3 Tips For Expanding Your Music Taste
No matter who you are or where you come from, odds are you have a music preference. Now, that preference may be wide or it may be small. You may adore a few artists and stick to them, prefer a few genre, or will listen to anything provided it’s been well-crafted and has a good message to it.
Of course, you don’t even have to be so high-minded to enjoy good music. Drum and bass, ambient tracks, and even zen drones can be wonderful and all have a place and time to listen to. But what if you hope to expand your music taste? Where should you get started? After all, you can’t listen to albums and enjoy them if you’re not sure the artists exist in the first place.
Well luckily, it’s never been easier to get into new and interesting genres of music. In this post, we’ll discuss how and why to expand your music taste, and what benefits this could grant you:
Dive into Music History
There is absolutely no better way to become a great appreciator of music than to dive into its history. This isn’t only because there are so many excellent artists available for playing through streaming apps now, effectively making your foray into the past endless, but with a great music history blog you can understand where to get started. Learning the pinnacles of a genre, offshoots from it, and the great artists of the past and their impact can be incredible to witness – so don’t be afraid to spend time on blogs or Wikipedia and see where your natural interest takes you. Listening to a genre sustain itself from the ground up is truly enjoyable.
Explore Cross-Cultural Music
While many of us stay locked into a Western-focused music landscape, the truth is that great sounds are hardly limited to Europe or the US. You’d be amazed at how much “world music” can inform your taste, from the high rhythms, great humour and comfort in Calypso Caribbean music to the incredible pace of indigenous ballads from countries all over the world, it’s true to say that anyone who can deeply appreciate good food and music will have absolutely no real capacity to be xenophobic because you’ll implicitly understand how utterly without merit any of those perspectives are.
Learn an Instrument
You really begin to gain an ear for composition, construction and skill when you learn an instrument. That’s not to say you can only have an opinion on music if you can play an instrument, but it can certainly inform your opinions, expose you to great music and past players of note, and also inspire you to replicate some of those wonderful classics you adore. Is there a better method of not only appreciating music, but bringing its value into the modern age? In this way, you contribute to the culture and offer your own valuable voice.
With this advice, you’re sure to expand your music taste in the healthiest way.