This show is for me and it's selfish. I started writing again because I miss it and enjoy being in front of the mic, but I don’t have a specific topic in mind. So I'm taking daily prompts, provided by DayOne, and I'm using those to make this.
If you don't like the show, I'm sorry. It's really for me.
If you do like the show, I'm bewildered but happy for you, and I'd invite you to share some of that value back with me in whatever way you'd like.
Who are your favorite artists? This question prompts a deep dive into the rich and varied landscape of music and audio appreciation.
For me, this is a very (very) personal journey that began in childhood, long before I could have known where it would lead. It was a winding path of genrese and memories from listening to my dad's stereo to discovering jazz and rock band to the wide world of classical music. (Yes, I use the term "classical" loosely.)
Eventually, it led to a delight in electronic music, quality covers, and a variety of current bands and artists.
But enough about me. What about YOU? What artists do YOU love?
This one, for me, digs pretty deep, partly because of my age and also because when I think of artists, I think of so many different mediums and genres within those mediums.
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I'm not just thinking about painters or things like that.
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To me, I think also musicians are artists, and we'll get to that in a second.
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Because of that, it's really hard for me to nail down a simple few, and I don't have the time.
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And I doubt that you have the patience for me to walk through all of my memories.
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So maybe I'll just focus on music and audio.
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My love affair with music and audio has been around for at least as long as I can remember.
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I know I can see pictures of myself as a toddler with headphones on, listening to music on my dad's stereo.
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I don't specifically remember those memories.
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I remember the pictures and maybe some little bits of fragments here.
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So I'm guessing I was probably around two years old.
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I don't know exactly.
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Maybe I was a little bit older, maybe a little bit younger.
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And I don't know if that's weird or not.
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It's not really something I've seen in my kids.
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I don't know about other kids or other people's kids, but that's the history I have.
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As a kid in school, I loved music class.
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It was probably one of my favorites.
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And I joined the orchestra as soon as I was old enough.
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I think I was maybe in the fourth grade, something around that.
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I started with the violin and I wasn't very good at it.
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There were a number of reasons that played into that.
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My skill level.
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The rehearsals often fell on days when we had snow days.
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I grew up in North Dakota where it snows a lot.
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And for some reason, that particular year, it snowed a lot on Fridays, which is when we had orchestra.
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Also, as it turns out, I didn't much like the orchestra director, and so that was a little bit of a challenge for me.
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Because of that, as soon as I was able, I switched over to band class, which I think was around 6th grade for me, and I started playing the saxophone.
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Then in the 7th grade, I discovered big band jazz.
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When I joined the jazz band, and in that time in junior high and in high school, I learned how to love bands like the Glenn Miller Orchestra and Weather Report and so many more.
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I really started to enjoy that music.
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Then in high school, my musical interests really started to split into two different areas.
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I loved playing jazz and listening to it some, but I liked listening to rock and roll and metal bands like Petra and White Hart and Striper.
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One of those is still kind of around.
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One of them has gone through well, anyway, it's been a long time and a lot of things have changed in those.
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But those are some of the bands I enjoyed listening to as I got older.
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Toward the end of high school, I really loved music, and that led me to then start studying it in college, which is what really started to deepen my interest in classical music.
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Strictly speaking, I'm not talking about just the classical era, but what people popularly think of classical music or art music.
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Anything from what I would call pre renaissance to the early 20th century avant garde.
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And as this passion started to grow, I really started to enjoy j's Bach and Handel, no surprise there, but also Mozart and Beethoven and Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky and Debussy and Ravel and Elgar and so many more.
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Probably the two that I had the most trouble with in terms of connection were Mahler and Wagner.
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I just really never connected with their music, but I loved so much of it.
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Now I'm older and as I've grown older, interestingly, my interests have not gone toward older music, although I still have a passion for that.
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I've developed a deep love for electronic music, and I would have to say that within that genre, the artist Rayer is probably among my favorites.
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While I quite enjoy quite a number of worship oriented artists, I think I like his covers better than the originals.
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In a lot of cases they just have something special about them and I connect with that.
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I don't know why.
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Speaking of covers, I also quite like scary pockets.
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Now, some of their music may have lyrics that need to come with a warning, but musically they are excellent.
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And speaking of excellent, I also can't forget about Cory Wong and also dirty loops.
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And there are so many incredible artists and musicians out there, I could probably just keep going on and on forever.
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I can't pick a favorite, there are just too many for too many different reasons.
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But these are some of the ones that come to mind.
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As I am sharing this.
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My question for you, if you are interested, is what about you?
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What are some of your favorite artists?
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I'd love to hear from you and hear what what you're thinking as well.
