After watching the ‘reading’ on what music means to deaf people, it had me think on what music means to me. As a musician and guitarist I want to talk about my musical influences and how my interests in different genres has progressed.
My first influence in picking a guitar was listening to Metallica, mainly ‘The Black Album’. My favourite track from that album was The Unforgiven, from listening to this album I wanted to learn all of the best Metallica songs. I learnt how to play nearly all the best Metallica songs and I was also listening to other bands of that era too, like Guns n Roses, Bon Jovi and Green Day to name a few. I was very immersed in Rock Music and didn’t listen to anything much else in my young teenage years. I guess I loved the pure power of Rock Music, a real ‘gun ho’ type of feeling to it. I also felt like this type of rock music had a range, like in ‘The Unforgiven’ it ranges from emotional acoustic sound to heavy rock.
Then I got into some more acoustic music, Green Day’s softer alternative I think was the reason for that. I started to listen to a lot of Youtube sensations Boyce Avenue, Tyler Ward, Kurt Hugo Schneider etc. It got me listening to or acknowledging modern music through their covers. I enjoyed the laid back feel of the acoustics, I felt like it told a story rather than the ‘gun ho’ nature of rock music. My real love for these Youtube sensations was their original music, in which I haven’t heard anything like this. It was acoustic, soft, but also had range that was actually loud without being ‘loud’ if that makes any sense. It told a story more so and it moved me emotionally. A fine example is one of my favourite songs called ‘On My Way’ by Boyce Avenue.
It started off soft, like the start of a story, but as each verse and chorus progressed the music swelled and made it ‘loud’. This along with the lyrics really pulled at my heartstrings.
Nowadays I listen to a combination of above with soundtracks of my favourite anime, movie or TV show. But also I listen to a lot of trance or melodic dubstep. I listen to soundtracks because they generally remind me of a good moment in the series that I watched or convey the themes of the show or movie through the track, but sometimes I just listen to them because they’re catchy.
But with trance and/or melodic dubstep, I have been listening to a lot of it. Mainly through Youtube, through the youtube channel Arctic Empire. Here’s one of their playlists/podcast.
I really enjoy this because it is relaxing, but at the same time has a certain bliss about it. I generally listen to this when I’m doing something else, like playing games, doing work, studying etc.
Music is a tool for many things and for me it is a method for conveying and feeling emotion. Without it, life would be very, very boring.
