Music

Music is a matter of taste.

Yes, the kind of music someone likes often depends on where they grow up, which people they are surrounded with and how much they know about music (its history, theory or practise, etc.). However, I believe that in the end, it is very individual whether a genre of music is worth listening to or not, especially for the young generation.

I grew up with classical music and shreds of Jazz. In fact, until the age of 12, I could not even bear to hear non-classical music without freaking out immediately. Often, after listening to the charts on the radio, I had to calm myself with Mozart for at least a whole day. But slowly, puberty and lack of social life led me to the curiosity toward pop music: What was special about it, and why did people like it so much?

I started listening to Beatles. It was still rock ’n roll classical. The music had an immense impact on me, beginning to re-form  my personality and taste. I realized that being bias towards certain genres neither made me myself nor anyone else happy. It would be much better of an idea to stay as open toward something new as possible. Only so can one grow with open eyes and shape his/her personality with more maturity.

Listening to “new music” is like travelling to another place. A genre may indicate a country, and a sub-genre a province. When a person is open to different „new music“, he/she is like opening to different cultures.

Popular music became attractive to me for a while. But I already knew from the very beginning that it could not stay long as my favourite. The structure is too simplistic for my taste: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, end! Almost every single song is like this. Sure it is arguable that many genres share the same structure.  In a sense, the classical sonata form is even more simplistic: exposition, development, recapitulation.

At that point I began to find out what made popular music boring to me: its instrumentation and harmonisation. Sometimes, simple harmonies consisting of three or four chords can be pleasing. But if the accompanying instruments are adding no exciting value to it, , the music has then no big value to my ears.

That explains why sonatas are far from boring. Because even though the structure stays the same for different pieces, each piece differs in melodies, harmonies, lengths and instrumentations to a very pleasing extent.

Puberty hit me, and with it the love for electrical sounds. Electric guitars stimulated the rock fan in me. Rock is exciting because of the instrumentation. It never gets too quiet for one to fall asleep, and it never gets out of wings such as some metal genres, the latter giving the listeners an aggressive impression. 

Electrical guitars led me entirely into the world of electronic. Synthesised sounds used in dubstep had a magical effect on me. Whenever I listened to dubstep, it felt like a string of electricity running through my spine, teleporting me into another world where worries and responsibilities were foreign and evil.

Growing up is a multi-facetted experience. It is, to the reference of an actress called Anna Akana, physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually challenging. All these aspects have separate impacts on the growth of a young person as well as his/her music taste. 

My growing experience has proven to me that friends, idols, feelings and education could all have major impacts on shaping one’s music taste. Yet, although these parts of my adulting life have helped me find my love for music, in the end, it comes back to my inner, almost like pre-born, preference what I like. 

It is indeed difficult for hard metal music to excite me, or for hours of popular music. Equally as hard is to keep me from classical music, esp. baroque music. I guess I could listen to Jazz non-stop, too, although it is not the genre I totally know.

I believe it is a big joy in life to find one’s individual taste in music with its broad choice in our post-modern age. In music, one can reflect or anticipate, can be inspired or motivated. Music is love. Musik is spiritual freedom, for children, teenages and adults, for young and old, man and woman.

 Music is magic.