Perhaps an example to illustrate –

A while back I was having dinner with a few people who were wine aficionados, discussing the various wines on offer in quite reasonable depth. When the conversation turned to me, I tried to bow out saying that I was a beer man, I knew nothing about the complexities of wine, just what I liked.

Their response was basically that’s all that’s important. It doesn’t matter whether you know the most intimate details and feel it with your soul, it just matters whether you enjoy it or not. Let your interest in a subject find it’s own level, although it’s worth giving it a prod. Looking down on someone else for using something in a way different to you is just elitist.

A readily apparent example is the way techy people tend to look down on myspace users. I hate myspace. I hate Facebook. I won’t use either of them. But I’m not going to look down on the people who enjoy using them simply because I don’t like using the web that way – they’re not using the web ‘wrong’.

To Luke and his first paragraph of the article: Enjoy the music you enjoy. Take Mack’s advice and try listening to music in a new way. If it grabs you, it grabs you. But don’t take any notice of people who groan at your ‘unsophistication’ if that’s what you enjoy. It’s a bit like those people who think that every time you have sex it has to be a long drawn-out ‘making love’ experience. Don’t limit yourself, try new things, but don’t admonish yourself if you don’t actually like what others do.

If overbearing teen angst movies have taught us anything – and they have! – it’s ‘be yourself’ :)

Secret to everything (including MMOs as you have found out :) is to stop doing at the point where you no longer enjoy it. Of course, that can be hard with respect to work… :)

Mack, I am thoroughly unsurprised you posted that drivel from an Apple.

I think your attempt to entice people into listening to music in a new way is great, but your “there’s only one real way to use music, the rest of you are plebians” is wrong, snobby and elitist.

Also, if you’ve never heard great despairing ‘hits’ on the radio, you’re either not listening to non-mainstream radio, or it just doesn’t exist where you are. There are alternative and public radio stations where I am that often have ‘hits’ with downbeat and despairing music.

The ironic thing is that in your rant against pigeonholing music, you just stick it in another pigeonhole.

Lolol Awfully Long

I haven’t read all the comments (awfully long!) but I enjoyed the article. I think you’ll like this one title 25 arguments for elimination of copy protection. They’re mostly just examples of where copy protection bites legit consumers, but still very interesting.

Well, the level of cerebral effort you need to listen to the music properly depends on the music itself. So, stuff like Britney Spears or Madonna is fine to have on in the background, the Soundtrack to War of the Worlds will jump out at you and throw your concentration, insisting on attention. How much you get out the music depends on how much there is to get, as well as the amount of time invested in it.

“I enjoy concepts and stories and ideas” Which is, well, pretty much what concept albums are built on. Musically, lyrically, and in terms of story. I find it pretty difficult to understand how if an album has a narrative, it won’t be the sort of thing you’ll be into, when music without a coherent emotional or conceptual narrative is generally much weaker in terms of intellectual content.

I recommend stuff which is difficult listening. If you really connect with a piece of music, chances are you might be able to physically feel it. If I play an incredible piece of music that I’ve heard a hundred times before for the first time in a long while, chances are it’ll sneak up on me when I start listening to how the piece is put together, and I’ll begin a pins-and-needles sensation throughout my chest and forearms.

Why don’t you break out the Half Life 2 soundtrack? It’s pretty much as close to a doomed soul as you can get, musically. Skip the ambedient stuff and put on dangerously aggressively and terrifying tracks like CP Violation, Requiem for Ravenholm, Apprehension and Evasion (and easy one to get into), LG Orbifold, Kaon, You’re not supposed to be Here, and Particle Ghost, for starters. They rarely crest the 2 minute mark but they’re intensely engaging, especially after not really listening to it In-Game.

@James Heaver: Well, it’s not that I haven’t “connected” with music. I do think there are songs which are significant to me at some level or another – for example triggering certain memories and etc.. You know – just not for the whole album.

And it’s also not that I’m looking for narrative in music. I was just commenting that music tends to lack it – and if it has it, it is not really the type of thing I’m attracted to. I can get the more cerebral kind stimulation from literature and them moving pictures on the TV. With music, I think I’m looking for more of an instant gratification thing. I can’t really quantify why I like some songs and not the others.

Still, I don’t actually crave that stimulation. Truth be told though, I could live without music. Some people say they could not do that but I think I’d be fine. Sometimes I go weeks without actually firing up my music player, or turning on the radio in the car. I do not own stereo equipment or an mp3 player. Is it ignorance? I don’t know. Perhaps it is. Maybe I should work on it….

@mack
Deltron 3030 is a fantastic album, @luke – may well be worth a go, as a concept album it has a much clearer narrative and story to it. It should be considered closer to a short story, musical or opera than an album.
You may find this more /engaging/ (whether positive or negative) than an album of individual songs.

Incidentally, I mostly listen to my music on shuffle, but have had to take deltron 3030 out of the mix because I just can’t listen to them as individual songs. Its not that I miss the whole album as such, the songs just annoy me as singles.

A random bit of trivia, which isn’t particularly related, but came to mind – David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album was originally intended to be a musical adaption of Geroge Orwell’s 1984, but he was never given the rights. Instead he wrote Diamond Dogs, so although more of a nromal album, than narrative there is a clear structure to it.

To be honest, Luke, I can’t understand your relationship with music.
You don’t have to be a great music geek, you don’t have to have a coherant musical taste in terms of genre (I most definately do not, I listen to Merzbow right next to Nancy Sinatra) – but having never made a real connection to music is, to me, like saying that you’ve never engaged with a book, a play, a film, an anime etc etc.

You don’t have to be a great theatre goer – but you should have atleast found one play that you’ve connected with – even if it /is/ negatively.

I think that you should set yoruself the task, and invest some time in engaging with an album (as @mack as suggested, although I’ve never tried his technique). It can be like learning shakespear at school – it may be a pain in the arse to begin with – trying to understand the archaic language – but as soon as it *clicks* then you will always have an ear for it. Even if you don’t end up being a shakespear fan, atleast you will know that you have experienced it properly and made an informed decision on it.

@astine: LOL!

People will get angry about music and defend the music they like to the freaking death if they like it enough, because they’ll have spent the life and effort listening to it and actaully understanding how it works

They’re like Gentoo users!

@Mack: Very interesting! I never really looked at it this way. I do admit that I mostly view music as nice background noise rather than anything else. I do get the whole “album is an artistic form of expression” thing though. I guess I just never found an album which would move me.

It could be because I thrive on intellectual rather than emotional stimulation. I enjoy concepts and stories and ideas. Even when I’m in idle mode listening to music my mind wonders doing other things – world building, creating random bits of storyline to be used in a future RPG campaign or a short story that I’ll probably never write and etc. So even when I’m “just listening” I’m not really concentrating on the music – it acts as a background.

But perhaps I should try to find an album I could enjoy the way you describe. :)