Musicology
So I’m going to start a list of music that I like and talk about it. My goal is to listen to a lot of music. My main musical interests are classical and rock and pop. I used to be into some areas of hip hop, if that comes back I will go over it as well. I will describe things the way I see them and discuss what elements of the music work for me, make metaphors of how the music feels to me and so on. And it will be a guide, not a criticism of various pieces and recordings. I have a long list of classical pieces I am developing, like a checklist, to listen to. I might organize it by composer alphabetically, or just have a specific page for each composer. I think that would work best. And then I would treat each solo artist or band as a composer. So there would be a page for Beethoven, a page for Liszt, a page for Kanye West and a page for Motley Crue, and so on.
This analysis may or may not get technical or theoretical, but only to the degree that I need it to express my opinions and feelings about the music at play. At all points, it will be there to introduce unfamiliar potential listeners to the artists or composers in an easy fashion, and a way to relate or hopefully expand the understandings of those musical creators to familiar people. This will be by no means objective. These are totally my opinions and my subjective feelings about music.
Having said that here are my inborn biases. I say inborn, because as I was growing in my mom’s belly, she played music for me, specifically to enhance my musical development. That music, to my knowledge, hey my hearing wasn’t that good back then, it was blocked by a belly wall to the outside world… that music was mostly classical, Bach, Beethoven and the like. So my biases are this: Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, collectively and also individually are the three greatest musical minds to have ever lived and will never be equaled. period. This is not open to debate or interpretation. Having said that, I enjoy many many other composers music including Liszt, Brahms, Vivaldi, Handel, Debussy, Schumann, Grieg, and on and on.
So on the one hand I am an admitted classical snob. Classical and composed art music is in my partially informed opinion a superior art form. It is not however, entirely a superior entertainment form. And I love having a blast and being entertained and blown away. Therefore I am also apt to listen to, speak about, cover thoughts on all sorts of musical artists who I enjoy tremendously. These can range from artists as wide as: Kanye West, Shakira, Pavement, Motley Crue, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Split Lip Rayfield, Lady Gaga, Def Leppard, Mastodon, Stone Temple Pilots, Tom Waits, Dua Lipa, and many many many many many many more, both mainstream and cliche, and obscure and bizarre, or obscure and unsung. This group of artists and bands includes acts and writers from the 1960s until today. I’m not saying I’ll speak of all of them but I am saying I have listened to and considered many, and they come into play in creating my internal musical landscape of ideas when I play and write.
