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What kind of music do you enjoy?

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AshRyan

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So, what kind of music does everyone here enjoy?

I listen to some classical, especially Rachmoninoff and Tchaikovsky. One of my favorite radio programs is a show called From The Top which showcases young (18 and under) classical musicians. The host is a pianist named Christopher O'Riley who's very good, and plays a lot of Rachmoninoff (who is also his favorite composer).

I also listen to a lot of film music. My favorite film composer is Danny Elfman, but I have scores by many different composers.

I enjoy some popular music, mostly in the alternative/rock/pop kind of genre. I went to Lollapalooza a couple of days ago, so that should give you an idea. Incubus played there, and they're probably about the only "nu-rock" kind of band that I enjoy. Their lyrics are often very positive, benevolent, and individualistic. Their music's not too bad, either. My favorite band is probably Self. They are a unique rock/pop group that has generally very benevolent music, and very clever lyrics and music. Their last album was recorded using toy instruments only, but it sounds much better than most other rock music released today. It's very fun. They always do something different than what you'd expect, like starting a song with a hard-rock riff, then breaking into a beautiful vocal harmony.

Anyway, that's probably the essentials of my musical tastes (although there are a lot of particulars that I'm leaving out at the moment). What does everyone else here listen to?

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I also love anything Rachmaninoff or Tchaikovsky. Some of my other favorites are Vivaldi, some Mozart, some Schubert, and a little of Debussy and Chopin. I also sometimes enjoy Renaissance polyphony. I don't like most classical-classical music from the 1600s and early 1700s, such as Bach (with the exception of his Brandenburg concerto).

On occassion, I enjoy some rock music, but I don't like it enough to have favorites or anything.

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I also enjoy Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, with a mix of a lot of others in classical music.

My favorite film composer by far is John Williams, composer of the scores for such movies as the Star Wars Trilogy, E.T., Back to the Future Trilogy, Indiana Jones Trilogy, and just about every single other movie that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have made, plus the Olympic Themes for the Olympics for the past 15 years or so, and a lot more. I also enjoy Danny Elfman and Jerry Goldsmith (some of the Star Trek themes, Air Force One, etc.)

Prior to discovering Objectivism, I listened to primarily rock music. Now however, I do not listen to any.

Ash, what station performs that radio program you spoke of? It sounds interesting.

Being a trumpet player myself, I also greatly enjoy some trumpet concertos and ballads from the likes of Haydn, Strauss, etc. Also, I enjoy the works of numerous brass groups including Canadian Brass and Empire Brass. In fact, I have met, received a clinic from, and performed with, one of the founding trumpet players of Canadian Brass, Fred Mills.

I also recommend any Sousa march. If any of you receive The Intellectual Activist, there was a great article about him in the July 2003 issue.

Music is truly a wonderful thing. It is a shame that there is not much out there which comes close to representing Halley's Concerto of Deliverance in Atlas Shrugged.

Here are some of my favorite pieces of music that I suggest:

1. Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30: Introduction - Strauss

2. William Tell Overture - Rossini

3. Pictures at an Exhibition: The Great Gate at Kiev - Mussorgsky

4. Fanfare for the Common Man - Aaron Copland

5. 1812 Overture - Tchaikovsky (my favorite)

6. Procession of the Nobles - Rimsky-Korsakov

7. Summon the Heroes - John Williams

8. Bugler's Dream - Leo Arnaud

9. Olympic Fanfare and Theme - John Williams

10. Parade of Charioteers - Miklos Rozsa

11. Chariots of Fire - Vangelis

12. all of the music from the Star Wars Trilogy - John Williams

13. all of the music from E.T. - John Williams

14. Saving Private Ryan: Hymn to the Fallen - John Williams

15. all of the music from Hook - John Williams

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Steve,

I also enjoy Jerry Goldsmith, he is probably my second favorite film composer. I greatly enjoy some of Williams' work (Hook, the Indiana Jones movies, some of the Star Wars stuff), but he would not even be in my top 5 favorite composers. In my opinion, his recent work (such as the most recent Star Wars film, and his theme for the 2002 Winter Olympics here in Salt Lake City) has been pretty awful. I enjoy some of Elliot Goldenthal's work, as well as Michael Kamen, Hans Zimmer, and a bit of Philip Glass--which I probably shouldn't admit on an Objectivist board, but in my defense, not all of his music is the atonal, minimalist, repetitive junk for which he is most well-known. There are several others I'm not mentioning here (including several deceased composers, such as Bernard Herrmann).

Just out of curiosity, why do you not listen to rock music at all anymore? Do you think there's no value in it at all?

I also play a few instruments, though none of them extremely well. (I used to be quite good on both the piano and clarinet, but haven't focused on them for several years. Now I am learning guitar.) But I do dabble in composing occasionally. While it's not a major career goal of mine, composing is something that I think I might like to do a bit of in the future--just more as a hobby.

I think if the Atlas Shrugged movie ever gets made, they should probably just leave Halley out, because otherwise it will probably be disappointing.

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I think if the Atlas Shrugged movie ever gets made, they should probably just leave Halley out, because otherwise it will probably be disappointing.

I agree with this. However, there are several plot devices Ayn Rand uses to build suspense. One is the whistling of Halley's music by the brakeman and Frisco and then Halley playing on the piano in Galt's Gulch. Another is the unique dollar sign cigarretes that turn up. Another is the length of twelve years which everybody mentions. Some of these devices need to remain in a movie...and if Halley is taken out, and cigarretes are kind of looked down upon today so those might be taken out...something will have to make up for the lost suspense.

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n my opinion, his recent work (such as the most recent Star Wars film, and his theme for the 2002 Winter Olympics here in Salt Lake City) has been pretty awful.
Unfortunately I agree for the most part with that. However, I believe he composed the music for the Harry Potter films, and I do like the Harry Potter theme.

Just out of curiosity, why do you not listen to rock music at all anymore? Do you think there's no value in it at all?

Prior to my discovery of Objectivism, I was a much, much different person than I am today. My musical tastes at the period reflected my personality and completely unknown philosophy. When I became more and more rational, everything about me changed, including my tastes in music as well.

That's not to say that there is no value in rock music though. It just means that all of the rock music that I listened to in the past, before discovering Objectivism, has no value in my opinion.

I wouldn't be against listening to different rock music, however, I feel as though the majority of music out there today is characterized by emotionalism, irrationality, nihilism, pseudo-individualism, etc.

I think if the Atlas Shrugged movie ever gets made, they should probably just leave Halley out, because otherwise it will probably be disappointing.

Perhaps.

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There are some excellent score composers out there that should not be discounted, such as Thomas Newman. Of course none of them approach a Richard Halley level of genius, but keep in mind that all aspects of the film version of AS would suffer from similar problems.

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There are some excellent score composers out there that should not be discounted, such as Thomas Newman. Of course none of them approach a Richard Halley level of genius, but keep in mind that all aspects of the film version of AS would suffer from similar problems.

If the music score is my biggest beef with an AS movie, it will be a joyous day indeed!

As per my music tastes, there are the classics of course, but I have quite a few popular artists I like as well – such as Dave Mathews Band, Collective Soul, Bush, Tool, Garbage, and A Perfect Circle. I also like some of electronic, new-age, and techno artists out there, such as Daft Punk, Orbital, Enya, Bush, Steve Vai, and Joe Satriani.

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I agree with this. However, there are several plot devices Ayn Rand uses to build suspense. One is the whistling of Halley's music by the brakeman and Frisco and then Halley playing on the piano in Galt's Gulch. Another is the unique dollar sign cigarretes that turn up. Another is the length of twelve years which everybody mentions. Some of these devices need to remain in a movie...and if Halley is taken out, and cigarretes are kind of looked down upon today so those might be taken out...something will have to make up for the lost suspense.

Lots of things would have to be cut out, even if they did a full 6-hour miniseries as was being discussed a while back. I wouldn't worry about removing these particular parts: there's plenty enough other elements of suspense that nobody would lose out, particularly considering how compressed the entire plot would have to be.

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Oh yes, and about my musical tastes.. I'm pretty eclectic. My last purchase was the 2-disc Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff set with Concertos 1-4 and Rhapsody/Paganini. I just got it yesterday and haven't yet had a chance to listen to it, but I've had good luck with the other two Rach plays Rach CDs I own. (The Solo Works & Transcriptions CD is generally full of bad recordings though, so be warned.)

Other than that, my disc changer in my car currently has... let's see what I can remember off the top of my head. Rachmaninoff, Guns'n'Roses, Sly & The Family Stone, Rev. Horton Heat, Nightwish, After Forever, Parliament, a compilation of old punk songs, Mozart's Requiem, uhhh... that's all I can recall off the top of my head. There's another one, but dunno what it is. Random other CDs I've had in there recently: Danzig, Mario Lanza, Beethoven, Smashing Pumpkins, Snoop Dogg, The Queers, Tchaikovsky, Bad Religion, Scott Joplin... I change them too frequently to keep listing, I'd go on forever. :-)

And yes, I'll side with those who like John Williams. I have a bunch of CDs of his scores, he's very good... but don't bother looking into his non-Hollywood works. He's only got a few of them, and those I was able to track down seemed like he was selling out in a sense -- trying to make "modern" music to make a point or something. Kinda atonal, not very much fun.

- Matt

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I’ve been reevaluating the music that I listen to since I started learning more about objectivism. There has always been one thing that I look for in the music that I listen to and that is drums. I’ve been playing drums since high school and I’m always looking for music that has good rhythm and solos. My problem right now is that some of the music I listen to has terrible lyrics. A lot of it tries to describe a gray and ugly world even though the drums are so amazing. The main bands I used to listen to are Modest Mouse, Aloha, and Built to Spill. I still value some of their songs but not many of them. Right now I’m teaching myself how to play a song called Truckers Atlas by Modest Mouse. It has one of the most complex rhythms I have ever tried to play and it’s been my goal to learn it since I first heard the song.

As far as composing goes I once wrote all the possible rhythms in 4/4 up to 16th notes. Then started writing 2 beat phrases for the drum set in 4/4. These phrases can be combined to make complex drum rhythms that can be used in most rock songs. This has helped me a lot when I just sit down and start playing drums (improvisation). I would like to be in a band sometime in the near future and use the theory I have already written to make music. It would be even better though to make a computer program that would write all possible rhythms for me. Maybe I could do this as a web site…

Oh yeah does anyone listen to Jazz? Do you know any good Jazz bands?

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My favorite musicians include No Doubt, Oasis, The Corrs, Evanescence, Billy Joel, Elton John, The Eagles, and I have a soft spot for Blur's "life" era. I listen to some classical, but not enough to really play favorites. Unless you count Mark Snow (composer for "The X-Files"). I loved his score for The X-Files: Fight The Future. :D

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As per my music tastes, there are the classics of course, but I have quite a few popular artists I like as well – such as Dave Mathews Band, Collective Soul, Bush, Tool, Garbage, and A Perfect Circle.

David, I think we're on about the same page. These are all bands whom I also enjoy to some extent. I have albums by all of them (although not all of all their albums). I saw A Perfect Circle at Lollapalooza last week, and they put on a great show. They played a lot of new stuff. I can't wait for their new album coming out in a few weeks.

John,

Oh yeah does anyone listen to Jazz? Do you know any good Jazz bands?
I listen to a little, but not a lot, of Jazz. I've been listening to a lot of Victor Wooten lately, he's a great bassist, you might want to check him out. I recommend the Yin Yang and Live In America albums.

Jennifer,

I listen to some classical, but not enough to really play favorites. Unless you count Mark Snow (composer for "The X-Files"). I loved his score for The X-Files: Fight The Future.

That's a really good score. I love it too. :D

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I like primarily Japanese composers (for videogames, anime, etc.) -- Yasunori Mitsuda, Michiko Naruke, etc.

My favorite classical composer is Prokofiev, also I like Faure, Beethoven, Alkan, Brahms, Bach, etc.

I don't like any music with lyrics but that just may be due to me having a difficulty in understanding spoken/sung language, so most lyrical music sounds like gibberish to me unless I am reading the lyrics while listening to it.

Oh, and both my father and brother are music composers and I do like some of what they write.

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Ash, what station performs that radio program you spoke of?  It sounds interesting.

Steve, I think I forgot to answer this question before. Sorry.

"From The Top" is a nationally syndicated radio program, so the particular stations that broadcast it in different areas vary. Unfortunately, in most areas it is carried only by public radio stations. But you can check out a list of stations that carry it in your area (as well as the day/time that they broadcast it) at their website, fromthetop.org. Follow the link, click on "Radio Show", then "station list".

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My musical tastes after discovering objectivism have changed radically as well, they're actually my own!! I enjoy music that is passionate and sensual. I like some classical ( Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart) Delerium, some R&B soul, a bit of jazz, brazillian, Joe Satriani, ATB, DT8, and some Paul Oakenfold. I also enjoy The Cranberries, Wild Strawberries. I love Delerium's "Heaven's Earth". And ATB's "You're Not Alone" ;)!!!! Carrie.

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  • 4 weeks later...

My favorite film composer is without a doubt Ennio Morricone, of spaghetti western fame. It's harsh and at times atonal, but when it's good it's great. I've only met one other person who's heard of him and enjoys his music.

As for more general music, I like a wide variety of genres: trance, swing, alternative, pop, jazz, ragtime, Dixieland, and "Weird Al" Yankovic (who is sort of sui generis). It really depends on the activity I'm undertaking and the mood I'm in. When I'm coding, I want hard, driving, lyric-free trance music. When I'm relaxing, give me some Dave Brubeck or Scott Joplin. If I'm cheery, I'll take some John Mayer or Amy Grant (the non-religious songs of course).

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My favorite film composer is without a doubt Ennio Morricone, of spaghetti western fame. It's harsh and at times atonal, but when it's good it's great. I've only met one other person who's heard of him and enjoys his music.

I do know, and enjoy much of, Ennio Morricone's music. So now you know two other people. :blink:

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  • 3 months later...

I love art rock in general, and have found Pink Floyd's Animals (1977) to be one of the best and most underrated albums in rock history. It is too bad that this album is perceived by many to be an attack on capitalism (just look at the hundreds of Amazon reviews on the album), but on a further look it does not seem to be so (even though that may be what the lyricist Roger Waters intended):

"Animals represents Waters' view of the avarice in modern society that divides people, creating the harsh, cold, uncaring environment in which he feels we live. His Orwellian world is broken down into three basic types: pigs (those who have and hold control with a self-consumed greed); dogs (who aspire to "pig status" and forsake everything and everyone in order to gain it); and sheep (the mindless masses who quietly accept all that is thrust upon them). Though a knee-jerk reaction is to view this work as a statement against capitalism, it would be more accurate to say this as an attack on anti-humanism. The subjects in Roger's lyrics are belittled for their pursuit of self-serving agendas at the expense of all else." -- Phil Snyder

If anything, its an attack on the mixed-economy system. How else would 'pigs' and 'dogs' breed? Anyway, whatever the lyricists intentions were, Animals is just plainly masterful music.

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About when I became interested in Objectivism, a couple of months ago, I fell for heavy metal - especially of the Swedish "Gothenburg Sound" sort, aka melodic death: for its beauty, power, edge, and sheer aggressiveness.

I haven't much else to say, so I'll just list band names. Adagio; Apocalyptica; Arch Enemy; Children of Bodom; Dark Tranquillity; In Flames; Lacuna Coil; Metallica; Nightwish; Opeth; Symphony X. I'm slowly expanding my collection, artist by artist. I am sort of a completist, having to have every release from any particular artist. I have a rather long list of artists I would like to explore (or memorize).

BTW - For anybody into Metallica, by which I mean into their earlier albums, I would recommend Apocalyptica and their first cover album Plays Metallica By Four Cellos.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thought I'd add my two cents and ask a question that has been bothering me for a while.

My tastes are eclectic also: classical, jazz, rock.

I find it interesting that so many of you listen to classical -- unusual these days. My favorites are:

Beethovens 9th (and the other 8)

Tchiakovsky - 1812, Romeo and Juliet, Nutcracker

Many of Rossini's Overtures: William Tell, Barber of Sevile

Saint Saens - Organ Symphony

Stravinsky (kind of a classical change of pace)

I'd like to find a good Mozart piece. Suggestions?

I am just recently getting into jazz (partly due to Ken Burns Documentary -- very good) and love the ones I have:

Duke Ellington - Live at Newport (excellent)

Charlie Parker (phenomenal musician)

Vince Guaraldi - Charlie Brown (great at xmas time)

Ray Charles, Harry Conick Jr., George Winston (also great at xmas)

Norah Jones - new

Diana Krall - new

But my favorite of all time is (drum roll) -- Stevie Ray Vaughan. I own just about every CD and Video tape he ever made. For those who don't know him he was another incredible musician, a virtuoso of the Fender electric guitar. Being from Texas he played Texas Blues -- what I consider upbeat electric blues in the vein of Jimi Hendrix (whom he covered often). He inspired me to pick up the electric guitar and I still play, though obviously not on that level.

I can honestly recommend all of his works but if you just want to get a flavor try "Couldn't Stand the Weather" and if you want to see a live performance in which all of his tricks are on display (playing behind his back and behind his head) try the VHS "Live at the El Mocambo".

Of course after listening to Stevie Ray for a while much electric guitar work appealed to me:

Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck (another virtuoso who's new stuff is intense - "Who Else !" & "You Had it Coming"), Robert Cray, Santana, John Lee Hooker, etc.

Rock and Roll in general consumes most of my listening time:

U2, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dave Mathews, Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, REM, Natalie Merchant, Alanis Morissette, No Doubt, Beck, Peter Gabriel, Beastie Boys ...

Some older bands that don't get as much listening time:

Billy Joel (my first album, that's right -- vinyl), Joe Jackson, Blondie, CCR, Pretenders, Tom Petty, Soundgarden, AC/DC, Spin Doctors ...

AND, I can't believe no one has mentioned ... Rush ?!?! These guys are objectivists! and it is very apparent if you listen to their lyrics, try "Moving Pictures", "Power Windows" and "Grace Under Pressure"

Now the question:

Some of the lyrics of some of these bands, occasionally, are irrational. It is not predominant so usually it doesn't bother me. I left one band off the list though, one of my favorites, Rage Against the Machine. You can gather much of what they're about from the name. The "Machine" is the USA; politics to a large degree, our founders to a lesser. Apparently all of them have degrees from Harvard (perhaps this isn't relevant but may explain some of it). The singer/lyricist (Zack De La Rocha) is very angry and passionate. The band fits right in and the music is very good, especially the guitarist (Tom Morello). I would describe it as: bass riff driven guitar (similar to Jimmy Page), angry, semi-rapp hard rock. Their thing is protest. On the cover of their first disc is the famous picture of the Buddhist monk who set himself ablaze to protest the Vietnam War. They support Mumia Abu Jamal.

Obviously I have a hard time reconciling objectivist philosophy with support of this band.

Could you?

Someone else on this site, who's tag line is "a fire in the master's house is set" (a Rage lyric), must like them also. It might be an irrational interloper, I'm not sure.

They are broken-up now (the band joined the singer of Soundgarden and they call themselves Audioslave) so I don't have to worry about supporting them in the future.

Is there any justification for supporting such a band?

Go Easy,

Marc

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