Tactics for choosing what to listen to

um... i just listen to watever i feel like at the moment..

...

or occasional 'joint' listening between the two of us.

kooky, crazy young beatniks, making a go of it...

um... i just listen to watever i feel like at the moment..

I know that seems blindingly obvious as an approach to choosing what you listen to, but sometimes, a lot of the time, I simply don't know what I want to listen to necessarily, and I'm scared of falling into either listening to the same thing over and over again, or not listening to anything at all.

haha welcome to my world.

you don't *have* to listen to music...

I dunno, coming up with "tactics" and restrictions just makes it seem like a chore... and listening to music shouldn't be a chore! If nothing jumps out to you, then don't listen to anything!

ITT, dudes in their late 20s.

problem with itunes and ipod is constant stream of music, too much material/not enough choice, etc.

ITT, dudes in their late 20s.

-- Dom Passantino, Thursday, January 10, 2008 10:14 AM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

yeah... though i was way ahead of the curve on this.

What's ITT stand for?

The Institute of Travel & Tourism.

ITT (network), a television network in Trinidad and Tobago
ITT Corporation, a large conglomerate
ITT Technical Institute
Individual time trial, a racing term
Institute of Technology, Tallaght
Institute of Technology, Tralee
Institute of Transport and Tourism, UCLAN, Preston[1]
Intent to treat population, medical analysis
"I think that", "in this thread" and/or "in this topic" see Internet slang
Invitation to tender for a contract; see Tenders
Cousin Itt, a member of the fictional Addams Family
Inter turbine temperature
Initial Teacher Training, a term used in the UK

Ah.

Does no one else seriously have this problem?

i don't see it as a problem!!

i suppose it depends on your special lady's listening tastes a bit.

but if you can't think of anything to listen to, don't.

if you want to play something, play it.

if you want to keep up with what's poppin', there's always playlouder.

or fluxblog.

or nairobi.

i don't have share your living situation, nick, but i i usually fall into the "what do i want to listen to when i want to listen to nothing" conundrum after a really great spell of listening (lots of great new releases or something). i usually turn back to an old favorite that i hadn't listened to in a while, not necessarily a personal top 5 of all time or anything but one of those records that fell in between like 9-15 on a year end list that you are totally familiar with but not necessarily totally immersed.

usually when i have your problem i find myself really impatient with new things so i put something on that's instantly familiar but still has potential for erm 'discovery'.

Em and I have a lot of crossover, taste wise, we just... both grew up listening to music individually, so it's kind of odd to suddenly transpose that to listening together. We've got two separate rooms (three, in fact) with decent stereos in, so listening on one's own isn't a problem (aside from the cat trying to eat my headphone cables).

I'm just interested in peoples habits and the way they make their choices, re; listening, particularly as they get older. It fascinates me.

xpost to enrique's 'don't listen to anything!' point:

it seems as if nick, like i'm assuming a lot of people, set out a time in their day/week to devote themselves to listening to something and when you don't want to listen to anything it's kind of frustrating, and at that point turning away isn't really an appropriate response

Aye, that's pretty much the gist of it.

look mr mouthy we all know the KITTEN!!!!! thread is a dry run for something else, get proposin' and sproggin' already dude

louis

Dude, kids are TOTALLY NOT in our plans for at least five years.

Someone photoshop a Choose Your Own Adventure book written by Jagger

5 years in which to have manly unmarried drinks + argument about indie w/Southall.

Followed by 5 years of Bob The Builder - The Album.

"...the low-end thump of synthetic construction-site noises complements the raucous tizz of a shouted children's choir beautifully, and what we have is an organic, thrilling paean to the humble efforts of men who would construct our abodes..."

i have to say this all sounds incredibly joyless

maybe this difficult "joint listening" cell on the spreadsheet demands further investigation

It's not 'joyless', just 'practical'.

ok - what about the radio? you don't always have to be in control of what comes out of your speakers, you know

i find last.fm useful in situations like these

(iow what tracer said)

Wire up your iPod to your domestic system and do some randomising?

Hey Nick, I relate! Co-habitation inevitably means less personal listening time, and joint listening time means choosing something that both of you are going to enjoy, or at the very least tolerate. My partner and I had very similar tastes when we first met; they diverged sharply during the 1990s, and came back together again in the 2000s, but only within certain areas. As it tends to be me who buys most of the music, and as it tends to be me who puts the CDs on to play (forget MP3s; he's an avowed audiophile and hates the drop in sound quality, and quite right too), I frequently feel frustrated at having to confine myself to the areas where our tastes intersect. It's no use bunging stuff on that he doesn't much care for and hoping for the best, as he's a sensitive soul who feels things deeply, and it destroys his peace of mind.

So, I *have* to have my private time as well. I get this for the first 60-90 minutes of each evening, as I get home from work earlier and will go up to the study to mess around on the computer. Apart from that, I tend to stay up an hour or so later on Friday and Saturday nights - and I also reserve the right to choose what I please while doing the ironing (for both of us), which is another 60-90 minutes a week.

Other than that, it's the iPod while walking to and from work (15 mins each way), and while doing no-brainer tasks in the office (between 30 and 90 mins per day).

As to what to choose: for joint listening, it's around 75% new album purchases and 25% back catalogue, and I choose carefully according to the mood I want to set in the house, e.g. optimistically frisky on Friday early evenings, calm/contemplative on Sunday mornings etc.

For personal listening, early evening computer time (where my mind is darting about all over the place) tends to involve a good deal of MP3 farming, so a lot of it is random new additons, shuffled from a smart playlist using Date Added within the last 3 months. On walks to and from work, I'm usually working through new-ish albums. At work, again I'll sometimes pick according to the mood I want to create (calmer if I'm stressed, more energetic if I'm bored and need a lift), but this also tends to be where I listen to the most challenging stuff. In this respect, there's almost no overlap between weekend "mood music" and weekday office music, as the music which soothes me at weekends just sounds bland and wishy-washy on weekends.

I've also long since accepted that I'm going to be acquiring more MP3s than I can reasonably keep up with, so I'll often treat iTunes on the PC as a kind of lucky-dip honey-pot. Somehow, the good stuff always seems to bubble up in the end. As for the "But I want to hear EVERYTHING!" impulse, I confine that to trying to keep up with the UK Top 40, again by maintaining a rolling Top 40 playlist and dipping into it two or three times a week.

(Typo at end of penultimate para: "bland and wishy-washy on weekDAYS")

Sicky - I'll give you a straight answer, I think about this stuff way too much. Obviously one's listening habits will change over time, depending on circumstances. When I first got married I could listen to music on the train and at work virtually all day and used to stand in front of my racks desperately looking for something to catch my attention beyond the recent acquisitions. Split second decisions had to be made otherwise I'd miss my train so I often found myself grabbing familiar yet haven't-listened-in-ages stuff. So during this time listening to music at home wasn't a priority as I'd had my fill. Even after kids came along this scenario continued.

Now, music isn't important to my wife - on the rare occasions she puts something on it's classical. So I have to constrain any joint listening to spouse-appropriate music, i.e. Robyn Hitchcock is ok, The Fall is not. She's got a code when we're listening - if she likes it she'll ask who it is, if she's uninterested she'll say nothing, and if she doesn't like it she'll say "This is challenging". For our long 4 hour car rides to her mothers I made an 80s New Wave mix, about 400 songs that I can tolerate or actually enjoy, and it's big enough that I won't go insane from hearing regularly.

Since I've been at home for the past year I've had to change my habits. If she goes out and I have the kids I put on whatever I want - the kids listen to what I listen to ("crazy music" as my oldest once said). At night she often catches up on Oprah or some design show on the DVR so I'll sit in the same room with my MP3 player and listen to recent downloads or something else new.

That's HOW I listen, WHAT I listen to is inconsistent. Typically I'm listening to new acquisitions, sometimes nothing but, and then I'll realize I've thousands of albums I'm ignoring and put on The Fall and then not want to listen to anything else for days. I also flit from scene to scene for weeks at a time, I'll go from NZ post-punk to Alt-country to 80s New Wave or whatever, and I'll dig into things I haven't played in years or try to find artists in those scenes I missed or dismissed previously. I try to put my big 100Gb MP3 player on shuffle so as to make me think about things I haven't for a while, or to get past the middle of the alphabet because when I start scrolling the artist list I'll often stop at some old favorite and usually not get past the M's.

I do find I have periods where I'm listening to stuff simply to check it out and not for the love of it - that was particularly pronounced last year when I got into ILM and there would be a thread weekly that encouraged me to download this or that artist and see if they appealed to me (which often they did!). I like compilations-as-samplers and they require focus or you'll miss something great. I do alot of R&D in order to fill in fallow periods like the 4 months from November to February where it seems like minimal new releases/reissues interest me. And then some music I once loved has lost much of it's mystery and doesn't require playing more than every few years.

I'm rambling now and missing many other sub-issues that come up. The bottom line is you don't have to ditch your music listening habits just because you share your life with someone but you will have to adjust them in ways that fit your spouse's expectations. And you certainly don't have to shift to Bob The Builder soundtracks after you have kids, they'll hop around to anything with a strong beat!

As I always have listened to music on my own, my listening dwindled as soon as my husband moved in. It went even further down as soon as Ophelia (our first child) entered our world. Now, strangely after Elisabeth came into the world, I have started to listen to more music. I guess it's a conscious choice: I just *need* music again though much less so but also because I know there's no way I can listen to it as much as when I was single. I would listen to about 3/4 hrs per day before I met my husband. I would love to be able to listen to that much music but it's impossible. I don't like music in the background so much for example.

Now I just make sure I go out for an errand or something so I can put the ipod on. I'll probably do some jogging as well. *Bestest* thing in the world: healthy and fun.

I just put a lot of stuff on my ipod and try to make sure I listen to at least one "unheard" thing when I'm out. But usually it ends up DJ Teebee and RObyn these days.

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm interested in; thank you massively Mr Odd and Nathalie.

I hope it's not depressing. Kids are the greatest thing in the world, but they do rob you of music time in my experience. That said, I have tried (in vain) to expose my kids to (my) music but as I rarely experience music as a social activity, they've yet to hear, say, No New York. Maybe for the best. ;-)

xpost: Oh well, at least I tried!

Oh you too!

in addition to how things change when you move in with someone, and then again when or if kids come along, the massive music collections made possible by cheap storage media and digitisation is a new phenomenon in music fandom and presents a giant challenge -- our puny brains simply cannot remember all of it, or even a significant fraction of it

which is why i like radio so much -- it removes decision-making completely, it's like a whole level of organization and stress that i simple don't have to bother with

I have a 50-minute walk to/from work, so I use this time to listen to things on my iPod that require more patience/attention than other things...(album-length tracks by the Necks, William Basinski, Hillage, things that slowly build and unfold like Deathprod, Thomas Koner, etc.)...I listen at work, but get interrupted much too frequently to really enjoy stuff like this...also, when I buy a box set (like last year's Elektra set, or the Faces one the year before that, or Goodbye Babylon the year before that), I'll set aside two weeks and listen to nothing else (again, on the iPod and on the walk)...I'm generally too busy at night when I get home to listen to music, so I try to make the most of the Walking Sessions...I also gravitate toward things that work better when you are moving rhythmically (techno, obviously) and stuff that was clearly conceived while walking about (Burial)...so-called "difficult" listening, your musiques concrete and whatnots, are more enjoyable to me when I am moving, and my shuffling can provide some sort of beat/structure...

they've yet to hear, say, No New York. Maybe for the best. ;-)

Nonsense! Play it all, kids absorb, and they get to a point where they ask for stuff. My oldest (almost 5) notices lyrics (which means sometimes I get in trouble airing new purchases with words I didn't expect!) and picks up on songs with lyrics that fit his interests (helicopters and superheroes currently) so I made a mix with tracks that named Batman, Superman, etc in the title - wound up with a bizarre collection including the Kinks, some old DIY track, Associates and XTC (both for "Helicopter"), the Mutton Birds "Green Lantern", etc. And he totally loves it! I have all boys and with luck I'll never have to hear anything from American Idol or High School Musical. Selfish but true.

which is why i like radio so much -- it removes decision-making completely, it's like a whole level of organization and stress that i simple don't have to bother with

But with 15000 songs on my MP3 player and I can set it to shuffle and have my own personal radio station. If I load up new things there's plenty of fresh material too.

When I was a toddler my dad played me Stockhausen, Ornette, Varese and Beefheart. Meanwhile my mum played me Sinatra, Como, Mario Lanza and Dean Martin. No wonder I grew up so confused... ;-)

i guess in my head i hold this idea that i can simply leave my collection on random on itunes/ipod and as i add things, they will eventually get an airing. what torpedoes this however is that i feel i have to listen to new purchases as complete albums/entities; that allowing individual songs to pop in and out in arbitrary orders is doing a disservice to them. which i suppose is kinda rockist, but meh.

*sound of penny dropping*

I go to the gym an hour to 1.5 hours in the early morning before work and just put the Ipod on shuffle.

Popism is a very convenience-based philosophy of listening, very utilitarian, almost. When I listen to music I want to indulge, to luxuriate. If that's rockist...

thankfully my wifes collection was vinyl only (we met up 18 years ago), and her weird Finnish records are not welcome when i'm around, expect 22-Pisterpirkko of course.
being honest, it is one part of the relationship that has niggled away in the back of the head from time to time, but not since i took on the current job. especially as one week in three i work from home which is a brilliant, totally selfish catch up time.
without that part of the job, i think we would have ended up in the divorce courts by now.
we had some duplicates (bowie mainly), but we kept them for the memories.

together we sold off one copy of all the duplicate CDs we had

Dude, all I can say is you better marry her and stay that way for life. The alternative is ugly, and I should know having had a joint comic collection with my college girlfriend. Ugh, brutal.

A friend of mine never merged her CDs with her husband and in fact marked each one with a dot on the spine, primarily because he didn't treat CDs well (left them around on the floor) but also because she was paranoid. And when they got divorced, she was glad she did!

and the reality is that Tiina has excellent taste .. its just she aint into the techno/dance thing at all, and this is where my real listening focus is these days.
my kids often say over their cornflakes : 'daddy is this that techno music again'

go on my son.

We've been together 6 years already, and I think we're in it for the long haul.

My 'tactic' as detailed above has gone a little awry this evening. Firstly I decided to listen to The Milk Of Human Kindness by Caribou instead of Cannibal Ox, because, well, I prefer it. Then I listened to hermann Dune, which we erroneously filed under D ages ago cos we thought it was a dude rather than a band, but I only got about four songs in before I realised w the singer reminded me of, and had to stop. Butters from South Park. Good grief. So now I'm on Ocean Rain. Nice.

Getting back to the main topic...

Tactics I use to choose what to listen to:
I will not listen to the same album two days in a row with the exception of something new.

I will not listen to the same SONG twice in a day. With the rare exception. I know some people get obsessed with a song or an album but I just don't want to burn myself out on something, and I've found it's really easy to do.

When I go to my racks I tend to pull out things that I don't have on my MP3 player or haven't listened to in a long time. I have alot of CDs, it's easy.

My mood comes into it but not as much as some people. Which is not to say I'm always up for some depressing Red House Painters - some music requires I feel pretty good in the first place!

I have no hard and fast rules in order to maintain a steady mix of old favorites and newer things. A friend of mine suggested setting up a separate rack for our top 200 albums or whatever and pulling something out of there every nth play. Bah, can't be bothered! ILM is great for jogging my memory and making me pull things out that I haven't in ages. For example, I really need to listen to The Stranglers _La Folie_, it's been years.

When guests are over I tend to go for the big band comps, Louis Prima or Cab Calloway. Nobody hates that stuff!

Dinner music tends to be something I'm familiar with (often classical) because music is rarely background for me and can keep me from focusing on the conversation at hand. Which also implies that music would be too distracting during, uh, other activities.

Then I listened to hermann Dune, which we erroneously filed under D ages ago cos we thought it was a dude rather than a band, but I only got about four songs in before I realised w the singer reminded me of, and had to stop. Butters from South Park. Good grief.

shop worker at the mini-HMV in Heathrow Airport terminal 1 swore blind that this was the best band he'd heard all year, have never heard a note

I remember Bill Drummond saying he chose a letter at the beginning of each year and only listened to artists beginning with that letter for the rest of the year, and wouldn't allow himself to listen to that letter again until he'd gone through the other 25 letters

anybody know if he still does this?...seems like a very good idea in theory (like recording an LP for each of the 50 states), but...

What?! That can't be taken seriously, can it? The guy's gonna spend a whole year listening to XTC, X-Clan, Xenakis and nothing else??

x-ray spex, xasthur, x-japan, the possibilities are endless

this is the best ILM thread in ages! that said....

My oldest (almost 5) notices lyrics (which means sometimes I get in trouble airing new purchases with words I didn't expect!) and picks up on songs with lyrics that fit his interests (helicopters and superheroes currently) so

that's awesome! my daughter is turning 5 this month; i play all sorts of stuff around her, and since you mentioned the "superheroes" thing, i'd like to say my daughter likes a lot of mf doom's stuff because of the superhero/supervillain running theme in his work. i mean, she can tell him apart from other hip-hop because of that theme, which is neat. she also likes kanye west because of the cartoon bear that graces most of his artwork. gotta try to keep the hip-hop clean around little ears, though, which can be frustrating.

i suppose it depends on your special lady's listening tastes a bit.

my girlfriend and i didn't at first share a lot of tastes; i was a lot more into music than she was, meaning i guess that i invested more time, money and effort into listening and exploring and such. a couple years ago she sort of caught onto this thing we call the "ipod game" in the car: i shuffle songs from the ipod, which contains some 250 artists or so, and she guesses the artist, and often the particular era or song - she's gotten damn good at recognizing my stuff, and she's finding a lot of things she likes, too!

i've also taken to playing stuff i think she'll like, based on what she already does. for example: just a week ago or so we listened to radiohead's kid a, which she already loves; the next night, i played boards of canada's geogaddi, and she drew a lot of parallels between the two albums, and now loves the second. she's also coming around to burial, by way of already enjoying massive attack and portishead.

through the above two methods, i've found it really fun and rewarding to watch her discover and enjoy new music for the 2 years we've been dating. and hey, if i never bring her around to mbv/jamc and such, at least she'll never win me over on pink martini. though i do enjoy brad mehldau, which was her doing. and a lot of older soul/jazz stuff as well.

Wire up your iPod to your domestic system and do some randomising?

this is fun, and quite useful when not doing close/attentive listening. for example when i'm browsing online looking at various stuff, catching up on a book, cooking a meal or something, i'll just put the ipod/itunes on shuffle. works great!

I go to the gym an hour to 1.5 hours in the early morning before work and just put the Ipod on shuffle.

i do this when i go running as well - usually for 30 to 90 minutes, several times a week. i shuffle songs and usually skip stuff i'm not in the mood for, a lot of slower songs, in favor of more uptempo stuff.

Or just start walking/jogging with your iPod alot.

yes! i started running a couple years ago simply to get some alone time listening to music; now i'm doing half-marathons and such, and enjoying running on its own terms. enough so that i'll still go out for a run if i've forgotten to charge the ipod - ha!

My 'tactic' as detailed above has gone a little awry this evening. Firstly I decided to listen to The Milk Of Human Kindness by Caribou instead of Cannibal Ox, because, well, I prefer it. Then I listened to hermann Dune, which we erroneously filed under D ages ago cos we thought it was a dude rather than a band, but I only got about four songs in before I realised w the singer reminded me of, and had to stop. Butters from South Park. Good grief. So now I'm on Ocean Rain. Nice.

and nick, good choices there! aphex twin, burial, caribou, cannibal ox, bunnymen - all great records. and i haven't heard hermann dune, but your endorsement isn't exactly a good one so...

anyway, great thread guys!

i haven't read the whole thread, so apologies if this has been brought up already. i've known people who've used generic flashcards. the idea is you make a card for every genre -- metal, punk, psych, dub, prog, hip hop, funk, blues, jazz, classical, kraut, folk, etc. -- and when you're arguing with friends about what to play next, you shuffle the deck, and then decide on a band that meets the criteria of the genre that comes up. if that sounds appealing, it could help with just choosing bands straight up

I've solved this problem by listening to the nice internet radio I received for Xmas, which also plays FM (which mostly sounds way better than the intraweb feeds). Mostly I've been listening to jazz and hearing things I've been meaning to catch up on for years. Right now I'm hearing Max Roach's It's Time.

Because apparently it's Max's birthday today. If I had went out and bought the record, I might not have known that. I might not have gotten around to listening for a while either.

I actually have been thinking about this a lot as this summer I was living with my g/f, and happens to be here a lot. I guess it's definitely harder to 'find new' music this way. And just growing up in general, chores, job, relationship.

So because all of this is so filled, where is the time for 'exploring', or just stumbling upon new discoveries in music? Which has, in a way made me who I am today, along with films, philosophy, books, everything really.

No real answer here, just more pondering...

Nick, is there a way you could combine drawing an Oblique Strategies card out of the deck with, say, choosing which record to play on a given evening? just a thought...

Maybe it's because I have a lot more music available now, or because I don't actively sit and "listen" as much as I did when I lived alone or spent a lot of time driving, but I don't feel like I really get to know records like I used to, when I'd know all the words to every song on an album. Having ten CDs in your car kind of forces you to listen to things more frequently than having 4000 songs on an ipod.

I listen to music at work all the time, usually from a 1gb flash drive. It forces me to pick things that actively want to hear instead of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff on my ipod. I will often hit the "party shuffle" button in iTunes a couple of times to give me ideas or remind me of things I need to check out more - eventually something that I've forgotten about or only listened to once will show up in the random list and I'll drop it on my flash drive and keep it there for a week.

When I'm walking to work or taking the bus I always listen to my ipod on shuffle. Lately I've been forcing myself to not skip ahead and just listen to whatever comes on, which is nice - something unfamiliar will catch my attention that in the past I'd skip to hear something I know for the hundredth time. "Oh yeah, I forgot I have this record on here".

At the gym for some reason I only listen to stuff I know and love - metal, old punk, or late 80's / early 90's hip hop for some reason. The Rub Radio hip-hop singles mixes for each year from '79 to '89 have been my favorites for the past couple of months.

The three stereos that we have in the house are as follows (I think what you have to listen with, and where, seriously affects how and what you listen to);

In the livingroom / kitchen we have the 'big' hi-fi, separates units (CD player, amp, turntable) on a dedicated rack with speakers on stands, measured out from rear walls, etcetera. This room is also where the CD collection (some 1500-2000 discs) lives, alphabetised on shelves). The TV is between the speakers, next to the hi-fi, and the DVD player also feeds into the amp. We have a comfy sofa for curling up and watching films on.

In the backroom / office I have quite a complex system that's cannibalised from lots of places - a DAC with inputs from my iMac and a CD player, which feeds into both a normal integrated stereo amplifier (in turn feeding two speakers) and a dedicated headphone amplifier. This room is where I keep my headphones, and where my comfy chair is. Effectively I can either listen to my iTunes or CDs through a proper hi-fi.

In the bedroom we have a decent mini system, which effectively only ever gets used for the radio these days.

In the bedroom we have a decent mini system, which effectively only ever gets used for the radio these days.

-- Scik Mouthy, Friday, 11 January 2008 09:06 (3 minutes ago) Link

fuckmusic...yeah baby ! ! !

Nothing like banging away to Dotton Adebayo on Five Live in the middle of the night.

Not nearly as good an accompaniment as Tommy Boyd's Human Zoo on TalkSport RIP (I speak from previous experience).

mark e, please to get your wife on ILM talking about her weird Finnish records!

Not to sound weird or anything but when we talk of moving in together I find the idea of not spending all evening every evening listening to music, downloading music, reading ILM, pissing around with softsynths almost more terrifying than any "but what if we annoyed the hell out of each other and/or had a massive row?" (and that's not any complacent idea that I'd be easy to live with, being pathologically untidy, forgetful, neglectful and stroppy).

Also, I bought some mini Sennheisers which are quite nice as in-ear buds go but still very tinny and hard to make out any more than a vague shuffle of drums on, so much as I like listening to music on my bus commute or walks it doesn't really count as a proper listen to me, especially not when it has to be turned up to drown out engines until the hi-hats hurt and I still can't hear anything else. Am I doing it wrong, or do you just put up with this when you have fewer listening opportunities?

You're doing it wrong. You want better headphones that isolate you from external sound.

Not too long ago, I found myself pondering these exact problems ... I was in a relationship with someone who didn't listen to a lot of music, and my home listening time was cut back a lot. If we were working in the kitchen or cleaning the apartment, I'd put on some friendly, uplifting house music or something, but generally we never just sat around and listened to music. She can't read or work with music playing, for example.

Basically, my computer (and iPod) became the hub of my music listening, moreso than it ever had before. My listening habits became more private, i.e. listening quietly by myself on my computer or blasting music over my headphones, rather than lounging in the den with music on the stereo. This meant that I was far more likely to listen to mp3s, rather than CDs, or equivalently, music from the past year or two (i.e. stuff I've downloaded that is saved on the computer) instead of older stuff. I've been trying to correct this by making a point of buying older CDs and revisiting more of my collection, and the New Year is the perfect time to put aside everything from the previous year and start fresh, so to speak.

My only advice for couples would be taking advantage of quiet time at night, if it is the case that you and your partner go to sleep at different hours. I really valued that time by myself when she would go to sleep and I had the time (and space) to hear whatever I wanted.

It's strange how two people can be attracted to each other and yet have very divergent musical tastes. I'm very fortunate because my wife has the same insanely eclectic musical likes (and dislikes) as me so I do not foresee these sorts of problems occurring when she comes over here to join me in Britain. Quite the reverse in fact; listening to music in the company of your other half is in my recent experience the loveliest thing ever. I've been listening to music alone for the last six years and that's long enough. I'm not saying it's the same for everybody but it just feels right and so much better and fulfilling with us.

Moreover when she brings her collection over there will be a great deal of music that I've never heard, and vice versa, so it'll be an exciting voyage of discovery for us to hear (and re-hear) entirely new music. Can't wait.

The other nice thing is that in the house I've got an extra pair of mounted speakers which I can plug into the stereo and you can hear the music wherever you go, in the kitchen, bathroom etc. and I anticipate that's going to be pretty much vital for us.

Maybe it's because I have a lot more music available now, or because I don't actively sit and "listen" as much as I did when I lived alone or spent a lot of time driving, but I don't feel like I really get to know records like I used to, when I'd know all the words to every song on an album. Having ten CDs in your car kind of forces you to listen to things more frequently than having 4000 songs on an ipod.

on the money

Is either way better? Sometimes I feel like I got more out of music, emotionally, when I was 17 and had about 100 CDs.

That's a common feeling, if a slightly illusory one. You tend to think it was better because you had more time and less responsibility and therefore were more able to get into and get to know an individual record, but in reality when I was 17 I was just as bogged down with exams, studying and what have you.

Even with more CDs I still try to devote as much time to individual records as I feel they deserve; in many ways this is aided by blogging since if I want to write in depth about something I have no choice but to try to inhabit the record's fabric in exactly the same way as I did when I was a lad.

giving the records the time they deserve is the sticking point for me; with owning more and more of them, finding the appropriate amount of time to devote is increasingly more difficult--my problem is not necessarily choosing what to listen to, but deciding when to give up with one record and move on to the next.

(i.e. 'i do not like this record' vs. 'i haven't absorbed this enough')

Is either way better? Sometimes I feel like I got more out of music, emotionally, when I was 17 and had about 100 CDs.

-- Scik Mouthy, Friday, January 11, 2008 11:41 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

well yeah. i'm reluctant to post to this thread for vrs reasons but i do feel it's better to know a few things well than lots of stuff fleetingly -- don't really care if it's rockist, it's a just preference. i gave up. i say this with 14 days' worth of music loaded up on my computer. on the other hand, i had way too much music when i was 17. i still don't think i've exhausted what i had then...

i still don't think i've exhausted what i had then...

exactly. and it just sinks to the bottom as new stuff is bought. it'd be better if i took a few months off from buying anything new, and forcing myself to listen to all the records at the bottom of the pile, but that's just creating yet another problem when i have to catch up on all the stuff i missed then.

it's not as bad as it is with books. but at least with music you may have technically 'heard them'. i have books bought while at college eight years ago that haven't been touched...

second hand. well, mostly second hand.

Is it more worthwhile to get to REALLY know a new record that you quite like and think you might like more, or to go back to something you really love from a while ago and indulge in it?

I guess part of this thread's purpose is about the onset of fogeyism, "it was all better when I were a kid", and not wanting to end up liking loads of cool shit from 1993-2007 and then whatever the 2011 version of The Killers is.

lol i was listening to loads of old stuff when i was 17 -- never not a fogey.

otoh in the mo-wax era that was kind of the done thing.

it's not as bad as it is with books. but at least with music you may have technically 'heard them'. i have books bought while at college eight years ago that haven't been touched...

in some ways, not hearing/owning something at all is better than having such a passing acquaintance with it that it's slightly embarrassing... c.f. friend asking "hey, what do you think about this record [that you own]?" and having to respond "actually i don't really remember it"

The most embarrassing thing is when you hear something in a shop and you think "that's really great" then when you ask what it is you realise you bought it back in 1998 or something and never listened to it properly...

It's all down to individual perspective; when I was 17 it was 1981 and there was NO TIME to listen to old stuff because there was so much urgent and key new music emerging practically on a daily basis.

plus of course you didn't have computers or CDs or the reissue culture back then so more often than not you couldn't actually buy much "old stuff" in the shops.

it'd be better if i took a few months off from buying anything new, and forcing myself to listen to all the records at the bottom of the pile, but that's just creating yet another problem when i have to catch up on all the stuff i missed then.

whoa - i can't imagine thinking about music that way, like you have to always know what comes out every week

this all reminds me some of this new book that's getting some play now that it's coming out in english. it's by a french guy named pierre bayard and is a bestseller in france and it's called "how to talk about books you've never read". it argues that all reading is a process of forgetting and that all culture is a system of papering over the guilt provoked by not having read something. he says that reading and non-reading are in many cases so similar as to be identical. if you read anna karennina 10 years ago but can't remember hardly anything about it, did you really read it?

for instance, having read people talk about the arcade fire a few years ago, i decided i never actually needed to hear them -- when i finally did i was like "yep, just like i thought"

I've spent much of the past 6 years telling people that something is boring and worthless based on the one listen I vaguely remember finding time to give it a couple of years before, and then when they enthuse about it going back to it and having to say "actually you were quite right, sorry" (and then not listening again after that either).

Everyone OTM about dread of stopping listening to new music, even for a week of catching up on everything downloaded/bought but only played once or even never played, for fear of giant pile of catch-up work required afterwards / idea that that will be the moment I dig out the slippers and let my record collection be set in amber (though it already kind of is because of so much more downloading now, and while I do pick up the things I really like I have much less time to look in record shops + fewer record shops to look in + fewer gigs to buy CDs at + such a short attention span that almost everything seems kind of old by the time I could buy it for real, why spend £12 on this old thing when there are NEW NEW NEW things to be downloaded?).

yeah i heard about that book, and think it rings true -- insofar as reading is tied up with social status (?) and people feel pressure to read stuff that i don't think you get with pop music. reading is also about learning a mode of talking about things -- which again you don't really have with pop music. or it's not enforced by the schools-and-university system at least.

xpost

even for a week of catching up on everything downloaded/bought but only played once or even never played, for fear of giant pile of catch-up work required afterwards

yeah i just have never been like this, ever - do you actually succeed in staying au courant on a weekly basis with like, all music genres that interest you??

even if i ever had been like this, i feel as though we're at a kind of "end-of-time" moment with music now -- even pace-setting genres like hip hop and techno seem more interested in unexplored side eddies of their pasts than really breaking into new territory -- so staying out of touch for a week or a month or a year isn't such a big deal -- everything is "current", from angel alanis to herbie hancock

Thing is there isn't the cult of the new with books so much, the canon is old and whatever's new seems to be regarded with deep suspicion, if you wait around a month whatever hip new bestseller you're meant to read this month will be as derided as Dan Brown or whoever so why bother reading it, just wait and then say you always knew it wasn't worth it.

Whereas I kneejerk-rejected the idea of listening to big important old records long ago as an angry teenager, not gonna listen to some fusty old LP just because Q says I oughta, so it's not the idea that I have to listen to a specific new record, it's more the worry that maybe one day in 1970 my Dad said he wasn't going to listen to whichever hot new band, and then suddenly every new record from that point on became a tin-eared racket not fit to exist on the same planet as Whiter Shade of Beyond The Pale or whatever, and my music collection's been the only thing I've ever had to be vain about, I can't bear to admit defeat on that.

None of which makes any sense written down, but it's the rough direction my subconscious goes in.

xposts, no, I don't ever feel caught up at all, but I like to feel I've made a token stab at This Week In Music, or at seeing what people are talking about this week (there's always a vague pang of regret when some old ILM thread I don't remember seeing before which mentions a lot of stuff I was excited to discover independently is dug up, like where was I that week to let this slide past me?).
And yes, as you say, this is pretty untenable right now, and there is as in Mo'Wax days a whole lot of cratedigging going on (italo/balearic/cosmic disco, disco edits and so on spring to mind), maybe as a joint side-effect of there being so much at our slsking fingertips and a reaction against it, so hopefully it's a mindset I can shake myself out of.

(sorry at huge unedited stream of consciousness but if I stop to edit there are six new posts to reply to as well, which is kind of how I feel about music)

From my experience: if the music's any good, whether old or new, it will find its way to you sooner or later, but always at the right time.

tracer, i think that this way of thinking comes from mild obsessive-compulsive mindset: i don't think i'll ever keep up with anything, and i *do* go long periods without keeping up with what's currently going on... however it's the paranoia/guilt(?) that comes from it that i'm really talking about.

spacecadet is a+++ on this thread.

"you don't always have to be in control of what comes out of your speakers, you know"

ive recently rediscovered how good this can be, even if you dont *like* everything thats played. it gets annoying having to always decide what to play.

I guess part of this thread's purpose is about the onset of fogeyism.

As I've got older, my tastes have broadened rather than narrowed, and I'm more than happy to have escaped the "All music made by people over 25 is BORING" trap, and the "All the right people are talking about it, therefore I MUST LIKE IT" trap, the "Guitar bands are SO OVER" trap, the "Dance music without audible R&B roots is SOULLESS CRAP" trap, the "Manufactured pop is MINDLESS BRAINWASH MUSIC designed to OPPRESS THE MASSES" trap, etc etc.

What I find now - aged 45, and not quite a full generation removed from people in their 20s and people in their 60s alike - is that I am potentially able to relate to music made by artists of all ages. Enjoying music made by a bunch of 19-year olds doesn't feel like arrested development/refusing to grow up/whatever, because a) it's balanced by other listening and b) I still remember what it was like to be 19, and much as 19-year olds might wish it otherwise, and quite right too, the experience of being 19 doesn't change that much over the decades.

Do you actually succeed in staying au courant on a weekly basis with like, all music genres that interest you?

Making the strategic decision to stop trying to keep up with dance music has admittedly been a great weight off my shoulders. Resident Advisor podcasts miraculously drop themselves into my iPod; I play them once, enjoy them without feeling the slightest desire to look up the tracklistings, and move on.

From my experience: if the music's any good, whether old or new, it will find its way to you sooner or later, but always at the right time.

Possibly the most insightful comment on this thread, but it has a caveat: you have to be looking for and open to hearing it! I try to reappraise things periodically that haven't grabbed me (i.e. Nuggets) or genres that are interesting but not critical to me (classic country, metal). ILM in particular has been great about sparking my re-interest in bands that I dismissed years ago or never gave a chance to - The Associates, early Simple Minds, post-Starfish Church - all caught my ear last year thanks to threads here.

giving the records the time they deserve is the sticking point for me; with owning more and more of them, finding the appropriate amount of time to devote is increasingly more difficult--my problem is not necessarily choosing what to listen to, but deciding when to give up with one record and move on to the next. (i.e. 'i do not like this record' vs. 'i haven't absorbed this enough')

This is another key issue but I've come to terms with it. If something doesn't grab me (or at least stick in my head) after a couple of listens, there are literally thousands of other things that I'd rather listen to. It's a harsh judgement, and sometimes down the road I reassess, but for the most part this works for me.