What Is It About Music That You Like? (Read first post!)
 

When I read Musicnative's questionnaire, I saw he posed an interesting question. How does music make you feel and what does it mean to you?

I don't want to ask this question, but I want to ask a similar one. Similar threads exist, but I would like to be a bit more analytical. I want to ask you what your favourite genres of music are and then explain music's biggest attractions, what it is that you typically like when you listen to a song. If you listened to music before your teens, I would also like to ask if the music you listen to now is more or less the same as what you listened to before your teens. Basically, I'd like to try and figure out a bit more what it is that makes people prefer some genres than others. For someone who likes the same band as me, are we drawn to it for the same reasons or do we appreciate different things about it? Are we taught to like a certain kind of music when we are young which we stick with or do we redefine our preferences in our teens or later, only to never return to the aesthetic preferences of our childhood?

Anyways, this is getting a bit spacey and fleety and I'm usually anything but so I've come up with a questionnaire format that I encourage people to use. Just copy, paste and edit the following quoted text in your own post!


I'll post an answer after this post that you can also use as an example. Oh, and don't let the formal format of this questionnaire prevent you from (also) posting in the thread as you normally would :)

Preferred Genres
A short list of genres here. Too many and the explanatory power of your answer decreases so don't list every genre you listen to, but stick to your favs!

Symphonic Metal and Hip Hop I'm going to stick with those two even though I love so many more genres but I get the point of this post.


What attracts me to music

Overall, I use music as a way to stablize my moods from time to time. If I'm angry, I have a playlist of songs called calm that eventually will calm me down over time. If I'm feeling flirty/in love with someone I will lean more towards R&B songs to reflect my mood. If I'm feeling pretty good and not in any type of mood that sways to a specific genre, I will zone out to some Electronica. I also have a playlist of songs called fight music. Sometimes when i'm angry the whole calm thing just pisses me off more so I need some harder metal/screamo to vent the frustration of the situation. I will post a few examples of some songs that I have on my playlist called Fight Music.






Are you attracted to the same musical qualities now as then?
No way, when I was younger, I would listen and gravitate more towards just the lyrics and didn't really understand what was going on in the background with the instrumentation. Now, it's the other way around Beats and instrumentation is what I look for first then the lyrics come into play later on for me. I like to break down the guitar solos , chords and other things and say what I would have done differently in the song to spice it up some.

okay I think I did this correctly.

Preferred Genres
Jazz Rock (/fusion), progressive rock, classic rock


What attracts me to music
What attracts me most to music is when I find it beautiful to my ears. I'm a sucker for harmonies and catchy melodies. The feelings I like the most in music are happiness or melancholy/sadness. I generally do not like extreme anger/despair/aggression in music and the songs I like the most are typically comfortable to my ears.

I listen to the music I like very often (albums on repeat) and I believe I find it has more replay value if it's a little more intricate than the standard pop format with predictable verses and refrains. It's not that I always prefer the trickier or proggier music (I don't, I like pop hooks as much as the next guy), it just seems to stay with me longer. I also have a strong preference for instrumental music rather than electronic and I very much like acoustic instruments. Put all that together and it may seem natural that most of what I listen to is from the 70s.

.. And I don't think the larger portion of what I listen to could be danced to in a club. :p:



The Caravan song above showcases the kind of melody and harmony I might like in a song combined with a content, happy feeling that I definetly attract to.




This track again showcases the kind of beauty that I like in music. The haunting piano chords in the start conjure up a kind of melancholy which I love and the vocal performance is just tremendously beautiful to listen to. Intense, but comfortable track to me that I connect with emotionally.




A sung melody like this is irresistible to me and I can find myself humming or singing a song like this all day.




Beautiful melody and playing by Knopfler and a sentimentality that I instantly connect to.

Are you attracted to the same musical qualities now as then?
Yes, I think I am. As a kid, I was exposed and listened to music like Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, ABBA and so on which has a lot of the qualities I look for today I believe. In my teens, I had a period where I rebelled against this somewhat and listened to more punk and noisy electronica, but I've since gravitated away from that and back to the aesthetic preferences from my childhood.


So, this does not paint the whole picture (obviously) as I do like stuff that strays from these qualities, but you know. How about you?

Definetly :D Reading your post, I think we generally gravitate towards music for somewhat different reasons which is actually quite interesting. :)

I can definitely relate to this. When I was younger I definitely cared a lot more about lyrics than I do now. Not that I no longer enjoy good lyrics, it's just that it's no longer the focus for me.

Preferred Genres
Damn near anything Electronic, Black Metal, Post Rock, Modern Classical, Folk, World. Tons of other stuff too. There's no telling what I'll liike.

What attracts me to music
I used to listen to music as a way to sort of bring me out of the here and now. I always felt bored and dreary, so the music I listened to tended to be dramatic in one way or another. As in I listened to the saddest, angriest, happiest, calmest, music I could find. Or if it was foreign, it would almost bring me somewhere else or to another time.

I'll just post one of everything













Are you attracted to the same musical qualities now as then?
Nowadays, I still enjoy music that is intense in some way. If someone posts an album and says "wow this is depressing", or "this is the saddest album I've heard", you can count on me to get it. For all the other stuff I've gotten into, like Hip Hop, I'm not sure what attracts me to it.

Don't like the labeling of genres very much, as so much of what I listen to crosses the bounds as if they aren't there, and some just can't relly ba labeled. At any rate, the genres I tend to lean to are :
Metal, R&B, Hip-hop.

First, a song must appeal to my ears, which is not very hard to do.
The next thing, and this is only necessary to love a song, it has to make me feel some emotion, either through the lyrics, or I am simply in shock from the beauty of the sound of the song that I don't even care what the lyrics are. I'm not afraid to say that some of my favorite songs are those that have made me cry. Some songs I love just to blast in the car.


Hmm... What did I listen to as a kid......
Mostly movie soundtracks from stuff like The Lion King, and for some reason I listened to the Backstreet Boys. I can't stand them now, though. Then for a while, I listened almost exclusively to country.
I'd probably still like a lot of the songs from those soundtracks, but my taste has widened very much. I still listen to some country, but much of it annoys me.

Favourite Genres
Oh god far too many and I like them all for different reasons, but for the purposes of this I'll use one of my favorites and something I've been listening to a lot of recently: harsh noise/power electronics/noisecore and the like.


What attracts me to music
Even within this subgenre I'd say there's enough variety to produce various reasons for liking different artists, but my favorite quality of a lot of it is the absolute catharsis achieved by a band like The Gerogerigegege. A lot of their music is basically just complete cacophony with unintelligible screaming. Most people can't tolerate the sound, but I love the.... rather pure emotional release, as I see it. Instruments Disorder would be the perfect example of this (and likely my favorite album ever), but it's not on Youtube. Still, here are some videos:








Are you attracted to the same musical qualities now as then?
Definitely not anymore... back then I largely listened to nothing but hip hop (which I still enjoy today). I've developed a much larger appreciation for various things in music that I previously didn't have.

^Oh man, that is so far removed from what I look for in music. That in itself is cool to see though :D

Thanks, glad to see I didn't just get the usual "AAAA HOW DO YOU LISTEN TO THAT" response XD. I mean... I look for a lot of different things in different genres (trying to stay open to about any of them) so I do enjoy some of the same elements as you at times as well, but I figure harsh noise is one of the less understood genres out there, so I wanted to use it.