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Ask HN: How to Become a Music Buff?

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Re: Ask HN: How to Become a Music Buff?

#112

Post by gorgoiler »

If you want to go a bit off-piste, 20th and 21st century liturgical choral music is an excellent choice.

As a bonus: gigs are free and in most cities happen every night (at evensong, which also comes with free mindfulness and meditation sessions, as well as a chance for a singalong with the crowd.)

The choirs range from school and college scholarship level to outright professionals and they will often have albums where you can explore their repertoire, and branch off from there. In essence: they put together the need-to-know pieces on your behalf, which assists massively in increasing buff-level.

I find the ensemble of male voice to also be incredibly relaxing:

https://open.spotify.com/track/12hKtoAt7uiDgqIzrqWWr4?si=O8d...

Re: Ask HN: How to Become a Music Buff?

#113

Post by uniqueid »

The nature of the question strikes me as a bit odd. If you don't have any enthusiasm for music history, I don't see what's to be gained by forcing yourself to learn about it. If it's not for fun, other subjects would have a greater impact on your career.

At any rate, the easiest thing to do would be to dive into classical music, rather than popular music. In classical, there's only around a dozen composers with whom anyone expects you to be familiar.

Re: Ask HN: How to Become a Music Buff?

#114

Post by abap_rocky »

kamonrye wrote: post #110

Find what you like and then deep dive into that genre. Learn the history about it, look up the producers, the stories behind the albums, the songwriters, the studios that they were recorded at even. A lot of historical context can be built from that. And you also find more artists that way. Also if you really want to get into it, look up the instruments that are influential in the process of the albums you find. For…

I agree 100%. I think hip-hop in particular makes it very easy to trace these relations with it's heavy use of samples and collaboration.

For example, Common's Album "Be" is the album that started me on my path back in 2009. I really liked the album and using those relations I was able to discover so much more music:

1. Kanye West produced it

  -> Check-out other Kanye production credits

    -> Jay-Z's "The Blueprint"
    -> Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter III"
    -> Kanye's solo albums
2. Marvin Gaye's "God is Love" is sampled in the song "Love is..."

  -> Check-out Marvin Gaye's album "What's Going On"
3. John Legend is a feature on "They Say"

  -> Check-out John Legend's album "Get Lifted"
Of course, it might be a little silly to think I needed to discover big names like Kanye, Common and John Legend but the process of discovering them through the music itself can help separate the artist from some of their non-musical pursuits that might not be as interesting.

Re: Ask HN: How to Become a Music Buff?

#116

Post by Barrin92 »

wheels wrote: post #35

Knowing what music you like would be helpful in a discussion like this. (Context: I've spent a lot of my career working in music or music software.) It's difficult to expand your musical horizons just by shooting in the dark at things you should like. But often you can build bridges to new things by exploring their musical ancestors and descendants. Like classic rock? Start listening to some blues, then go from there…

for classical music there was a really cool site I stumbled over years ago called getintoclassical exactly for that purpose, it somehow vanished from the internet, but it still is on archive.org.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140313070112/http://www.getint...

Re: Ask HN: How to Become a Music Buff?

#117

Post by asciimov »

A great jumping in spot would be to watch Ken Burn's Jazz and Country Music Documentaries. Two other shorter documentaries that I can recommend is "The Wrecking Crew" (2015) and "It Might Get Loud" (2009)

Listening to music isn't gonna do you a lot of good unless you have context. For example, The Beatles and Beach Boys influenced each other. Rubber Soul led to Pet Sounds which led to Sgt. Pepper which led to Smile.

Another consideration is that some of the real influencers aren't well known or popular, and some of them were not the singers but the music writers, producers, and musicians.

Re: Ask HN: How to Become a Music Buff?

#118

Post by jmfldn »

microtherion wrote: post #25

You might be going about this in the wrong order. Instead of trying to become an expert in an art form that does not currently appeal to me, wouldn't it make more sense to first find instances of this art form that DO appeal to you, and then branch out from that? So the order I would suggest is: 1. Find music you like particularly 2. Seek out music related to #1 3. Start thinking about why you like what you like So,…

This is exactly right. You can't become a music buff by following a predefined map, or at least that wouldn't be a very satisfying journey.

Speaking as a music fan, former producer and DJ I say that the secret is to follow your instincts. Find some things you do like, can be anything even if you currently only like a few things. Explore from here. Explore the artist's catalogue, find similar artists, look at related genres or the genre's roots / DNA. Spotify and YouTube algorithms are great at finding related content so just fall down a recommendation hole and see here it takes you. You can quickly make some interesting transitions into other genres even like this. Don't overthink it but see which things make you hungry to explore further.

Don't seek to be a buff. Seek to explore your taste, follow your gut, follow your feelings and see where it takes you. You'll naturally end up knowing a lot but it's not about knowing, it's about the joy and fulfilment of music and nothing more.

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