New Music

[Nemily]

As we are closing out the year soon, I am listening to some favorite Holiday tunes and a lot of new Holiday tunes that I find are very good. Discovering new music is like reading a new book for me. I always end up feeling enlightened, having a refreshed outlook on things in general. I am captivated with new things that are done with our old notes.

How are you exposed to new music? Sometimes I listen to local (or even not so local) radio stations, although I find that many top 40’s type stations cover an all-encompassed package of genre and I am not that much interested in every little thing.

When I was a tween/teen we would go to someone’s house on rotation and take one album and we would listen to the albums that were brought and just be kids, dance whatever. This is why as lot of my albums today have my name on them lol. This greatly widened my interests in music in I had never heard.

I often browse through a local CD shop nearby that has a great catalogue. And then there is another vinyl album shop nearby that has some of the most sought after and the newest trending albums. I learn a lot from browsing these local shops.

I do pay attention to what the 30ish year-olds play on the stations in the car. That exposes me to a lot, especially on long car rides. I like a lot of it. I’ve even gone to many concerts at amphitheaters to hear artists that I have grown to love because of being exposed to music that others like. I also have purchased albums from various artists for family teenagers. I like some of that.

In general, I find myself constantly chasing a better understanding on lots of things, and because of that I learn about things that very much pique my interest. One recent example, I learned that Justin Bieber is married to the Granddaughter of Brazilian songwriter and musician Eumir Deodato, which is solidly in my lane. You never know.

How do you discover new music?

 

[Rudy]

I saw an interesting interview yesterday with Rick Beato interviewing guitarist Steve Lukather. Towards the end, their discussion pointed out why so much of today's "Top 40" music is not engaging and nowhere near as it good as it was decades ago. They did it in musical terms and to me it made perfect sense. I won't get into it (although I might link to it later when I'm at a computer), but in essence, today's Top 40 and even some other modern music is so bland because there are so few chromatic elements.

But that only covers "popular" music, stuff on mainstream radio. And it finally put into words what I'd been trying to explain for years, in many places, as to why today's music is so unengaging.

I constantly explore new music but, "new" means music I haven't heard before, not necessarily music recorded recently. There are a few recent recordings I've purchased but by and large, I have such a large backlog of music from the past I want to explore that it really doesn't leave room to get into much more.

There are still many artists I follow who release new recordings, so it's not all the older music that I'm exploring. Yet it's a rabbit hole I fall into when I take on a project, such as working with all the CTI Records catalog (and all of its offshoot labels), that opens up entire new avenues of music to explore. One of my year's favorite albums is by drummer Idris Muhammad and, had I not discovered his Power of Soul album on Kudu, I never would have heard of his two Prestige albums Black Rhythm Revolution or Peace and Rhythm, and missed out on a lot of great grooves.

Or if I hadn't created a "piano trio jazz" Pandora station, I never would have heard the original version of "Lonely Woman" by Horace Silver. I'd heard it for decades on Pat Metheny's Rejoicing album but never sought out the original. Hearing that original and then embracing Silver's Song for my Father album, that turned me into a fan of Silver's, and I have most of his catalog now.

Those are just two of many examples of how I've discovered "new" music.

So for new (to me) music, my main resources would be:

• New releases by artists I already follow;
• My Pandora stations (which I've fine tuned for many years, some more than a decade);
• Roon Player (the system I use to play my digital library--I go "credit diving" and look into composers and musicians listed in the credits, and find a lot to explore, thanks to all the links throughout the player);
• Internet radio streams, either via Roon Player or the TuneIn app;
• Recommendations from others, including mentions in forums I visit, and reviews written by reviewers whose opinions I trust.

Radio isn't even on my radar anymore. We're just a second-rate market so it's mostly cookie-cutter stations.

What I find more fascinating at times is how all this music fits in together--what its roots are, common elements between styles and artists, how (and why) one thing evolves into another, etc. Even to hear licks borrowed from others. Steely Dan's "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" borrows the riff from Horace Silver's "Song for my Father," for example. It's nice to hear where these things came from, and how they are applied to something new.

 

[Bobberman]

Much of the time it's either info on the web that I find out about new music in some cases I stumble upon it on Amazon and in the case of Herb alpert's continuing output I find out about it here on the corner. There are the Walmart type stores and used vinyl stores I never go to anymore and new product stores closed down quite awhile ago. So the old ways of finding new music are no longer an option

 

[Nemily]

in the case of Herb alpert's continuing output I find out about it here on the corner.

Likewise. I pre-ordered Herb's new CD that day

 

[Rudy]

We still have a couple of stores in the area that sell new CDs, although not as many as vinyl since that is way more popular now. I don't go into malls, so I don't even know if those chains still exist anymore. I know the other big box stores got rid of CDs for the most part, and the selection there is only what sells in large numbers.

My days of browsing stores like I did in the 70s through the 90s is long in the past.

 

[Harry]

It's now been five years since I last bought a CD in a store. In fact, I even took a phone photo at the time. It was when Carpenters released a special Target version of their RPO album. There they sit, right next to McCartney's RED ROSE SPEEDWAY.

 

[Bobberman]

It's now been five years since I last bought a CD in a store. In fact, I even took a phone photo at the time. It was when Carpenters released a special Target version of their RPO album. There they sit, right next to McCartney's RED ROSE SPEEDWAY.

I haven't seen a display like that in well over a decade brings back decent memories of my many CD buying trips over the years