Everyone's favorite music?

Because there are too many serious threads here :P

By Annatar11 Posted May 15, 2008 07:27:40

Okay, so, time for another lighthearted OT thread since there are plenty of real world/politics ones going on!

I'm pretty crazy about music, I pretty much have to have something playing when I'm near a PC. I love discovering little-known music, and I generally don't get hooked on the pop culture stuff, though some things played on VH1 (US cable "music" channel for any non-US people

Music in quotes because they just play it in the mornings, the rest is crap!) stick around for a bit.

A lot of really cool music I've found through friends, and a lot through http://pandora.com/ . Pandora is a free online radio station. You do need to register, but it's basically just email/password and I've never gotten a single email from them, spam or otherwise. It's very professional, and basically it creates customized playlists for you. Put in a song name or artist, and it will populate a huge playlist with songs of similar style. You can vote these up or down to help control what it plays, the only limitation is how many songs you can skip per hour. It's awesome for discovering new stuff!

For more control over what I listen to, I use http://www.imeem.com/ . It's not a radio station per se, but it allows users to upload music and then anyone can search and play it. It's also free (and you need to register), and it doubles as a mini social networking site but it's also pretty clean and I never get crap from it. It's very handy for finding specific songs, and you can also create your own playlists. You can always listen to everything you upload, but in some cases if imeem doesn't have a deal with a record company to play a specific song, everyone else will just hear a 30 second sample. These days there are fairly few 30 second samples, and there's a toggle in the playlist controls to just automatically skip these so it's still a pretty good deal. I use imeem every day at work

Hope at least some of you find something interesting, and share yours!

+6 Karma 51 Replies 7 Referrals

If you like Lisa Gerrard, check out her stuff with Dead Can Dance. Great stuff.

Here's a sample for you:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Do5vj3D-OD4

Indeed, I listen to some of the Dead Can Dance stuff

Just figured it'd be easier for folks to identify with her movie tunes

Yada Yada. Injection by Hans Zimmer, from MI:2. A lot of his stuff is pretty epic

Explosions in the Sky,
Smashing Pumpkins, the Offspring, Papoose, Jay-z, Blink-182

There's nothing that i don't listen to.

I like my music progressive, cutting edge, avant-garde. I get so tired of the crap they play on the radio that I don't even use radios anymore - silence is better than most of that garbage.

Bands of note: Neurosis, Isis, uneXpect, Rush, Explosions in the Sky, Red Sparowes, Mogwai, Sigur Rós, Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Pelican, Mastodon, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Nine Inch Nails (yeah, a bit mainstream, but still - they freakin' ROCK), 27, Between the Buried and Me, and lots more.

I get so tired of the crap they play on the radio that I don't even use radios anymore - silence is better than most of that garbage.

Hard to disagree with that one

Yada Yada. Injection by Hans Zimmer, from MI:2. A lot of his stuff is pretty epic

Yup, I love Hans Zimmer's music. "The Rock" score is pretty awesome, too. Howard Shore did some great stuff with the LoTR scores, Trevor Rabin has a few good ones under his belt as well (Armageddon and Enemy of the State come to mind)

Seconding Pandora as a good service - paired with Pandora's Box (basically stand-alone program for breaking it out of the browser) it's a excellent tool. One complaint I have with it is that if you mix a lot of stations, it doesn't put them together very well. I'll be listening to alt-rock for a little bit (maybe three songs) and then bam! hip-hop. Still, you can always make them separate stations.

You can get a handle on what I like by going to my site, Band Chat. It isn't updated as frequently as I'd like these days, but it has enough back content to keep you busy!

-HM

THE BEATLES!!

and elvis is also very great

spacemuppet

I listen to metal and rock mostly. Notable bands include System of a Down, Dream Theater, and Keane. I also like movie/play scores, such as the LotR and Matrix scores.

Sigur Rós

Holy sh*t so they don't just exist in my imagination?! You're the first person who's ever acknowledged their existence.

If your looking for nothing but truely strange music, Mr Bungle is quite interesting, pink cigarette and girls of porn are interesting songs haha.

And if u want some interesting drum and bass, pendulum is pretty popular at the moment, though i haven't heard their new album yet.

Swell opening post. I've so far pretty much shunned streaming audio despite having had broadband for several years. Maybe I have to reconsider that soon.

Re music and GC2, the main things I want are a lack of obvious lyrics and some sort of "spacy" quality.

I use iTunes (despite not owning an iPod and not wanting one). I like it because the combination of their decent library interface and the "smart playlist feature" lets me have a meta-list I call Game Time. I feed it mostly from supporting smart lists based on genres (dub, ambient, etc.) with some lists for specific artists such as John Holowach, who has plenty of free stuff up on the Internet Audio Archive.

Other artists I like for game time include: Bill Lasswell, Swayzak, Thievery Corporation, Mad Professor, Stereolab, Boards of Canada, The Higher Intelligence Agency, Jah Wobble, Funki Porcini, Legion of Green Men, Lee Scratch Perry, Mouse on Mars, The 462nd Zinnias, Kruder and Dorfmeister, Loop Guru, Basic Channel, Massive Attack, Sly & Robbie, Messian Dread, Amon Tobin, Swag, and Mr. Scruff. This list is neither complete nor rank-ordered.

I feel my taste in music is best summed up by listing the artists in my current playlist

Tracy Chapman, Tom Waits, The Doors, Space, Skunk Anansie, Simon & Garfunkel, Richard Thompson, Pink Floyd, Paul Simon, Nine Horses, Recordings of the G3 concerts, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Erasure, Bob Dylan, Death In Vegas, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bob Seger, Bob Marley, Blur, Blue Oyster Cult, Beastie Boys, Animals, Sting, Shed 7, Johnny Cash, Chris Rea, Ryuichi Sakamoto, John Lennon, Iggy Pop, Radiohead, Crash Test Dummies, Black Grape, Gogol Bordello, David Sylvian, and the Survive Style 5+ and Macross Plus OSTs.

So this would basically be pretty much any genre, as long as its good.

I will also put my word in for Pandora being very good for discovering new artists, even if sometimes it does make some very (seemingly) strange connections (Harold Budd -> Rednex).

So this would basically be pretty much any genre, as long as its good.

I mentioned "genre" mostly because it is a UI thing in iTunes. But Terraziel raises a really good point. A long time ago, I heard one of my favorite picky friends respond to a question along the lines of "What kind of music do you like?" She said "Good stuff," or something equivalent.

I mention this only because several times I've ended up happier because I decided to buck my own biases about music "genres." Patsy Cline and the elder Hank Williams are now among my favorites, but for too much of my life I assumed that music called "country" was boring crap not worth my time.

A few more links for different stuff

Jem is an interesting singer:

"24" (used in Ultraviolet trailer)
"They"
"Finally Woken"

I also tend to love piano in songs, though most of these are naturally fairly slow and melodic

Sarah McLachlan has a bunch of good piano songs, but that's too predictable, so here's a Californian singer Vienna Teng:

"Lullaby for a stormy night" (anime vid with the track)
"Gravity" (also anime vid)

She's great on the piano and has a pretty voice.

Sigur Rós

Holy sh*t so they don't just exist in my imagination?! You're the first person who's ever acknowledged their existence.

They do exist outside of your brain (and have like 24 MILLION listens on last.fm - crazy, huh!). I finally got my hands on the rest of their discography I was missing just yesterday. They pretty much blow my mind, even though I have no idea what they're singing about. It's perfectly majestic post-rock for chilling to.

I listen to a lot of melodic metal, like agathodaimon, eternity void, vesania, sirenia, graveworm, draconian, and a lot of others. There's too many to name so I won't list them all, just the highlights. I almost never listen to the radio; too mainstream for me. You definately won't find these bands on the radio.

Okay. I hope I live long enough to see how people respond to this...

My favorite song is...Antonin Dvorak's symphony #7 movement IV: Allegro con Fuego

*dives into flame shelter*

I also like a lot of the classic as well as more avant-garde jazz. Basically, I like to listen to stuff I can play on my saxophone.

Wow, lots of stuff that an old guy like me (44) listens to as well. The usual suspects of course: Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, Rush, Jethro Tull, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. Also like Junkhouse, I Mother Earth (first album was damned good, IMO), and find myself listening to Jane's Addiction a lot of late. Meat Puppets, anyone? Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Kate Bush, Enya, some Stone Temple Pilots, Some Pearl Jam. The list goes on. I'm also surprised to see Sigur Ros mentioned. Not often you see that.

Anyone listen to Ars Nova, Yatha Sidhra, Magellan, or Explorer's Club?

What about classical? Anyone into that as well?

About the only thing I can't stand is country and I'm no fan of rap or hip-hop. I guess that's my age showing.

I will also put my word in for Pandora being very good for discovering new artists, even if sometimes it does make some very (seemingly) strange connections (Harold Budd -> Rednex).

I rage every time it goes from CAKE to Red Hot Chili Peppers (which, by and large, I despise). I've been downvoting the latter for about a month now and it refuses to stop. Had it not been for that stuff, I would probably have bought one of those neat radio things that can do Pandora.

Apart from relatively-non mainstream stuff like the aforementioned CAKE, I do like a lot of britpop (from Beatles onto more modern stuff like The Futureheads, Arctic Monkeys, and Franz Ferdinand, back in the day when people actually cared about them

), a few very limited 80s bands (Queen, etc), some electric-heavy stuff like Muse (not quite metal/hard-rock), and some "smarter" hip-hop/rap like Kweli & Blackalicious. If that wasn't bad enough I'm also a huge trance fan. :V

About the only thing I can't stand is country and I'm no fan of rap or hip-hop.

Amen! I'm 15 and I agree with you on that.

Antonin Dvorak's symphony #7 movement IV: Allegro con Fuego

No need to dive into a flame shelter over that.

My all-time favorite piece of music? Water Night by Eric Whitacre.

Now THAT is music.

I prefer Classical and New Age. Mostly Baroque period for classical. Don't care for vocal (singing) for either. Instrumental music.

I am a bit of a weirdo: totally detest the Piano, but LOVE the Harpsichord!

Instruments learned: Piano (8 years in 1 chronological year), Clarinet, and Cornet (short trumpet).

I was playing Chopin before the year was out, way back when I was a kid. Mother had ideas of becoming a Concert Pianist, while I had other ideas. Probably why I detest the Piano so much. Practice, Practice, Practice.... Little kids would rather play with other little kids.

Classic parent mistake

I would give anything to learn piano, but I tried and failed miserably. I was young, but nowadays I don't get much opportunity to

For a very long time I was a fan of instrumental only and didn't care much for songs and to a certain extent that's still true. There are only a few artists/bands I like listening to, everything else is a few songs here and there

Water Night by Eric Whitacre

Thanks for that link and the artist name. You fancy-music folks might be pushing me to my first symphonic binge in quite a long time. I actually owned a little Bocherini and Bartok on vinyl, as well as Frank Zappa's first London Symphony Orchestra album.

Thanks for that link and the artist name.

Indeed, that was a nice song

Here's another one that's very nice listening:

"Turning to Peace" by Paul Schwartz

Edit: How do you imbed youtube clips? :x