The Evolution of your Music

[Hyper Kinetic]

An interesting thought has occurred to me over the past few days after going through some of my music collection.

In particular, I have been listening to Drum'n'Bass almost exclusively over the past month or so after I got Andy C's "Nightlife 4" and "Nightlife 5". I have gone back over some of the older stuff, like Andy C's compilation for Drum'n'Bass Arena (~early 2000s), as well as some older mix CDs that I made myself (also compiled early 2000s) and you can definitely hear a change in the musical stylings over that time.

Although I am not really "on the pulse" of DnB at the moment, I can say that it is very synth and bass heavy when compared to some of the older tracks that used a little more ambient sounds. That's not to say that there weren't some heavy synth or bass tracks on older things, because there were (hell, that's basically what DnB is all about really)... but it is not as bleedingly obvious prominent as now. There's also a lot of different effects than there once were from different electrical/synth instruments. The sound, though more... "pure", is not necessarily as "clean" sounding as it older tracks.
And, yes, I realise that is a real touchy-feely way to describe it... but, having no experience in musical terminology, it's the best way I can describe it.

So, how about your preferred musical stylings? In the past X years, have you noticed an evolution or change in trends?
Pop/Sugar songs seem to all have Auto-Tune these days, for example.
What about you metalheads out there? I know there are lots...

How has your genre changed recently?

[evalys]

I was a "late bloomer", as some might call it. Was listening to more or less pop all my teenage years, not intentionally, just y'know, on the radio and trash. Didn't know any better. Then, got introduced to Dream Theater (progressive metal band) by this guy I had a crush on and listened to them and immediately fell in love. Oh, I should probably mention that I'd grown up on classical music too, piano lessons since I was 7 so yea, the 'progressive' bit in the progressive metal really struck a note with me.

I'm still a huge huge fan of DT, and probably will always be. But, over the last couple of years, after moving to Australia from Singapore ((please do not swear) music land), I've been immersed in the local music scene. It went from indie, to rock, to metal, to doom metal, to ambience, to post-rock, to noise, to post-metal, all of these in no specific order. So yea, I don't even know where I'm at now because I love it all, and what I listen to really depends on what mood I'm in.

[Geneva]

EDIT: This quickly turned into a rant of epic proportions. I tied up the end as quickly as I could but be warned, this one goes on for quite a bit.

My musical taste has taken more twists and turns down the years than I can honestly remember.

Oddly enough, I actually hated music for years. I just couldn't see the big deal about it. I now realise that this was because I had had no knowledge of music outside of Pop, Swing and mainstream Rap at the time.

I remember, distinctly, flicking through TV stations one day and, for reasons I can't quite remember, settled on MTV.
They were talking about a brand new track by an up and coming musical act called the Gorillaz. The track was, of course, Clint Eastwood.
In the space of seconds I was hooked. Every time I sat down to watch TV, from that morning on, I'd switch over the MTV, every few minutes, just to see if that song was playing.

But that was the extent for my love of music back then. I didn't try to find out more about the Gorillaz and pretty much pinned the song as a once off.

A year later, however, I had another musical discovery.
My friends in school all suddenly decided that long hair was cool and black was the only colour worth wearing. I kind of just nodded my head and let them be until one of them loaned me a CD with the promise, "It's like nothing you've ever heard before!"
I got home and threw on the album, rather skeptical. My skepticism didn't last long however as my room filled with the sudden, mind-numbingly, loud guitar riffs of Seventh Son of the Seventh Son by Iron Maiden.

Within the week I had bought my first Iron Maiden T-shirt and a copy of Edward the Great, which I played constantly on repeat. The cries of despair from my parents were only just drowned out by the booming roar of Can I Play With Madness.

And that was it for about eight months. Iron Maiden, Iron Maiden and more Iron Maiden. I had myself convinced that they were the only band in the world worth listening to and, slowly but surely, converted half the youths in my neighbourhood to metalheads much to the chagrin of everyone else.
I, quickly, became known as the "bad influence" of the street which was ironic seeing as I was lanky, weedy and terrified of conflict.

Worse still was when I proclaimed it my holy mission to convince my parents (and anyone with the patience to listen) how heavy metal was far superior to any other music genre (despite having only listened to one band). Needless to say, that mission was a complete failure.

I would love to say that my horrid tale of musical monotony ends there but, alas, it got much worse before it got better.

Moving house brought me to a new school with new people. Shy as I was I had trouble fitting in until I found a clique of Metal worshipers (and I don't use that word loosely). In a desperation to find my place I grew my hair to a ridiculous length, exposed myself to bands like Slipknot, Pantera and Korn (Oddly, I could never bring myself to like Metalica, for some reason) and decided there and then that my entire wardrobe would consist of baggy jeans and band T-shirts.

This wasn't helped by my new friends' witch-hunter like attitude to anything outside the genre. If you listened to something remotely happy then, clearly, you were gay. Which, apparently, was very, very bad.

As I got the know my way around the genre I found myself attracted to the bands with romantic subject matter or political ideologies. As my friends were drawn to Slayer, Machine Head and Lamb of God, I started listening to System of a Down, Marilyn Manson (who was gay, because he wore make-up*) and eventually Tool.

Finally brave enough to follow my own taste in music rather than the tastes of others I made the epic discovery of Nine Inch Nails and BANG! Pandora's box was opened.

Trent Reznor was gay, you see. This was because he wrote songs about feeling sad. Feeling sad was Emo and Emo was gay.
But at this point I couldn't have cared less. NIN struck a chord with me that I hadn't felt in a long, long time. Not since that morning when I happened upon that Gorillaz video.

Old habits die hard, unfortunately, and I still held a prejudice for any musical act that didn't involve copious amounts of white noise.
I found myself in musical limbo, unable to decide whether I liked certain types of music or not. I would hear a piece of music, like it but then slap myself on the wrist and think "That's dance music! You're not allowed to like that!".

Then came Demon Days.
With the release of the new Gorillaz album, the airwaves were clogged with repeats of "Dare!" and "Feel Good, Inc." My old love was rekindled and it seemed a gateway of music was opened. For once, my prejudices were moot in the face of such music and the metal bars of my musical prison cell (pardon the pun) came crashing down like the walls of Jericho.
This was music! Good music! My music!

With Gorillaz, came the Beatles, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley and various other bands I wouldn't have been caught dead listening to a few months back. I felt I had reached an audial Shangri La and one of the few privileged to know such great musical diversity. As you can tell, my chain-and-ball ego still remained very much intact.

This was "Superior Music", you see. Better than all that "Mainstream (please do not swear)"**
Electronic was still viewed very much as the devil unless it was performed by a band otherwise considered a rock group. And then....
I don't know.... Something must have happened as my Mp3 player suddenly started to fill with works by Goldfrapp, Brian Eno, Moby, Frederic Chopin, David Bowie, Nina Simone, etc...
Maybe my ego finally broke? Who knows?

From that point on it was merely a matter of: Listen to it, like it/dislike it.
Gone were the notions of superior genres or mainstream/alternative origins factoring in on whether a piece of music was good or not.

And here I am now.... Maybe I finally have reached that fabled Shangri La of music? Maybe in a month's time I'll hit another musical epiphany? I don't know and honestly I prefer it that way.

Well. There you go. If you, honestly, read all of that consider me impressed. At least my bi-monthly rant is out of the way for now.


FOOTNOTES: (Yep, I became so engrossed in this, I actually added footnotes!)
*Not to be confused with Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth, who also wore make-up but clearly, weren't gay, because the two group "leaders" decided on this.

**Odd as a lot of it was actually mainstream.

[mina]

Well when I was younger it was all the Beatles, U2, and The Cure.

I had a mid period made of the Gorillaz and whatever else was on the radio at the time.

When I hit my early teens I switched from 1960's rock over to more emoish stuff. (I blame the issues in my life for this.) Which brought me to Secondhand Serenade, Mayday Parade, and Evanscence.

Now I am in my late teens and I have switched again back to the Beatles, but I have taken up Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and a little Katy Perry.

I sense another change coming since my life issues are back. (I just hope to god it isn't rap this time.)

[Hyper Kinetic]

Well... not the intended direction of the thread (I was aiming at how a music genre had changed, not necessarily how individual's and their types of favoured music changed) but it certainly is a good direction to go.
As such...

My musical journey started back in the early 90s with the first few songs that I remember being Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" and probably East 17s "House of Love". Maybe also Underworld's "Underneath the Radar".
The first CD player I got, for Christmas roughly 15 years ago incidentally, came with Roxette's "Don't Bore Us, Get to the Chorus (Greatest Hits)", Tommy Emmanuel's "The Journey" and Queen's "Greatests Hits".
My dad's choice of Enya's "Watermark" seems to be where I got my like for mellow tunes.
Mum's choice for Neil Diamond's "Greatest Hits" and Belinda Carlisle's "The Best of Belinda: Vol 1" is another major memory.
I was generally a generic Top40 Radio listener. I also used to love watching a program called "Rage" on our national broadcasting station (The ABC... the same group that Pendulum did a remix of the News theme for ). I also liked the sound track for the Shareware version of Descent II/Terminal Velocity. Later on, there was the Tony Hawk and Gran Turismo soundtracks too. There was Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and "HIStory" in there somewhere too.
Early-mid high school is when the whole "Download Music/Napster/Audiogalaxy" thing took off, and I began downloading a few different Top40 stuff.
Actually, I still unashamedly like Belinda Carlisle.

This changed roughly a few years in to high school. A friend let me borrow a burnt trance/dance CD (I later found out it was Wild Compilation 9, the one with DJ Jean's "The Launch", about 5 years ago when I stumbled upon it at a market stall. Promptly bought that album)... and I was hooked instantly.
A few months later, I went down to the store to purchase the Ministry of Sound's latest dance compilation release and noticed Godskitchen's compilation "Summer Trance". After quite a few minutes of deliberation (seriously, I can not make purchasing decisions to save my life), I decided to go Godskitchen and to this day I am not sure if I have made a better audio purchase. Though I don't actually have a lot of non GK trance albums, I definitely still like my synthetic sounds.
Somewhere along the line, maybe even before Wild 9, a different friend got in to Moby. Hells yeah.
Somewhere along the lines, there was the soundtrack to Swordfish too.

An interesting individual choice was that of the Manic Street Preachers. I remember reading a minor comment about them in a UK Playstation magazine and thought "Ah, what the hell". I typed their name in downloaded the song with the most interesting title. I found the song "A Design For Life" and I loved it. It was quite different to everything else I knew at the time and I became hooked. Kinda worked for where my head was at during that period, too. I don't listen to them all that often (like once a year, tops) any more, but I still like the sound.
Similarly, for Pop Will Eat Itself (their songs that got me were "Everything's Cool" and "Ich bin ein Auslander"). I also found them through The Designers Republic (see below).

A couple of years later, another friend sent me over a file. I can't remember the name of the track, but it was by Dieselboy and/or Stakka & Skynet. Although not brilliant, it was fast and this was the first real taste of Drum'n'Bass I got. A few months later, and GTA3 came out, complete with MSX FM, a partial cut from the label Moving Shadow's "01.1" album with an MC. I jumped on that one straight away and ended up finding the actual "01.1" album. It's pretty awesome. I also got Andy C's mix for Drum'n'Bass Arena. This one is extra special because, at the time, I had a thing for the design group The Designer's Republic, and they did all of the corporate branding of the WipEout game series (up until WipEout Fusion anyway), Pop Will Eat Itself and Godskitchen's "Summer Trance" as well as Drum'n'Bass Arena. Clearly, I had to have that album. Since then, a significant portion of my music has been related to Drum'n'Bass and Breakbeat.

Somewhere along the line, another friend introduced me to the Deftones. While I will admit that they aren't brilliant (the less said about "Saturday Night Wrist" and their live vocals, the better), I did like the sounds that I was hearing ("White Pony" and "Around the Fur").
A few years back, I decided to act on my vague curiosity about Nine Inch Nails. I kept hearing good things, that a lot of other bands were influenced by them and also the Quake soundtrack was by Trent Reznor so, on a whim, I went to the NIN website. This was around the time that The Slip was introduced as a free-for-all online album. So, I thought, what better way to see if I like it than that? Well... since then, I have a lot of NIN stuff. My favourite is the "Beside You In Time: Live" DVD. Absolute Gold and gets played at least once a month.

Looking back on it, I actually "blame" Audiogalaxy & Kazaa for a lot of my music choices. I don't condone similar things now as there are far more legal ways these days to find samples of things that you like and it is easier to find similar things. For example, most music companies will place samples of music on their sites and Wiki is there to find similar things. Back then, though, it was a bit harder especially with the lesser known music genres.
See, after Napster collapsed, I stayed away from downloading music. I got back on to it through Audiogalaxy after I found the music video to Leftfield's "Afrika Shox" on a Playstation demo disc that I absolutely had to have and searching my local area had proven fruitless. After that, Audiogalaxy had a few different suggestions along similar audiolines. Similarly for when I started picking up Drum'n'Bass during the Kazaa era.

Then, of course, there is the word-of-mouth factor. There's some chance that most of my musical selections would not have changed all that much without the variations by friends and change of general trends.

---

So, in short, I went from generalised "Classics" and Top 40 to Trance/Dance/Techno/DnB with a few sidings of heavier things like Nine Inch Nails and Deftones... as well as a bit of mellow stuff.

[Psychichobo]

For me, it was a lot like Genevaman's experience.
The first music I actually liked to listen to was Iron Maiden's Brave New World album, and then Kamelot, and for a short period of time I was very metal-orientated. I was open-minded, but the only other things I liked were Eminem, Scatman John and the odd Daft Punk song, so I tended to feel a bit annoyed when R n' B was the trend. I tried, but could never get into it.

However, I always had a bit of a mental barrier against Death Metal or the like, as anytime anyone tried to give me an example of metal it was invariably screamy and loud with very little thought put into structure or rythm. I still can't stand singers who screech or growl throughout the entire song, it feels like they're wasting an instrument to me.

Eventually, however, I decided to explore the other types of metal in the hope that they weren't all the same, and it paid off. Dir En Gray had some cracking stuff, Rammstein were just brilliant and Judas Priest were like another Maiden. There was also Lordi, though I can thank Eurovision for that.


Since then it's pretty much mostly metal. Gorillaz were an odd exception turning up around when I was exploring other musics, but really I've not found a lot outside the metal genre to really catch me.

[VoragoTitan]

basically I went soft rock --> harder rock ---> metal.

started with what my dad listened to, then have found my own may through music since I was 12 or so.

I mostly listen to metal and hard rock now, but I am a well rounded person who will be fine with other stuff. Just no rap and country please.

-VoragoTitan

[Hyper Kinetic]

EDIT
I have no idea why that didn't post properly...

Dec 23, 2010 0:23:52 GMT Psychichobo said:

.I tended to feel a bit annoyed when R n' B was the trend. I tried, but could never get into it.

However, I always had a bit of a mental barrier against Death Metal or the like, as anytime anyone tried to give me an example of metal it was invariably screamy and loud with very little thought put into structure or rythm. I still can't stand singers who screech or growl throughout the entire song, it feels like they're wasting an instrument to me.

RnB contains neither Rhythm or Blues these days. It also sounds bleh.

Also quoted the Screamy/Growly thing for truth.

[hivefleetcurinus]

for me it went:
rap when i was a little one

then to metal in my mid teens

and then i found out about the rave scene when i was 14, now i love psy and goa trance and basically evry other genre there is ;D

[CephaSquiddy]

It would appear that I'm making a post.

I'm not gonna lie, when I was in 3rd grade or so, I got into terrible mainstream alt-rock and emo. Never have I liked rap and hip hop. In about 5th grade, I got into classic rock, thanks to my parents. I was in love with classic rock for the longest time. Then I discovered.... DREAM THEATER (Mike Portney ;A;). They were my favorite for the longest time, and I became a Progressive Metal (please do not swear). I got into bands like Tool and the Mars Volta. I still love Dream Theater, Tool and the Mars Volta, but have since widened my horizons. I realized that today's music is great, as long as you look underground. I think the bands that really widened my horizons were Gorillaz and NIN. They are still 2 of my favorites. Some time ago, I discovered Drum N' Bass thanks to Pendulum. There was a time in my life where D'n'B was all that I listened to. I got over that. Then I moved onto more Industrial music, thanks to Reznor. Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb etc... Then I got out of Industrial a bit, but I still really like it. Now a days I'm really into Trip Hop. Massive Attack and Portishead. I've also been hitting A Perfect Circle up a lot. Lately though, I've been going back to my Prog roots. Porcupine Tree and the Mars Volta mainly.

[/post]

[WestRider]

My musical taste is ridiculously diverse, and I don't really feel like tracking the evolution of that over the decade and a half or so since I started listening to Music other than what my Parents played. My core genre, though, is Metal, and I've actually moved through it in much the same path as it actually evolved, although somewhat faster.

In the mid 90s, I got some AC/DC and Motörhead albums, and started getting into the 70s stuff where Metal really took off. From there, I moved into the 80s stuff: Iron Maiden, the big Four of Thrash*, etc. Progressively getting harder, faster, and louder, around the turn of the century, I moved on into Grindcore, Death Metal, and finally Black Metal in '04 or so.

And I've got to say, since Black Metal really got established in the early 90s, I haven't run into anything truly new in Metal. I've only run into one album put out since that time** that pushed past the boundaries staked out by then, and even that was by a Band that started recording in '91. The last 15 years in Metal seem to be dominated by hybridization and fusion, combining existing elements or reaching out to other Genres like Goth Rock, Industrial, Rap, or Folk.

I haven't heard anything since that's pushed sonic weight past where Bolt Thrower did, or explored in the boundaries of where Intentionality is still discernible from White Noise past where Burzum and co. pushed to.

*Metallica, Megadeath, Slayer, and Anthrax, for those who don't know.
**All that You Fear, by Impaled Nazarene, possibly the most intense thing I've heard.

P.S. For those of you into the Iron Maiden/Judas Priest-type Metal, you might want to look into Iced Earth. A bit heavier, but the influence is still clear, and Tim Owens from Priest actually sang for them on a couple records. Night of the Stormrider, Something Wicked this Way Comes, and Horror Show are all decent entry points into their catalogue.

[aldo1234]

well for me my choice of music changed quite rapidly over the time i had a secondary school. First and second year i spent most of my time listening to Blink-182, greenday and the offspring as well as other pop punk bands. all this changed when one of my friends (an upcoming dj) introduced me too one of his friends mixes, Ascending moon by DJ syntwulf and thats really when things just went crazy.

I started listening to har5dcore dance with the likes of Darren Styles, Dougal & Gammer, Hixxy etc before being introduced to pendulum.

with the release of In Silico brought me listening tothe likes of sub-focus, freestylersand of course the prodigy =)

all of this has lead me to where i am today happily listening to pendulum, the prodigy, chase and status and my favourite band at the moment Hadouken! Absolutely love music for an accelerated generation and for the masses, i could just listen to those albums on repeat for hours, and i find it especially good for when i want to knuckle down and paint 30 hormaguants =D


favourite songs of all time :
mic check - Hadouken
propane nightmares - pendulum
breath - the prodigy
spitfire - the prodigy
pieces - chase and status
and
Vermilion pt2 - Slipknot surprisingly one of the most relaxing songs to listen too and someday might start me listening to some heavier metal......

[drdan]

I started with pop punk stuff around 12 or so - mostly green day and the offspring, this was in the just before they both went huge and really poppy.

Then shifted over into "alternative" in my mid teens, Manson, various mainstream MTV type stuff. Of course got swept into the "Nu-metal" explosion of the late 90s - slipknot's debut, system of a down etc. etc. Also got into slayer, megadeth and metallica through my guitar teacher, and as a result was getting bored of the other stuff.

When I was 17 or so, I heard the Nile song Wind of Horus (from their In Their Darkened Shrines album) on a magazine compilation CD and I've been hooked on death metal (mostly tech DM) ever since. Stuff like Nile, Spawn of Possession, Visceral Bleeding, Goratory, Gorod, Psycroptic etc.

Particularly loving Gorartory's Rice on Suede album now (tasteless song

Besides DM, I go in for a bit of black metal. I also like experimental music, especially of the metallic variety. I'm particularly into Behold... The Arctopus's first full length Skullgrid right now (cool piece). I like modern jazz, particularly Ornette Coleman.

Through the extreme metal scene I ran into Ulver, a band that started off black metal, then did a classical album, then went electronic/avant garde. That also opened me up to electronic music in general. Not really sure on which sub genres I like as I don't know the terminology, but Modeselektor would be a good example.