“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.”
Maya Angelou
Here you can find information about music I like to listen to, how I listen to it, and what I think about it.
While I have not yet made any music of my own, I am an audiophile and have a deep appreciation for music.
ContentsI listen to an extremely varied selection of music, across many
languages and genres.
Here are some artists/bands I’ve been listening to for a while (over 2
years continuously):
- Theivery Corporation
- Infected Mushroom
- King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
- Boards of Canada
- Aphex Twin
- Tame Impala
- The Doors
- BADBADNOTGOOD
- DIIV
- Childish Gambino
I would consider the above artists to be my “favorites” currently. I
probably have over 50-100 other artists in my library, though.
Some recent discoveries (within the last 2 years) I’ve been listening to
quite a bit:
- Robohands
- Daikaiju
- Japanese Breakfast
- Air
- Khruangbin
- Kruder & Dorfmeister
I have a playlist on Spotify which has around 1600 songs (amounting
to ~120 hours of music). It contains pretty much all the music I’ve
listened to and liked enough to add to my collection in the last 7+
years.
For an insight on how my musical tastes, knowledge, and interests have
changed over time, feel free to check
it
out.
My collection, for the past 1-2 years, has been accumulating predominately the following genres:
- Rock (psychedelic, shoegaze, indie, progressive, instrumental)
- Ambient (classical, chill-out, trip-hop/downtempo, lounge)
- Jazz (jazz fusion, acid jazz)
- Electronic (IDM, trance, synth-pop)
Send recommendations my way!
I would attribute much of what I would consider “the foundation” of
my musical taste to my father, whose musical library is comparable to
mine in variety (and likely size).
Through him, I discovered rock, world music, jazz, and electronic trance
music.
Otherwise, I have a couple friends who provide the remaining influence on my taste, contributing music from a variety of genres such as hip-hop, jazz, indie rock, punk rock, etc.
I own two pairs of over-ear headphones (2x more than the average person), on which I do the majority of my music listening:
- Beyerdynamic DT1990 Pro (open-back, for analytical listening, really nice)
- Shure SRH840 (closed-back, good sound, much less nice but good for working with noise around)
I use an amp/DAC (a single, dual-functionality unit) that is
connected to my desktop PC via an optical/fiber cable.
With it, I use a simple passive switch for picking which set of
headphones will recieve output. This allows me to keep both pairs
plugged in, and swap seamlessly.
Music is incredibly important to me. Here, I will use a somewhat cliche Nietzche quote: “Without music, life would be a mistake.”
For example, I find music incredibly instrumental (pun intended) in
achieving flow
state.
The following elements of a track are especially important when using
music for this purpose:
- Consistent tempo/pace and rhythm
- Captivating musical form
- Absense of substantial lyrics in a familiar language
- Track length of at least 4 minutes
I like to represent music as if it was a network of interconnected parts; typically this has a synergistic effect while done in tandem with thinking (e.g typically relating to very cognitively involved tasks like programming, planning, fast-paced discussion, or any general series of conseuctive tasks in some complex workflow). I’m not entirely sure why I do this or how it works, but this process, at the very least, is incredibly satisfying to me as it occurs, and helps me focus.
Sometimes, however, music may have the opposite effect (I call such music “violent”, as it is disruptive or destructive), regardless of the track. In these situations, I opt for silence.
For normal listening (when I’m not explicitly seeking to enter “the zone”), I generally prefer music with the following characteristics:
- Captivating musical form
- Interesting, skillfully played instrumental elements
- Continuity
- Well-written lyrics (if any)