Music for a Muser

My regular guests will catch the humor of the title. I used to listen to music quite a bit. A lot, in fact. Not just the type of listening where you turn on the radio while getting ready. I'm talking about active listening, where one sits in a room perfectly positioned between 2 very good speakers, turns the volume up beyond a level where conversation is possible, let the wall of sound flood the consciousness, and listen, paying attention to all the layers of the piece. Children cut into that type of leisure for awhile, followed by the political season where talk-radio and reading took my spare time. I'm now cycling back to a stage where I really crave good music, and want to play more. I still know enough piano to tinker with some songs, and I'm attempting to learn guitar. But I'm mainly starting to listen to music again.

Active music listening is much like a fine wine tasting. Various influencing factors can "color" the sound your ears hear, and while you might not be able to pick out with the naked ear that something was amiss, if the cleaner sound were introduced, even an untrained ear would be able to tell the difference. I was fortunate to find, some years back, a pair of really good speakers on clearance at Circuit City, and music has never been the same since. I was suddenly able to hear layers of sound that I never knew existed before on many of my favorite CD's. I was hearing music the way the producer heard it in the studio. I pulled out CD's I hadn't listened to in years, and it was like I was listening to a brand new album. If you're going to take up music listening as a hobby, I highly recommend a decent receiver and excellent speakers. The receiver does matter a great deal. Yamaha makes the cleanest, affordable amp that won't color your music. Now, if the budget won't allow such an expenditure on speakers, don't let it stop you from this exercise. Music is meant to be processed, just like other artforms. You stare at a painting to discover the beauty and to interpret the artists intent. You dissect complicated paragraphs of history's greatest philosophers and thinkers to try to understand what they're conveying. You talk about films and what the director meant by using this color of that Tupperware®. The great musicians of this and previous generations deserve no less.

So I intend to add a good deal more music discussion to my upcoming posts, primarily because it's what I'm interested in right now. In the days to come, I'll talk about many artists and albums that I believe are underappreciated/undiscovered. Feel free to chime in with some of your favorites that I may not know about.

I've previously talked about my upbringing a little bit. One of the forbidden fruits of my youth was "SECULAR MUSIC"!! (cue forboding music-dom dom dom) I don't mean to demean my parents in any way here either, they were doing what they believed was best for us. But the idea was that all music that didn't talk specifically about God was secular. Now, there were some very fine christian artists, but not really a lot of world-class musicians. I really wasn't exposed to the musical greats during my formative years, which is a bit of a surprise considering how important music was in my family. (My dad's a songwriter/recording artist, all of us play some instrument) So college was really my first opportunity to discover the genius of guys like Stevie Wonder and Wang Chung, and I would say my real formative years started there. So I'm still discovering some of the greats, and I'm excited to introduce you to some of them.

So join in and let me know who your favorite artists/albums are.