Ask HN: How to Become a Music Buff?
Music has always been the least appealing art form for me out of the music-film-literature trio. Now I am looking to get more familiar with its history, evolution and simply discover good music.
Is there a music buff's roadmap, some sort of a chronologically-ordered list of the best and most influential albums that gives a coherent picture of how music evolved over the 20th century? And is that a right approach to becoming a music buff? If not, what is?
132 comments
[ 6.7 ms ] story [ 299 ms ] threadthe key is to put in the listening hours.
how you start doesn't matter much. maybe wikipedia + youtube?
Can you share what your diagnosis is?
I think a good start for you might just be going to RYM Charts (https://rateyourmusic.com/customchart) and selecting a genre. You'll find the top rated albums, and can further filter by the decade. That's my #1 music discovery source.
For anyone starting from nearly-scratch with popular music I'd recommend a chronological approach to lists like this. Don't start at #1—cut the list off with however many you're willing to commit to listening to, then order them by release date, and start at the beginning. For the earliest entries consider hunting down the major influences on their genre or a couple major popular acts from the preceding 10-20 years before them to get a sense of where they came from—maybe a few tracks of ragtime, a crooner or two, a couple big-band acts, some early and mid-period jazz, maybe an album of "standards" or something, a small selection of early rock. That's a decent set-up for starting on 60s-and-on popular music, which is mostly what these lists treat (Kind of Blue is almost always the highest-ranking exception to the "60s and later" rule)
[EDIT] incidentally, I don't see a CSV or Excel export option for the list on this site, even in the list of "subscriber" features that I could unlock by paying $15. I am entirely certain I'm not the only person who needs my lists to end up somewhere like that so I can mess around with sorting, checking-off, and so on :-)
While I feel like I've been doing a fairly good job of keeping up with music for the last decade, their knowledge of music, even from before they were born, is extensive and got me interested in exploring stuff that came out before I really cared about music.
Bandcamp is a great place for music artists. Here a huge chunk of the profits go direct to the artists, so it's got every possible kind of music from nobody you've ever heard of.
They have a weekly radio show called The Bandcamp Weekly. It's super varied but they're friendly and they often do themes each week. Give it a go
Most of the music I’ve come to like in recent years I heard first on the BBC. Radio 3 is a particular treasure.
In parallel, learning music is best when you're having fun. You should start with your favorite artists and dive deeper into their discography. Research the label they were on (fruitful if the label is independent). Look into their contemporaries. Who were those artists? Maybe they were associated with a larger movement/scene, and so on.
Finally, listen to more music! Everything (almost) is on Youtube or Spotify. Make it a point to listen to music everyday.
Given your list I would suppose maybe you like things with a complex narrative, or as is the case for me - music with clever/complex lyrics.
So you could look for music that has a complex narrative, but obviously that helps you find music best suited for you and not helping you build an understanding of what is appealing about music or what makes for 'good' music artistically speaking.
Although maybe you can jump from music appealing to you to a broader feeling for music in general.
Is there some music or musicians you find more appealing than others?
My recommendation would be to look at the most famous/most popular musicians in the respective genre you're studying, and then follow the links from there. Learn who influenced them, and who they influenced. And then follow the organic web from there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Stone%27s_500_Greatest...
These are great starters, I would recommend going through and finding out what periods and artists speak to you and then joining Spotify and using their auto generated playlists to dig deeper. They do an AMAZING job if you <3 the songs you really get into. My personal taste is really scattered, gen z pop, old school country, punk, hip hop, 90's hi-nrg and house, disco, and they somehow consistently find new music that speaks to me.
The search is part of the enjoyment. Start listening to whatever you can find that you think you might like and if you don't like it just put it aside and look for something else. If you do like it, you will probably be compelled to find more music like it. Look for interviews with the artist or band members and they'll probably talk about their influences and other artists they themselves like. Go listen to those artists and repeat the process. If you like those artists keep digging. If not, go somewhere else and find some other music.
There must be at least one song or artist who interests you. I'd recommend starting there. One of my favorite albums is Love Man, by Otis Redding. Maybe give it a shot and see if you like it :) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kyK5LvO6EbPrUC...
Also, go see some live music. Seeing music live is almost incomparable to listening to music through headphones or car speakers.
https://music.ishkur.com/
Though if you really don't like music why do you think you can get good at it?
Like I feel like I have almost no knowledge of painting, and that it's important in some sense, and I'll go to exhibitions but... None of it goes in. I can't answer questions on what I've seen. (But music mostly did.)
Really, there is no such thing as being a "music buff", but you can be a "jazz buff" for example! I'd say pick something mildly pretentious to feed your clearly slightly overinflated ego and dig deep into the history of that genre.
I absolutely love music and the emotional effects it has. But I can never remember the names of songs, or how they sound. It means when I try to play music at a party, first I have to look it up by finding the playlist I put it in, and then it inevitably falls flat - missing the mood in the room by being too sad or happy or heavy or melodic. Many of my friends do this instinctually - they can throw songs into the queue and they fit the mood.
The one area I can seem to remember is actual bands I've seen perform. Something about engaging with live music sets it in my mind.
So while I think investing time into music if you enjoy it is worthwhile, there's no point forcing yourself. It might be that you're just not wired that way. And that's ok!
There are also a lot of movies out there - Béla Fleck made a movie tracing the banjo back to africa Throw Down Your Heart, if your looking to chronological type stuff in America, Ken Burns did a series on American Jazz and Country music - https://www.pbs.org/kenburns, Muscle Shoals, Buena Vista Social Club, The Nu LatAm Sound may be of interest for non western movies
https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/500-greatest-... (take with a grain of salt)
so much music, so little time!
1) Tune into HD college radio stations so you get exposed to a lot of stuff and you can see the artist/track names.
2) Make and explore play lists on Spotify.
3) Google artists that interest you.
If you want to be a music buff, my suggestion is to learn how to play an instrument. This will give you the understanding to appreciate music; you can't truly understand a musician's talent until you try to play what they can and fail. You can't appreciate the complexity of a piece that has changing time signatures (for example) if you don't even know how to count time. You'll end up listening to the same chord progressions over and over (G-C-D come to mind...) if you don't know how to identify what you're listening to.
If you want to be an audio buff, buy some expensive speakers and then just follow you ears.
So the order I would suggest is:
1. Find music you like particularly
2. Seek out music related to #1
3. Start thinking about why you like what you like
So, start by establishing a visceral connection to the art before delving into the analytic side.
Being a music buff among music buffs is as much about having a well-developed taste in music as it is a knowledge of music that influences others.
So start by developing your taste in music. Here’s how:
Using a site like albumoftheyear.org, listen to the first one to three tracks on the top rated albums from every genre.
Do this every week on Monday. New albums come out later in the week and it helps to see the how reviews change after more critics and fans listen repeatedly.
Your goal should be to find albums that you want to listen all the way through.
Sometimes, You’ll listen to the whole album and want to start it over as soon as you’re done. Other times you’ll find the album doesn’t live up to its first few tracks.
Albums you consider great you’ll be lucky to come across once out of a dozen times, so you have to be patient with the process.
You’ll know you found something you like when It feels exciting to know about a piece of music like you’re in on a secret. And it makes you want to tell other people about it.
Share the album with someone and tell them what you like about it.
Going through this process won’t only be a great experience—-you’ll learn your own taste.
And you’ll have convinced yourself that you in fact do enjoy discovering and listening to music as much or more than the other art forms you mentioned.
You’ll find you naturally learn about historically important pieces of music from reading reviews and from talking about music with other people who are impassioned by it.
The key is to then follow up like you would when you hear a word you don’t know the definition of, or library that solves something you were considering coding by hand.
Make a note, listen to the album and think about the context it was mentioned in.
If it appeals to you go back and listen to the greatest hits if that appeals to you go through their entire catalog.
But I agree it has more of "viceral" to it than anything else.
My advice to OP: find the radio stations, podcasts or playlists that tickle your fancy and just keep track of what you like as you listen.
OTOH, if you want a more historical approach, read about the music (or watch documentaries/tv shows) before you seek it out. That works for me when reaching out to music that are not on my radar. For instance, during the Xmas holidays I tend to read many Best Albums of YYYY lists, such as the Rolling Stone magazine one. That's how I found Amy Winehouse, Radiohead's In Rainbows among others that would have gone inadvertently for more time. I enjoy reading the "why I should listen to" part.
Speaking as a music fan, former producer and DJ I say that the secret is to follow your instincts. Find some things you do like, can be anything even if you currently only like a few things. Explore from here. Explore the artist's catalogue, find similar artists, look at related genres or the genre's roots / DNA. Spotify and YouTube algorithms are great at finding related content so just fall down a recommendation hole and see here it takes you. You can quickly make some interesting transitions into other genres even like this. Don't overthink it but see which things make you hungry to explore further.
Don't seek to be a buff. Seek to explore your taste, follow your gut, follow your feelings and see where it takes you. You'll naturally end up knowing a lot but it's not about knowing, it's about the joy and fulfilment of music and nothing more.
How to use: a) For overview of most important albums which is at the same time a reasonable overview of modern music history, use the default sorting https://rateyourmusic.com/customchart b) after you get into specific sub-genre's, use the sorting. For example, you discover you like Japanese 90s city-pop? Here's the query for you https://rateyourmusic.com/customchart?page=1&chart_type=top&... c) for music discovery, browse recommendation lists of people there. It is a true gold-mine of great music
For completness, to rollingstone.com and npr, I add pitchfork.com which is arguably the most important "independent" medium