What's the STRONGEST musical experience you’ve EVER had?

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What’s the strongest, most intense experience of music that you have ever had? Please describe in as much detail as you can!

Also, after posting, PLEASE copy and paste your response here: http://ppsisfaculty.qualtrics.com/SE/?S ... XYIBkzP5Ah

I’m conducting a study on this subject at my University and would love to document it (your response will remain confidential and anonymous).

My strongest musical experience happened just a couple of months ago in November. I was at a jazz club in London and Kenny Garrett was performing. What occurred for me was nothing short of miraculous. It’s the sort of thing that can awake a sleeping spirit from years and perhaps decades of slumber. The music swept me away into a different world — a world with different rules and different laws than the ones we are usually accustomed to in our everyday life. It had a trance-like affect that absorbed through the listeners’ entire body.

There is one moment for me that stands out among them all: About half way through the set, Kenny and the group played a song called “Haynes Here”. In the middle of the song, while interacting and facing the drummer, Kenny repeated the same line over and over for about two or three minutes. Then, as if by some sheer twist of fate, parting the clouds and descending from the sky above, came one single note from Kenny’s saxophone. One yell, one scream, one note. That was all it took. That one note, which he held for a couple of measures, hit me like a ton of bricks. It knocked me out completely from where I was. At that very moment, it was as if I saw another side of life that had been hidden by the illusions of the present world and societal norms. I saw what it must have been like for the first humans on this earth, what it was like for the hunter and gatherer tribes thousands of years ago when they were listening to music. It was like a bolt of lightning that hit the very core of who I am. That’s the only way that I can describe it.

Here’s a link to one of his performances. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW8vXIs6uyA

Usually I can't really enjoy concerts. There's too many people and I can't get into to it. Actually I haven't been to a single concert that I have enjoyed. Except one.

It was at a festival far to the north in Norway. The festival was at an island, quite a long bit from the mainland. It was quite cold, no sun, occasional rain and I hadn't really packed for the weather. And to make matters worse, I didn't get a lot of sleep.

The special thing about this concert is that they have one concert in a large cave. The air was cold and misty, everywhere you looked you saw either a cave or the ocean. The mood was just perfectly gloomy. And when the girl ( it was a solo act ) started playing... Instant goosebumps. And they stayed the rest of the concert.

After the concert I even went up to her and told her it was a great concert. And that's not something I could ever do normally. But I felt like I had to.

I don't understand the question. Is there a difference between a strong musical experience and your favourite music?

The album I've probably had the most fun with is Trout Mask Replica. I heard Matt Groening talking about it, and he said (and was right) that it sounds awful at first, and you have to force yourself to listen to it 10 or so times before it starts to make sense and become good. I followed his advice and now it's one of my favourite albums. Because your brain does so much of the work to pull the disparate parts together, the album sounds a little differently every time you listen to it.

Listening to ambient music while tripping on LSD. It made me see the universe as nothing but pure love.

This was I think back in October of last year. This occured on the way to a medical appt. I was on an Arcade fire kick with the release of their latest album Reflector. I was listening to their track Oh Orpheus, and I just got really into thinking about the story of Orpheus and what he went through and Arcade Fire's choice of words, and I started bawling my eyes out because it was sad. I had never done this with any other piece of music and haven't done it since. In order to see if I could replicate it, on the way home after the appointment, I listened to Oh Orpheus and started crying again.

It's not so much a strong musical experience in the sense that the composition or the emotional delivery of the performance touched me, as much as it is an associative reaction:

my strongest musical experience was when I heard a song on the radio that brought to mind a person who was very dear to me emotionally, because I had heard her sing that song at one point. Once I finally heard that song in its original version on the radio, it actually gave me feelings of a kind of nausea, not because her memory was nauseating, but because my mind was that deeply touched emotionally, that my body just responded by convulsing.

I have strong reactions to music all the time. The strongest experiences of bliss, and euphoria, come from Jazz Fussion. I especially love Jazz Fusion influenced Chiptunes. But Jazz Fusion blows my mind every time I listen to it.

Do you have any links to these Jazz Fusion chiptunes because I would like to partake. I <3 chiptune music.

Yes give me a moment and I'll compile some links for you.

Joshua Morse is probably my favorite. Some of his music is pure chiptune he uses LSDJ for some stuff, but some of his music is 8-Bit, others contain more natural elements with influences from Chiptune. I think you'll enjoy it.

This album is inspired by "Ridge Racer". Beautiful: http://music.gamechops.com/album/ridge-racer-arrange ... track 2 is lush although this album isn't the best to demonstrate chip and jazz fusion, it does show Jazz Fusion from PS1 days.

He has a whole array of albums here that you can listen to: http://joshuamorse.bandcamp.com/ ... His WaveForm album is the best to me ... http://joshuamorse.bandcamp.com/album/waveform-3 (Listen to Turtle Dance).

Fearofdark also produces chiptune with lots of Jazz Fusion influences. I love his Motorway album: http://fearofdark.bandcamp.com/album/motorway you can see all of his albums here: http://www.fodxm.co.uk/albums.htm

Kulor is the same as the above, I love track 2 from this album: http://kulor.bandcamp.com/

Coda too http://yogurtbox.bandcamp.com/album/tracer

That should be enough for you to get your ears around for now :p

I already did this as part of the other survey.

I think I have to give at least two answers. There's music that makes me feel quite sad, sometimes so sad that I shed tears, and there's music that makes me feel energized, that has a certain hypnotic or psychedelic quality. Both can be very intense experience to me. There's also a wide range of music that I like to listen to but they don't have as intense effect on me regarding my emotions or feelings.

In the first group I'd mention these:
1) Le Maximum Kouette / ça me dirait bien - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=333_BblOY40
2) Bob Marley and The Wailers / Fussing And Fighting - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN1JoJcR ... re=related
3) Bergendy Ensemble / Will I Ever See You Again? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2w1Q8-r8Tg

In the second group I'd mention these:
1) Pink Floyd / Absolutely Curtains - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZyKUsWJ73o
2) Pink Floyd / Echoes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkcbqJUGG8Y
3) Mike Oldfield / Hergest Ridge - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAhKnobORkw
(this latter also for its repetitiveness)

Attending a Rammstein concert.

I went in there not expecting flames to shoot up twenty feet from the stage when they opened their set with "Sonne". I was not expecting a show where virtually every prop doubled as a flamethrower. I heard they put on an awesome show, but I had no idea how awesome until that night a couple of years ago.

It was also without a doubt the single loudest musical experience I ever had, as my ears were ringing for a couple of days after the show. Totally worth it for the experience, though.

I did feel a bit bad for the band when they performed "Engel" expecting the audience to sing the last line of the chorus. The lazy Americans made that an awkward moment. Granted, I was afraid to sing the line because I know very little about the German language and I did not want to screw it up. That was a bit embarrassing. Yes, I was one of the lazy Americans.

Of course, a close second to that was attending a DMB concert at the Gorge Amphitheater less than a week after Leroi Moore passed away. That was quite emotional.

Took about 225µg of the novel drug Lysergic acid 2,4-dimethylazetidide (a rare analogue of LSD) after about four hours of a relatively light and enjoyable psychedelic experience I had some strange thoughts and the trip took a dramatic dark turn. During this difficult period i sat in a small dark room with headphones on at a high volume. The music i was listening too was Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima by Polish avant-garde composer Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki. Putting this experience into words is impossible.

Music is one of the ways that I am able to "receive" the world. Not sure how else to say that - but it's the thing I'm not usually able to do when conversing face to face with other people. There is no wall between me and music. I couldn't possibly pick one moment, happens a lot.