TheMusicExperience

Quora Answer : Why does the majority of music that I hear today feel so lifeless and formulaic? For some context, I am a 33 year old man who played classical piano for 5 years and enjoys mostly all genres of music.

Sep 12, 2019

If "the majority of the music that [you] hear today" is lifeless and formulaic, then you are clearly doing it wrong.

For fuck's sake, dude. Pretty much all music ever made in human history is now available on YouTube. Type in a couple of search terms and click a button and you are THERE.

Adult men shouldn't be listening to music that someone else is playing on the radio. People who want music to be great should just take responsibility for making it great by going out and finding great music for themselves. Unless the majority of music you hear today is music you've gone out and hunted and killed for yourself, then of course it's going to sound lifeless. YOU are lifeless.

Music is about "participating" ... not necessarily as a musician. But at least as a fan. If you don't actively love some music. And actively hate other music. And passionately seek more music to love. And remain fascinated by the way music grows and changes and each new generation tries to do something new with it.

Then ... I dunno ... close your ears. Because music isn't for you. You deserve your ennui if you think music is a "product", a kind of bottled excitement that someone else can just package up and drip-feed into you.

Quora Answer : Is it weird that certain music genres genuinely make me REALLY angry when I hear them?

Oct 16, 2019

It is somewhat.

You shouldn't be made angry by music. Music is just sound-waves, if you don't like them, listen to something else.

One issue is that some people seem to be invested in worrying about what other people should be listening to.

You might be one of those people. Or you might just have spent too much time hanging out with those people, or following them online.

If so, just stop. You really have no need or business worrying what other people listen to. Unless they're your neighbours playing it too loud late at night, or your work colleagues playing it too loud at your place of work. In which case the conversation is about them being anti-social assholes, not the merits or otherwise of the genre.

Quora Answer : Why do so many people say that modern music has no culture or creativity? Are they not looking in the right subgenres?

May 15, 2020

Basically yes.

Either they aren't listening to the right music.

Or they aren't actively "searching" for the right music and so only hear music that is given / imposed upon them by others. (No music is good if you are forced to listen to it.)

Or they haven't heard what to listen for to appreciate the creativity and culture within the music.

I sympathize with someone who has a particular way of relating to music, say they look for some kind of traditional chord structure and development in it. And then they find themselves confronted with something like electronic dance music which is all about creating a vibe with a particular repeated loop, and the feel it gives you when you hear it in the rave, and the subtleties of the sound design.

And they hear nothing.

They don't know that there is creativity there. Or that a cultural dialogue is taking place as this artist responds to and challenges the artists and trends of a couple of months ago with a new idea. Or celebrates a current new trend by adopting it in a new context.

Music always has subtleties to explore. And culture is just what humans do. Humans wouldn't bother to make music if it wasn't part of a dialogue with other human artists.

Music is vast. And the variety of ways it can work and properties that people can relate to within it are staggering. It's hard to know music well enough to understand even a fraction of it.

But it's a good bet that if people are bothering to make music, and listen to it, at all, then there's something there. And if you learn to pay attention to it, to figure out what people really like about it, you'll find it.