Wednesday, November 22, 2006
hello, my fellow readers, and welcome to todays edition of BLOG-O-TAINMENT!
so you are bored, and you decide to come here. because i am here. it seems natural to me. i write, sometimes even at great length. sometimes even on topic. but it will be enough, because i have already killed about thirty seconds of your time, and that is what you were really after in the first place.
on to the meat. i broke down yesterday. i have this myspace page. i held out forever, because myspace seems evil and i have this place. but no one can find this place. i left it blank, because the name and the city are what people search for when they want to find me. but i stare at it, and i see things they tell me to write about, and it makes me anxious. it makes me want to write about those things. so i broke down. i put a giant list of music on my myspace. probably too much. i mean, i am still a myspace newb, i don't know all the ins and the outs, the common courtesy sort of things that every internet community develops. but screw it. they told me to write about music. they got exactly what they are asking for.
the thing is, all i did was list music. that isn't enough for me. that isn't writing about music. so now my mind is swirling. all i can think about is 'why that music?' what am i leaving out by fitting my text into the little myspace box, with my little myspace list. music is a big deal, it deserves much more explaination, i have realized. so i am here to flesh this whole musical obsession thing out, and you are here because you are bored. it is a match made in heaven.
first, we need to find out how i appreciate music. the context of my listening habits. i listen to music mostly on weekends and before bed. having music on in the background while i am doing other things can piss me off. i am not a big fan of the random shuffle thing. if they had a random album shuffle, i would be there all the time. i like albums. songs are great, but i need a full album or i am not satisfied. it makes me sad to see great songs on terrible albums. if i was a good song followed by cheap filler, i would be pissed. i would mutiny, and take the other two halfway decent songs with me. if you are putting out an album, you should focus on making a solid album, and solid albums are filled with solid songs. solid albums are better as a whole than any single song. that is what an album should be, an collection of pieces that becomes a new entity when combined, to the benefit of all the pieces.
luckily, there is more music out there than i could possibly listen too. i have found enough albums i think are solid that i don't have to worry anymore. i can sit down and blow off an hour on the internet, or just sitting like a lump listening to music. or, my favorite, letting music put me to sleep. i think my insomnia stems from the fact that i can't shut down my thoughts. when i lay down, my brain sees the lull in the action and goes to work. there is nothing going on, so it is time to think without interruption. music gives my head something else to focus on. it still takes more than one album to fall asleep, but falling asleep in less than two hours is still infinitely better than not falling asleep at all. anyways, the time right before bed is usually my favorite part of the day. it is just me, my thoughts, and whatever two albums i have picked. so, i just drift.
it makes perfect sense, it ties in with how i have always enjoyed music. i can never fully pay attention. my mind always drifts. lyrics are usually useless. i can never pay attention. they pop out at certain moments, when they are relevent to my internal monologue, and that is great. but most of the time, vocals are just another instrument. mostly what i seek out is the emotion behind the songs. it is in my nature. i try to feel what the people around me are feeling. so when i am listening to music, i try to feel what the artist is feeling, or at least why they are trying to make me feel. it gives me an odd perspective sometimes. i will talk to someone about a song, and they will be like 'did you listen to what they were saying? you didn't catch it at all.' but i wasn't, so my song ends up being a little different than their song. most of the time, we can reconcile. we just add a different aspect to eachother's appreciation. but yeah, lyrics. screw lyrics. i am not listening to music to hear bad poetry. i am listening to let the music take ahold of me, and give me a vicarious emotional experience. that is what good music does, makes you feel things without the usual prerequesite outside stimulus. all it takes is a song, just sound, and you can feel angry, or sad, or in love. that is what amazes me, and what keeps me coming back for more.
it is funny to wind back through my music listening career. first, it was grunge and alternative. it was junior high and high school. it was anger, it was angst, it was my petulant attitude toward life. i slowly wound my way through rock, until i started dabbling in electronic music, kind of my second wind. i had never known anything other than rock, so it was a little confusing. no words, no instruments, just a constant building pulse that took time to develop, but could take you places you never thought possible. it spoke to me, the fact that a computer could make this this music. to me, it was basically organic math. a human controlling the structure of numbers and sine waves, and all of the things i was fixated on at the end of high school and the beginning of college, and turning them into something beautiful. trance music was an epiphany. the simpler the song, the more beautiful it seemed. then, after i was a complete trance addict, i found raving. it was a little annoying, since trance and raves in seattle didn't seem to go hand in hand. it was all house and drum and bass. both of these are great, sure, but it wasn't what i was looking for. maybe i just picked the wrong parties, i don't know. so i started exploring on my own. i started to explore goa, psytrance, and all of the more acidy tripped out edges of the electronic world. i realized i enjoyed getting away from the constant bpm that drove rave sets. my mind thrived in the shifts and turns. this slowly lead me away from trance as a fallback. i started finding more downtempo chill albums and a whole mess of trip hop. this has really become my staple. i am not even sure if i can define trip hop. actually, i am not quite sure i can define any music genre. my mental cataloging is all based on what i have heard from other people. trip hop defines a broad spectrum of music to me, and at this point, i wasn't too concerned about describing my tastes to other people. i just wanted to hear new things.
this is where my tastes really exploded. i wanted everything. i wanted to listen to every album, and every other album it was compared to. i wanted to find the best of every sound i had ever heard. i just wanted the best albums, the albums i enjoyed the most. i didn't mind weeding through mediocre albums that i liked until i found the one album that i loved, and made them obsolete. it was just a process i went to any time i found something i hadn't heard before. that is what i wanted, the albums that sat at the top, and let me narrow down my tastes, until i had only music i wanted to listen too. i stopped paying attention to genre. i just listened to everything, and if i liked it i would pursue more. if i didn't, it was deleted for space. my tastes were broad enough, that genres were just ideas to lead me to the album i wanted to hear. punk, jazz, indie, happy hardcore, bluegrass, whatever. if you can combine two or more, even better, because you give me something i haven't heard before. the only thing that really keeps things focused is a lack of hard drive space. for a while i was constantly forced to reevaluate, and examined what albums i really listened too, and what albums were just there for show. i lost a lot of stuff i wish i still had, but apparently not enough to go find it again.
and here i am. i have so much music, i can't listen to it all. i don't even know how to begin to share my tastes with someone else. albums work their way in and out of my regular playlist. burning cd's work to a point, until i realize how outdated my own booklets full of burned cd's are. i am always adding new music. i have enough albums and enough artists i listen too, that there is always new music coming in. whenever i decide to look, there are new albums to download. usually don't even need too, because i can just skim through my huge folder of unsorted crap and find something i forgot i had.
i figure, my tastes reveal themselves. i don't really pay attention to what i am listening too. i just scroll through, and find the first album i really want to listen too, and put it on. before the album ends, i find a new one. i never spend more than about thirty seconds looking, because i don't have too. it all depends on my mood. sometimes, i spend weeks without listening to the same album twice. then sometimes i listen to the same albums over and over, because they are so good and give me no reason to look for anything else.
i have been thinking about something for a while now. setting up a page like the reviews page. a top 100 page. i want to have a fluid rating system of my top 100 favorite albums. something i can change on a whim. i think this would be a lot of fun to build. i wonder how long it would take me to even find 100 albums i think are worthy to be on the list. not too long, i am thinking. it is something i have been meaning to set up. i could set one up for ryan and matt too. that would almost be more interesting to me, because i tend to view other people's music through the prism of my own tastes.
now, i am tired. i am not even going to read this again tonight before i publish. any glaring errors will get to stay in all their mistyped glory. not that i am going to be able to sleep, anyways. i'm staying at my parents house tonight, which means no music. i wonder if i can recreate a full album in my head....... ooooh....... your task is now to try and recreate your favorite album, now that my entertainment outpouring has run dry.
so you are bored, and you decide to come here. because i am here. it seems natural to me. i write, sometimes even at great length. sometimes even on topic. but it will be enough, because i have already killed about thirty seconds of your time, and that is what you were really after in the first place.
on to the meat. i broke down yesterday. i have this myspace page. i held out forever, because myspace seems evil and i have this place. but no one can find this place. i left it blank, because the name and the city are what people search for when they want to find me. but i stare at it, and i see things they tell me to write about, and it makes me anxious. it makes me want to write about those things. so i broke down. i put a giant list of music on my myspace. probably too much. i mean, i am still a myspace newb, i don't know all the ins and the outs, the common courtesy sort of things that every internet community develops. but screw it. they told me to write about music. they got exactly what they are asking for.
the thing is, all i did was list music. that isn't enough for me. that isn't writing about music. so now my mind is swirling. all i can think about is 'why that music?' what am i leaving out by fitting my text into the little myspace box, with my little myspace list. music is a big deal, it deserves much more explaination, i have realized. so i am here to flesh this whole musical obsession thing out, and you are here because you are bored. it is a match made in heaven.
first, we need to find out how i appreciate music. the context of my listening habits. i listen to music mostly on weekends and before bed. having music on in the background while i am doing other things can piss me off. i am not a big fan of the random shuffle thing. if they had a random album shuffle, i would be there all the time. i like albums. songs are great, but i need a full album or i am not satisfied. it makes me sad to see great songs on terrible albums. if i was a good song followed by cheap filler, i would be pissed. i would mutiny, and take the other two halfway decent songs with me. if you are putting out an album, you should focus on making a solid album, and solid albums are filled with solid songs. solid albums are better as a whole than any single song. that is what an album should be, an collection of pieces that becomes a new entity when combined, to the benefit of all the pieces.
luckily, there is more music out there than i could possibly listen too. i have found enough albums i think are solid that i don't have to worry anymore. i can sit down and blow off an hour on the internet, or just sitting like a lump listening to music. or, my favorite, letting music put me to sleep. i think my insomnia stems from the fact that i can't shut down my thoughts. when i lay down, my brain sees the lull in the action and goes to work. there is nothing going on, so it is time to think without interruption. music gives my head something else to focus on. it still takes more than one album to fall asleep, but falling asleep in less than two hours is still infinitely better than not falling asleep at all. anyways, the time right before bed is usually my favorite part of the day. it is just me, my thoughts, and whatever two albums i have picked. so, i just drift.
it makes perfect sense, it ties in with how i have always enjoyed music. i can never fully pay attention. my mind always drifts. lyrics are usually useless. i can never pay attention. they pop out at certain moments, when they are relevent to my internal monologue, and that is great. but most of the time, vocals are just another instrument. mostly what i seek out is the emotion behind the songs. it is in my nature. i try to feel what the people around me are feeling. so when i am listening to music, i try to feel what the artist is feeling, or at least why they are trying to make me feel. it gives me an odd perspective sometimes. i will talk to someone about a song, and they will be like 'did you listen to what they were saying? you didn't catch it at all.' but i wasn't, so my song ends up being a little different than their song. most of the time, we can reconcile. we just add a different aspect to eachother's appreciation. but yeah, lyrics. screw lyrics. i am not listening to music to hear bad poetry. i am listening to let the music take ahold of me, and give me a vicarious emotional experience. that is what good music does, makes you feel things without the usual prerequesite outside stimulus. all it takes is a song, just sound, and you can feel angry, or sad, or in love. that is what amazes me, and what keeps me coming back for more.
it is funny to wind back through my music listening career. first, it was grunge and alternative. it was junior high and high school. it was anger, it was angst, it was my petulant attitude toward life. i slowly wound my way through rock, until i started dabbling in electronic music, kind of my second wind. i had never known anything other than rock, so it was a little confusing. no words, no instruments, just a constant building pulse that took time to develop, but could take you places you never thought possible. it spoke to me, the fact that a computer could make this this music. to me, it was basically organic math. a human controlling the structure of numbers and sine waves, and all of the things i was fixated on at the end of high school and the beginning of college, and turning them into something beautiful. trance music was an epiphany. the simpler the song, the more beautiful it seemed. then, after i was a complete trance addict, i found raving. it was a little annoying, since trance and raves in seattle didn't seem to go hand in hand. it was all house and drum and bass. both of these are great, sure, but it wasn't what i was looking for. maybe i just picked the wrong parties, i don't know. so i started exploring on my own. i started to explore goa, psytrance, and all of the more acidy tripped out edges of the electronic world. i realized i enjoyed getting away from the constant bpm that drove rave sets. my mind thrived in the shifts and turns. this slowly lead me away from trance as a fallback. i started finding more downtempo chill albums and a whole mess of trip hop. this has really become my staple. i am not even sure if i can define trip hop. actually, i am not quite sure i can define any music genre. my mental cataloging is all based on what i have heard from other people. trip hop defines a broad spectrum of music to me, and at this point, i wasn't too concerned about describing my tastes to other people. i just wanted to hear new things.
this is where my tastes really exploded. i wanted everything. i wanted to listen to every album, and every other album it was compared to. i wanted to find the best of every sound i had ever heard. i just wanted the best albums, the albums i enjoyed the most. i didn't mind weeding through mediocre albums that i liked until i found the one album that i loved, and made them obsolete. it was just a process i went to any time i found something i hadn't heard before. that is what i wanted, the albums that sat at the top, and let me narrow down my tastes, until i had only music i wanted to listen too. i stopped paying attention to genre. i just listened to everything, and if i liked it i would pursue more. if i didn't, it was deleted for space. my tastes were broad enough, that genres were just ideas to lead me to the album i wanted to hear. punk, jazz, indie, happy hardcore, bluegrass, whatever. if you can combine two or more, even better, because you give me something i haven't heard before. the only thing that really keeps things focused is a lack of hard drive space. for a while i was constantly forced to reevaluate, and examined what albums i really listened too, and what albums were just there for show. i lost a lot of stuff i wish i still had, but apparently not enough to go find it again.
and here i am. i have so much music, i can't listen to it all. i don't even know how to begin to share my tastes with someone else. albums work their way in and out of my regular playlist. burning cd's work to a point, until i realize how outdated my own booklets full of burned cd's are. i am always adding new music. i have enough albums and enough artists i listen too, that there is always new music coming in. whenever i decide to look, there are new albums to download. usually don't even need too, because i can just skim through my huge folder of unsorted crap and find something i forgot i had.
i figure, my tastes reveal themselves. i don't really pay attention to what i am listening too. i just scroll through, and find the first album i really want to listen too, and put it on. before the album ends, i find a new one. i never spend more than about thirty seconds looking, because i don't have too. it all depends on my mood. sometimes, i spend weeks without listening to the same album twice. then sometimes i listen to the same albums over and over, because they are so good and give me no reason to look for anything else.
i have been thinking about something for a while now. setting up a page like the reviews page. a top 100 page. i want to have a fluid rating system of my top 100 favorite albums. something i can change on a whim. i think this would be a lot of fun to build. i wonder how long it would take me to even find 100 albums i think are worthy to be on the list. not too long, i am thinking. it is something i have been meaning to set up. i could set one up for ryan and matt too. that would almost be more interesting to me, because i tend to view other people's music through the prism of my own tastes.
now, i am tired. i am not even going to read this again tonight before i publish. any glaring errors will get to stay in all their mistyped glory. not that i am going to be able to sleep, anyways. i'm staying at my parents house tonight, which means no music. i wonder if i can recreate a full album in my head....... ooooh....... your task is now to try and recreate your favorite album, now that my entertainment outpouring has run dry.
