons I think alternate time signatures should be a wider part of musical training and general musical consciousness in this country (and Europe, I guess, since a lot of the rest of the world seems to be pretty comfortable with crazy time signatures!)

I think my favorite composers are probably Stravinsky, Ligeti, and Satie. I like Debussy's piano stuff, and that really beautiful kind of tonality and texture in the more orchestral stuff. I really gravitate toward 20th century composers, obviously. Actually, looking through my CDs, one of my recent favorites has been Arvo Part's "Passio". I like vocal music a lot, especially sacred music, and I'm a Latin language/pretty much any ancient language nut, so that sort of combination really does something for me. I think the song "Requiem", from Castlevania, Rondo of Blood, is really beautiful, just a simple setting of the "Kyrie Eleison".

Speaking of video game music, like Aeroprism said, I'm pretty sure we all love it, but I really want to hear about some favorite soundtracks. And there may be a debate about whether Wily Stage 1 from Mega Man 2 is the greatest video game song of all time.
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Re: It's that music thread!

Postby Wolf Bird » Sat Feb 2, '13, 5:50 am

Bragatyr wrote:I actually kind of got into a few Scandinavian metal bands just sort of tangentially because I have a Norse myth obsession. I think it's kind of funny that just about every other band from any Scandinavian country, including the Faroe Islands, it seems like, writes about Odin and Thor and the whole gang. It's awesome. That's how I got into a few songs by Morifade and Einherjar. "Odin Owns Ye All" makes me feel like a Viking. But speaking of the earlier metal bands, how do you feel about Black Sabbath?


They're decent, I sometimes will listen to their albums when I'm in the mood for something older. I'd say my favorite of the early metal bands is probably Slayer. But I'm willing to admit I prefer more contemporary metal, for the most part, but I have to respect where it started. If you like viking themed metal, you can't get much better than Amon Amarth.

Also, for electronic music, I have to say I really really love Assemblage 23.

Bragatyr wrote:Speaking of video game music, like Aeroprism said, I'm pretty sure we all love it, but I really want to hear about some favorite soundtracks. And there may be a debate about whether Wily Stage 1 from Mega Man 2 is the greatest video game song of all time.


My three favorite video game soundtracks, no contest: Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, EarthBound. I have these soundtracks (plus a few others) in my music library, but these three easily get the most listens.
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Re: It's that music thread!

Postby augmentedfourth » Sat Feb 2, '13, 9:47 pm

Bragatyr wrote:augmentedfourth, I have to very much agree with the choice of Holst. The Planets is easily one of my favorite large-scale orchestral works. I really like "Mars", "Venus" (probably the most beautiful one) and "Neptune", possibly my fave, because I like eerie, cosmic stuff. I remember a really good trombonist friend of mine from high school was telling me that the band director tried to do "Mars" at one point, and there were roughly a handful of kids in the school who could even play a few bars of it, simply because of the whole 5/4 thing. I remember that kind of boggled my mind. That's one of the reasons I think alternate time signatures should be a wider part of musical training and general musical consciousness in this country (and Europe, I guess, since a lot of the rest of the world seems to be pretty comfortable with crazy time signatures!)


I could tell a whole bunch of stories about "Mars" and the 5/4, but instead, I'll just quote this paragraph and say: yup. I'll also toot my own horn a bit (HAHAHA SEE WHAT I DID THERE) and say that my last year teaching, my 6th grade spring concert was in early April and I had a lot of time with those kids after the concert to work on building their musical skills. I pulled "Mission: Impossible" off the shelf so I could get them started on time signatures that were not based on 2, 3, or 4. Most of them eventually got the hang of it.

(Some people might argue that "Mission: Impossible" should really be written in 10/8, or 6/8 + 2/4, but let's not give ourselves a headache here. I also had a conducting professor who claimed that "Mars" was fast enough that it should be conducted in two beats - one long and one short - instead of five, and that's how we had to perform that assignment. Headache.)

Let's see, video games. Other than PS, my favorite series is Myst; while most of the soundtracks in the game were meant to be ambient music, every now and then they put out a really great track. Myst III: Exile had its ups and downs as a game, but the title track was a big departure from the previous music of the series, and I liked it. However, I distinctly remember being blown away the first time I heard the Kadish Gallery theme. That world's probably one of the hardest in the game, but the music in the gallery makes up for it. (I assume the singer is singing in the fictional language made up for the universe, but I could be wrong.)

My friends and I were big into King's Quest VI in middle school. I loved the in-game instrumental version of "Girl in the Tower", though there's no denying the cheesy over-the-top awesomeness of the recorded track Sierra included with the CD. I'm not quite sure if it's good on its own, or falls into the "so bad it's good" category, but I love it anyway. One of my best friends is a rather scruffy-looking headbanging Metallica junkie who didn't cut his hair from about 2000 - 2006. I couldn't help but laugh whenever he'd get into my car, pick up my iPod (that was hooked up to the car's speakers), and go directly to "Girl in the Tower" and we'd rock out on the way to wherever it was that we were going. :D

I had mixed feelings about the game itself, but I do appreciate what The 7th Guest did with its theme and altering it in various ways and slipping it in throughout the game. That was another game that had some tracks included on one of the CDs, and they were fun.

Going old school, I had the original Columns for the Master System. Not only did I always find Columns more fun than Tetris, but I loved the music in the original. The music for the normal single-player mode was reminiscent of some Bach-esque organ piece, and was written and arranged very well, considering the limitations of the system.
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Re: It's that music thread!

Postby Bragatyr » Sun Feb 3, '13, 4:37 am

I think that was probably a good call to use the "Mission: Impossible" theme. I imagine pretty much everybody in the world has to be familiar with the theme, and so the biggest part of the time signature hurdle is crossed, because the rhythm is already pretty much internalized. But yeah, I actually always kind of looked at the main part of the theme as being 10/8 (dividing the accents 3,3,2,2, because I tend to feel things in eighth notes whenever possible) but of course that's always the call of the person notating it and convention.

I have unfortunately still not played any of the Myst games, even though I've been meaning to track them down, but that Kadish Gallery track is awesome. Just really beautiful, and haunting, with those vocals. That's my kind of music. I've actually been meaning to track down some King's Quest games, too, but these old PC games seem hard to find!

And I haven't played Shadow of the Colossus or Earthbound either, which I regret (especially Earthbound, because as my friend keeps lamenting there was a local game store around here that had it for like 45 bucks a few years ago, and they're long gone) but I have played Okami, and it does have an awesome soundtrack. I got sidetracked on the game because I was having a Zelda overdose, but I really need to go back to it. I do really like the Onett theme in Brawl, though, and pretty much all the Mother series stuff that made it in. I've just gotta catch up on a lot of game soundtracks, basically, especially early PC era stuff.

And Wolf Bird, I saw that you were listening to Green Man, by Type O Negative, recently. They are quite easily my second favorite band of all time, and I love that song. I'm so glad I got to see them back when I was in college. Definitely the best live experience I've ever had. Peter Steele was just awesome.
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