Analyze your own tastes! What makes your favorites... your favorites?

Hey this was fun... Reviving for kicks.

Being a teenager (once).
Ears

Great thread! I ask this to myself all the time. Let's see... I tend to be drawn to synths. Guitars are fine as long as they meet some criteria. I hate the sound of the "clean" electric guitar. I need effects: one or all of chorus, delay, reverb are a must. Distortion is OK to but not by itself. I very rarely like acoustic guitars. I tend to dislike things described as "organic". I generally like stuff to be polished and produced. Little sounds and tweaks all over the place are a bonus. Isolated things I usually love: synth pads, octave basslines, big gated reverb drums, strings. Isolated things I usually dislike: vocals that are too expressive, minimal instrumentation, long, monotonous passages (guitar solos, a beat that goes on for two long).

I hate the sound of the "clean" electric guitar.

Ha, I love it. I even have a Clean Guitar playlist.

am a sucker for earnest ineptness, or people who have honed their talent in perverse arenas, and even if I don't care for it, I feel like there's a social obligation to champion these kinds of dudes. I'm a little bewildered by people describing sonic preferences divorced from context. There's got to be a hidden narrative there somewhere.

Tritones, minor keys, faux (or real) Arabianisms, 1970s technology, 1960s production values, Bo Diddley beats, sitars, wah-wah pedals and tambourines are all right by me.

no backstory?

texture, organic sounds manipulated in non-organic ways, hand claps, dotted 8th notes, analog distortion, trombones playing high notes w/vibrato

I get a specific kind of euphoria from Music for 18 Musicians, Tangerine Dream, the soundtrack to Risky Business (which features TD), etc. I love when there is a certain repetitive rippling quality to music wherein the melodic elements and the rhythm become indistinguishable and everything just seems to float/flow/flutter/shimmer. I think I heard music like this in some movie when I was very young or something and it got encoded into my aural-pleasure center. I find this quality in a broader range of music than those examples would indicate, though. Cluster, Basic Channel, Studio, and parts of Remain in Light come to mind, mostly stuff with synths, but not necessarily. When I find it I tend to hear it as a perfect "locking in" of all the elements in the music (but its not the same as the locking in of a very tight rhythm section, it is something that tends to involve all the elements in the music.) I'm much more likely to find it in music that has a strong sense of rhythm without abrupt changes, without a lot of chaos, and without jazzy solo-ing.

I love a lot of music that doesn't meet this criteria at all, but I've noticed that I have a particular obsession with this quality.

"organic sounds manipulated in non-organic ways"

This suggests to me a desire to reconcile our culture's poor shepherding of our natural resources with the undeniable boon of modern technology, where the trombones represent the futility of seeing this enacted through public policy?

raw sounding yet catchy. soulful backup singers are a bonus.

I think it is personally hard to pin down what I like... I like things the grandeur, the building up to something bigger, then I like the smallness, the quiet subtlety of a song. Basically, anything that makes me feel "something".

Hey daavid why do you think you have those preferences? Did you listen to that kind of thing growing up? Are your best memories associated with your favorite artists that have that sound? I guess these questions go for anybody.

I tend to like pop music that's lyrically and musically complex yet song-oriented.

Melody descending into sublime chaos.

When I was growing up in Vermont, I liked messy hip hop made by crews with the parts better than their sums (Heiro, Boot Camp, Wu Tang), lyrical trickery, and things that sounded like they were made by "intelligent" rappers, since I flirted with poetry and rhyme.

Then, I became infatuated with "indiepop" after I fell in with a certain pop addict crew of Florida hipsters when I left my rural northern abode to roam. Their brand: chunky, loudly strummed guitar (electric or acoustic) with nasally, almost dissonant male vocals. I fell head-over-heels for music that sounded like this, which generally was made in the late '90s, early 2000s.

Later, when I moved to New York, "indiepop" transmuted into the clean, shimmery guitars and more driving beats of the mid-'80s.

This turned into a penchant for chugging rhythm guitars with solos, and somehow I only liked music that was made before 1983. I can't explain it, but if you played me a song made after 1983, I would know and it. ("Powerpop" and "punk.")

Now, I listen to almost nothing that sounds like these things, and I prefer authentic sprawling, epic guitar/synth wildebeest songs with raw, damaged vocals. My preference for era changed, and I started liking things from 1968 through 1973. It's odd, but those are my favorites now. ("Prog" and "tropicalia" and "psychedelic" and "kraut.")

I live in LA now.

Well, I am always been interested in melody and harmony, and I guess harmony is even more important, in that I like a song to have the occasional surprising chord change, only not so much the sense of tonality is lost. A song that changes chords and key all the time, yet always sounds very tonal and very pleasant and melodic will for me be a fantastic song.
As for song form, I somewhat prefer verse-chorus, but I often fine interest in music that has more than just verse and chorus (i.e. the "suites" of Genesis and Yes back in the 70s), whereas if it has less (funk, hip-hop, blues), it bores me in its repetitiveness and monotony.

Other than those elements, I am a sucker for all kinds of wide stereo sounds and stereo effect, and for multi-voiced vocal harmonies produced in extreme stereo. I also like a rather polished and detailed production, have never understood the "less is more" thing, because to me, the more elements in the sound, the better.

I tend to like stuff with precision, a rich sound, unusual ideas and a good groove. My tastes go from reggae to death metal though, so don't think there are really any rules. I think I may be a bit of an aesthete, I'm at least as interested in analysing the way stuff is put together as the emotion and meaning behind it.

chap have you had records that just immediately hit you as instant favorites from both reggae and death metal?

okamax, does nostalgia ever play a part in your current favorites? It looks like you've been all over the place taste-wise.

Geir, you've always seemed like you've known the answer to this thread well before it existed! Do you generally only like records that remind you (vaguely even) of your all time favorites?

chap have you had records that just immediately hit you as instant favorites from both reggae and death metal?

Yep!

Neat! I've definitely loved records from both ends of a broad spectrum, but the ones that hit me the hardest seem to fit into my original description.

I like the repetitive chords of Philip Glass and Steve Reich and like any musical genre that contains this principle. I guess this explains why I love black metal, techno and lots of traditional music but dislike death metal, math core and jazz. I also am fond of children's music and fairy tales. I can still sense the dark but fascinatingly endless possibilities of the world portrayed in them, as well as the creepiness of the simple melodies. This explains my fondness for (old) Disney music, musicals, cabaret, etc. Combine the repetition with the fairies and you end up with Legendary Pink Dots, Current 93 and the like.

Yeah, that sums it up quite nicely.

most songs under 2:30

Do you generally only like records that remind you (vaguely even) of your all time favorites?

They don't remind me of them if the melody is different. I only like music within genres I either already like, or genres that remind me of the good-old genres (like, 00s electropop is very similar to 80s synthpop, for instance, which is why I also love 00s electropop)

geir, do you love the new teenage fanclub album? you must. i just heard it the other night. sounded lovely.

Well I didn't mean down to the melody, but yes genres basically.

geir, have you heard violens? i'm looking forward to their new album. probably the only indie-rock album i'm looking forward to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKdNhPVnK3Q

Evan, I guess it would have to be for a nostalgia of times I never experienced (except Floridian/Athenian indiepop, which was alive and well while I was there).

It's funny, because now that I DJ, I tend to like songs with a consistent thread throughout. Which may be why I, like Sebastian, dislike herky jerky, inconsistent music like math rock, Mr. Bungle, Frank Zappa... but it's really hard for me to say. I think

I'm convinced that a lot of it is non-musical, or if it is musical it's on such an abstract level that I can't begin to figure out what it is. That's why I'm suspicious of things like Pandora that seem to work off of a "sounds like" template. I do believe that there's some sort of spiritual link between Lisa Suckdog and Scarlet's Well and Men Without Hats and Fleetwood Mac and Game Theory, but someone smarter than me is going to have to find it.

― dlp9001, Wednesday, September 23, 2009 1:59 AM (8 months ago) Bookmark

was pretty OTM. Why I dig certain happy hardcore tracks or drum n bass or Dutch prog or Taylor Swift is impossible to say. It's pretty inconsistent taste, but that's what makes my shelves of records so enjoyable for me to dig through all the time. It also is hard to say why I like one track off an album, but none of the rest of the album. Shouldn't the same person or group of people be able to find that thing that makes something my "favorite" more than once?

I wrote a huge post, lost it, but am glad because this thread brought me to a flyer of my first real rap show:

http://www.fresh-force.net/downloads/GetFresh.pdf

I would put the performance of one Lady C up there in my Top 10 of things that shaped me forever.

not sure this goes here, but nostagia factors into my tastes, and one thing i loved about 80s pop -- epic choruses with rising vocal harmonies (e.g., journey) -- is still kind of lacking in a lot of modern rock. oddly enough, a band i think can achieve this is grizzly bear, but they have to loosen their turtleneck sweaters, write more like while we wait for the others, and get michael mcdonald to permanently front the band.

in a parallel world contenderizer&I are arguing about this til the end of time

Man I'm sure there's some secret to the melodies and chord progessions that set me off but damned if I know what it is. Something like the chorus to Suzanne Vega's Luka, damn that gets me every time, and I ain't no musicologist but when I look at a tab and it tells me asus2 -> bsus4 I'm like BUT WHY? That same chord progression even happens in the verse without half the affect!

Damn, isn't it so true. Thats why I can't get my head around it. I just want to know what the formula is. I want a scientific explanation with charts and diagrams of my brain and lines drawn that show the history of music I've loved during great times in my life that have lead to what I love the most now. If I don't keep talking about nostalgia, I have no other context to measure my favorites with. I don't believe I was just born with a preference for a certain sound, so I've been obsessed with looking back (an obsession that goes beyond music as well).

for the longest time, my magic formula was I hated anything my parents liked and loved anything that would make them uncomfortable, although I hope I've grown past that at this point. they listened to nothing but the most innocuous, noodly, blandly ahistorical Scottish & Irish traditional music, with the occasional bluegrass, folk, and inoffensive mainstream rock thrown in. I like rhythm, hedonism, obtuseness, variety, novelty.

I'm an oddball that has been keeping track of whatever album, cd etc. since Oct 1st 1996. 24 years, I'm totally insane. Kind of started in an odd way as I was working as a temp at the freaking Farm Coop headquarters in Indianapolis doing some type of temp stuff. They were laid back as it was all getting shipped to Illinois or somewhere at the beginning of the year. Pretty much your usual late 90s, recent collge grad situation...anyway this lovely lady that was a retiree teacher doing temp work for pocket money loved talking to me about the CDs I had in my book bag I was always listening to on discman headphones. She said, "you have too many child, you cannot listen to them all" and got talking to me to keeping a list to see that I actually listened to what I was accumulating. I started the list, but the accumulation never really stopped. ;) The list evolved and is in a Excel spreadsheet and Word document that was originally created on a out of the trash Windows 3.1 box. It's been saved and converted over the years, but there is probably some weird artifacts for a file going through that many different application versions. Nurd, i know.

These are the records I have listened to the most from the 90s, not repeating any other by the same artist.

Boards of Canada- Music has the Right to Children
DJ Shadow- Endtroducing
Tortoise- Millions Now Listening will never die
Shellac- Terraform < I've listened to all their records a bunch, but this might be there as it came out new right after I started the list.
Queens of the Stone Age- S/T <<<< This one is from driving. Last listened 2017.
Underworld- Dubnobasswithmehead
Slint- Spiderland
Fugazi- Steady Diet of Nothing
Jesus Lizard- Liar
Soundgarden- Badmotorfinger

These are the records from the 80s that have the most listens.

Motorhead- Ace of Spades
Joy Division- Closer
Sonic Youth- Daydream Nation
Jane’s Addiction- Nothing’s Shocking
New Order- Power, Corruption & Lies
Deep Purple- Perfect Strangers < This one kind of surprised me. I had a CDR in the truck for a long time, has to be why.
The Minutemen- Double Nickels on the Dime
AC/DC- Back in Black
Big Black- Songs about Fxxxing
Soundgarden- Louder than Love

I guess I'm a beer drinker but not a hell raiser. I have listened to 'other' music, I know I have listened to over 4000 different records since I started the list.

Yeah, I bought a few issues of Spin.

solid list there, a foundation for living