my-journey-in-music - Tumblr blog

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 21-22 “This is who I am”

I’ve lost so many oppertunities for musical discovery throughout my still very young life, by either being narrow minded or feeling like I’m behind practical. I’ve done a horrible job balancing what I want to do and what I feel like I have to do. This past year I’ve taken up what I’ve lost and checked out up to six albums or pieces a day and I finally feel like I’ve aquired a true identity in music.

I’ve really come to appreciate jazz thanks to a school project. There was a guy in my class who hated jazz more than anything in the world and I was able to change his mind by keep showing him cool stuff and telling him what to listen to when and where in each song. In return, he showed me a lot of classical music, previously I had only truly appreciated film scores and various works by Stravinskij. He showed me Mahler, Tchaikovsky and most importantly Maurice Ravel who is among my favorite composers now. 

My favorite pieces of music are finally definable. I love the combination of classical music, jazz and electronica. Wikipedia defines this as “art rock” but I’m still waiting for a better term because art rocks golden era was in the 60s and 70s and it sounded a whole lot different than the genre I identify with. 

My favorite composer is in no doubt Ryuichi Sakamoto with his asymmetrical classical/electronica album “async”. I’ve missed my stops while taking the bus when listening to this, it takes me to a completely different place.

“Blackstar” (David Bowie) and “A Moonshaped Pool” (Radiohead) are incredible examples of modern art rock with so many genres colliding into creating art. “Is This The Life We Really Want?” (Roger Waters) is to a lesser extent art rock too, but nowhere near as refined as the previously mentioned titles. 

I guess I’ve long struggled with my identity, its not something one chooses, but it feels so good to look at my record collection or even just these dumb posts thinking “This is who I am, this is what I want to do”.  Even though I didn’t realise it, I don’t think we’re supposed to truly find our identities before this age. The hormones are finally starting to take a break and we’ve been through the most defining events of our upbrining

If anyone has bothered to read these I hope you’ll take the time to reflect on your own journey, and its important to keep in mind that it might not be finished. I know I’ll grow more as a musician and listener, but I really feel like this is the foundation for my taste.

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 20 “Losing my identity again”

In preparing to get into music university I mainly practiced stuff I didn’t listen to. And I didn’t get a whole lot of time to listen to stuff, which is horrible because if you’re just sitting at home practicing by yourself, not listening to music, not creating music, whats the point of doing music at all?

I’m glad I did though, or else I wouldn’t have been accepted to the university I wanted. What was so tempting to me was that in this perticular university they want to break down the walls between classical and rythmical (everything that isn’t classical) music. They’ve promoted with that if you want to be a musician you should learn all parts of it and not divide it as we have the last couple of decades, which I fully agree with. Its especially perfect for me cause I compose classical pieces arguably more than i practice bass. They allow me to do both and I have amazing teachers in both subjects.

When I got the chance to listen to music however, it was primarily some of the newer stuff to Radiohead, Stravinskij, John Williams and Hans Zimmer scores, and Pink Floyd. Still, I felt like there was no identity in there. The only thing that was for sure was that I had thrown away my old one and started embracing electronic elements and classical music a whole lot more.

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 19-20 “The Beginning of the End”

Another big problem I noticed in this new class was that I wasn’t just behind everyone else practically, but theoretically. I couldn’t understand even the simplest music terminology beyond basic chords and note names. This lead to me putting away the bass for a little (big mistake) and dive into numerous theory books, which lead to me wanting to listen exclusively to “intelligent music” (horrible and pretentious term, I know).

“Kid A” by Radiohead was my gateway into electronic music, “Le Sacre Du Printemps (=The Rite of Spring) by Igor Stravinskij to classical music and “Better than the Blues” by Neal Richardson to jazz (even though its quite blues-y)

I didn’t even realise until creating this post, but the merging of these genres is exactly what my current taste in music is. But we’re not there yet. 

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 18-19 “What? You have to practice when you’re studying music?”

Muse became an essential part of my listening. Much thanks to Christopher Wolstenholmes bass playing that I’ve learned a lot from. Another big influence was John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin.

When I started this new school after my gap year, it was clear to me that the level of musicianship in the new class was way above what I had done previosuly. This first year I just practiced and practiced, when I wasn’t practicing like a madman to the next concert I leaned back to relax to some scores by John Williams. But there was never as much time for that as I hoped, this was truly an mentally exhausting year.

My identity was somewhat shrouded, I just wanted to be the same level as the rest of my class.

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 17 “The Gap Year on Tumblr”

When moving back home I was in the unfortunate situation that I had been away long enough to lose contact with everyone I knew there, and I was 5 hours away from where I used to live. I did get a tumblr account at the boarding school, my girlfriend at the time was what you would call “tumblr famous” and promoted me a few times so that I’d get a few followers without even lifting a finger (I think I had like 500 followers before I made my first post). I did use it a little and I appreciated the nice anons, but I didn’t become an avid user until this gap year. And then the indie roots my sister planted so many years ago developed.

I started on “The Beatles side of tumblr” which quickly expanded to indie bands (I still don’t quite see the connection, hipsters listens to both I guess). The thing with indie bands is that the lyrics are often in focus, which I haven’t thought about in atleast three years. My experience with lyric-focused songs is that you become more selforiented (sorry for lack of better words, this isn’t my first language and i don’t necessarily mean it in a bad way) and its easy to get the idea that “no one understands me but him/her/them” even though its often written pretty vague. I’m not intending to trashtalking these artists and bands, I can still listen to these, just that this and some of the people I followed on here lead me to be more focused on myself. But the amazing job they did was to steer me away from just liking rock even though the genres are related.

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 16-17 “Rock is still being made?”

I remember very clearly the first time I heard Foo Fighters newest album “Wasting Light” and I couldn’t believe this was made today. New rock? That isn’t pop punk? The site further lead me to Slash’s solowork “Apocalyptic Love”. I was never much of a Guns N’ Roses fan but I have to admit, listening to the heavy intro of the song “You’re A Life” legit made me cry. Then I googled older artists that have released new stuff and found KISS and Aerosmith had released new stuff. I also discovered Muse for some reason. The only things that stuck was Foo Fighters and Muse, but all these albums really meant a lot to me.

What sucked was that I had influenced basically everyone I knew to not accept stuff created after the 70′s... Oh, the irony... 

Later, I dropped out of the boardingschool and went home to live with my parents again where tumblr would decide my further musical developing.

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 15-16 “Everything after 1976 is garbage”

My first truly defined identity. The beginning of high school. I was the hippie musician at school. And with it came the bad attitude “older music was better” (which I’ve grown past). It did work though and I converted many people (including my Skrillex-loving roommate) and ended up in a group that turned out to become trendsetters. The bold statements I said about electronic music... Its embarassing. 

Even though I started to know a lot more music, I’ll still say I was more narrowminded than I was before.

I remember towards the end of the year my bass teacher told me he liked to categorize his students into people who wanted to learn a new song of his favorite bands every week and people who wanted to become musicians. That affected me a lot and I started to challenge myself more musically and check out music that I didn’t necessarily like, to improve my playing.

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 13-14 “Girls”

Oh, how often I fell in love at this time. I was probably in love with every girl who ever greeted me at this time. And I wanted to have things in common with nearly everyone so I checked out a lot of their music as I fantasised about our marriage (i bet that sentence didn’t go the way you thought)

It was never too far of a stretch though, The Wombats was in the indie genre in which I had showed interest in before, and Jefferson Airplane is from the same time period as The Beatles. (Oh man, I remember thinking the girl who showed me Jefferson Airplane was the hottest girl I had ever seen)

I progressed through The Beatles unchronologically and somehow discovered David Bowie on my own through YouTube. 

We didn’t have a lot of girls in my class, but they all seemed to listen to Green Day, especially Wake Me Up When September Ends. Guess who picked up the guitar to impress the hottest emo chick in class? I did grow to like the songs though

Disclaimer: I didn’t start to play music because of the girl, I had been trained in some piano, guitar and cornet throughout my childhood. This was just a good motivation to actually practice. Also spoiler alert; nothing happened between us.

I remember going to my music teacher at school asking about The Beatles song “Something”, cause I heard a melody beneath the melody, and couldn’t for the life of me understand what instrument was playing it. She told me it was the bass guitar and that Paul McCartney was one of the first to do this in this genre. This was the moment I decided to pick up the bass (which is my main instrument) and I practiced every day to be able to play the song even though it was far out of my league.

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 12-13 “Discovering myself”

We moved when I was turning 12 and this is where I feel I started developing an identity for real. Music class at the new school introduced me to The Beatles and Queen, two bands my parents have always played for me but I never payed attention to until a cool new music teacher told us it was cool (turned out I was the only one believing in her.. oh well). And my sisters influences in indie music further developed and I discovered bands like Franz Ferdinand and The Kooks.

This school was completely different than what I was used to, there were no gangs and there was a really good culture for listening to what you want, wearing what you want and just be who you want to be. I started looking up to a guy in class who knew some cool rock riffs on guitar and drum grooves, he introduced me to Nirvana. While checking out Nirvana my very christian father came in and asked me why I was listening to such satanic music which was probably the worst thing he could tell a preteen. I can’t think of a better motivation to keep listening to them.

But the main band I kept listening to for years and years ahead was The Beatles, at this time though it was mostly the hits and the early stuff.

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 10-11 “The Crisis”

Look at this mess of an identity crisis. This was the time when the school yard started splitting up in “gangs”, and I was in multiple. Primarily the “cool gang” and the “nerd gang” as well as I still looked up to my sister that listened to completely different music. The only thing that glued them all together was the channel MTV.

The “cool gang” had me listen to the rapper Sean Kingstons single “Beautiful Girls” a lot. 

Fun fact: much later I discovered Ben E. King’s 60′s single “Stand By Me” and instantly liked it. Turned out it was because Sean Kingston have sampled the song in “Beautiful Girls”

But I never identified with the song, it was more a song that was put on over and over until I automatically learned the lyrics and sang along with my friends.

The “nerdy group” didn’t listen to a lot of music, but it was a bit more aggressive. Simple Plan with “Shut Up!” and “I’m just a Kid” were often put on. Not identifying with the cool groups music made me sortof leave the group, not in a dramatic way it just happened. And with the growing popularity of online gaming instead of couch coop, suddenly I had no reason to go out to meet people. Which was all my fault, and I developed some unhealthy selfpity that year (that luckily disappeared quickly). I kept listening to Simple Plan briefly, but was introduced to the Arctic Monkeys album “Whatever People Say That I Am That’s What I’m Not” by my sister and I was once again steered in a more right direction. With Simple Plan I was very hung up on the lyrics, but Arctic Monkeys was just plain cool music.

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 8-9 “The Dueling Popcorn”

It shouldn’t be legal to post the film score to the great John Williams and a badly remixed version of the Popcorn Song side by side... But see the good side (left) that I am heading towards the right direction. Lets start with the wrong one.

The old 80′s tune “The Popcorn Song” had an awful remix by the little creature known as Crazy Frog. It was on every phone on the school yard, and those who didn’t have it got it transfered Via IR (the thing before Bluetooth) and it was everybodys ringtone. If you had a ringtone that weren’t Crazy Frog then you weren’t cool. Simultaneously, I was a major pothead (potter nerd. i was 8, jesus.) to that extent that I bought the album for the second movie. 

I didn’t write it in my last post cause it wasn’t relevant at the time, but growing up I never cared much for Winnie the Pooh and other typical small-children stories. As I’ve mentioned before I looked up to my sister whos five years older, and she was such a hipster that she read Harry Potter before the movies came out, so I demanded my mother reading the same out loud to me every night. We had just started the third book when the first movie came out and I have to admit the movie was a lot scarier, but none of the movies ever scared me as much as the second one. It alone had me develop arachnophobia. Anyway, Harry Potter was a big deal for me, back to the music.

This was possibly the first time since the rythms of Grieg that I found some music that I appreciated just for the music with no real associations, because I didn’t listen a whole lot to the main title, I had the piece “The Dueling Club” on repeat even though I didn’t care much for the scene where it’s played. I couldn’t describe what I liked about it but I could listen to it over and over without doing anything else or getting tired of it.

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 6-7 “What is popular is good”

You’d think that after a child who adored the great composer Edvard Grieg would continue this journey through the Romanticism and further develop a good sense of music.

Nope.

Not yet atleast. And even though “good music” is individual, I think most people will agree now that this music was truly awful. My school kept developing trends, which my taste in music were deeply affected by in elementary school. The first trend I remember was Pokémon cards, but the theme song were never a hit. The second trend was these things called Dracco Heads, small figurines you could collect, and weirdly enough, without even a TV show, their song were a major hit in our school. Along with O-Zones “Dragostea Din Tei” which most people remember through the “Numa Numa Boy”. I was a kid, I was easily influenced and the songs were catchy.

This was also the first time my sister influenced me, although I never took an interest in Eminem, I loved a few songs by Postgirobygget (Norwegian Tenacious D) that she had shown me, some of them with brutal lyrics (Example: “Under the ice, under the ice, she’s under the ice. Then she died, tragically, in a drowning accident” with a cheerful melody)

[my-journey-in-music]

Age 2-5 “Rythms” My first meeting with music that meant something for me started pretty early, the first christmas where I could walk I showed great interest in the norwegian christmas songs “Så går vi rundt om en enebær busk” and “På låven sitter nissen” where you have to run around the tree at different speeds narrated by the lyrics. I have no recollection of the first few years this happened but apparently I made my family sing them on repeat.

.

The second time I remember much more clearly. My mother is sortof an amateur piano player, one of the few songs she knew was “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Edvard Grieg. Whenever she played it I liked to stomping around in the living room to the rythm. Both of these early incidences were deeply associated with actions and rythms, in which I’ve now learned (being a music major) that is because the section of the brain which picks up rythms is the first to develop, and in most cases you won’t start picking up the right harmony until you’re closer to nine or ten.