Current Popular Music and Love

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Oh my goodness Angel Rho. I really appreciate your passion and intense love of music. We just have very different taste. Where you see the rise of Nirvana as the terrible end to bands like Whitesnake and Winger, I see the rise of Nirvana as the end to terrible bands like Whitesnake and Winger. Truly one man's meat is another man's poison.

I like Fleet Foxes too, and other similar recent bands.

We do have some overlap in our ipod playlists with synth-heavy prog rock and early 80's pop. And I'm no fan of Miley Cyrus or Britney Spears either. Not because of their images. I just find them too fluffy. Madonna pulled off the neat trick of writing dance pop without being too fluffy. We can agree on her. And we can definately agree on Led Zeppelin. I'm middle aged. It's hard to find a middle aged rock fan who doesn't like Led Zeppelin. I'm old enough to remember a time when "Stairway to Heaven" wasn't a standard and a cliche.

Saw Fleet Foxes on TV, nice harmonies, and although it's going off topic, this clever 450 year old painting, which was used as the album art, is worth a look.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlandish_Proverbs

PS. Fleetwood Mac (incl Peter Green), Led Zeppelin, of course. Definitely a soft spot for some blues. Too much else to list, and, as KaiG said, there are always a few more gems to find, old or new.

@ AngelRho: I can relate with you somewhat in regards to musical tastes and the state of music today. And as I posted earlier I'm a prog fanatic too.
As for the synths you listed earlier, I'd be partial to the Prophet...although even popular vintage synths such as the Prophet 5 (and the Polymoog, which I'm also a fan of) have been documented to malfunction rather easily. I hear newer analog or analog-esque synths such as the Smith Prophet '08 and Moog's Little Phatty seem to be carrying on the legacy of these older synths and would probably be more reliable technical-wise (of course, I'm not much of a musician myself, but I do love the sound of vintage synth!)

Also another factor I see in the state of music today might be the race card, and/or the idea of affirmative action possibly being applied in the music business. Not intending to sound racist or anything with this theory, but it just appears to me that there tends to be a lot of sub-par rap & R&B becoming popular with the mainstream. And you barely ever hear any criticism against these rappers and R&B singers -- possibly out of the prospective critics' fears of being branded a 'racist' -- while all the critical vitriol is instead directed at the pop and rock side of music. Just a thought...

Tim (aka the Slipperman)

If Gwen Stefani, Black Eyed Peas, Young Jeezy, or something like that is on at a bar or club, or someone's car, I don't mind it - I don't think I'd ever chase it down myself. I have met people who were pop snobs though, real particular on top 40 and utterly hated anything that was underground - usually if they broached music at all with me it ended up in quite a bit of ballbusting back and forth .

My take on age and music though, if you want to get into what's out there at 36 I'd say go for it, the only problem is while it sucks being seen as the uncool 30 something it also sucks to be seen as the girl/guy who never grew up or who'd want to run around with people half their age - that's at least the negative inference on the other side of it. I think a lot of who's in or out or who never get's 'uncool' in terms of state of mind and approach to things but that's another topic altogether. My overall take though, it seems like in your teens music defines your social group, in your 20's is ok to talk about at parties, by your thirties or forties its generally a taboo topic unless you're around people who you know share your particular passion - ie. do what you want, just don't talk about it too much.

As for me - I've been into following the latest undeground electronic of certain scenes (my nick says it all), that was foreign and uncomfortable in my 20's and I have a feeling that in my 30's I'll probably have to keep that on the downlow even more.

Hey, you're NEVER too old to enjoy good music. You CERTAINLY not too old to MAKE it, either. Never.

Look at Kraftwerk. I honestly think those guys would have been MUCH more prolific had the right kind of technology existed back then. Their music back in the old days was amazing enough, though primarily it only really existed in concept. The tech it took to really bring their ideas to life was just too bulky to make practical use of it.

But now? All you need is a laptop and some controllers and you're all set.

About up-to-date keys: I'd LOVE to own a Dave Smith Prophet '08 AND a Moog Voyager. I do own a Roland alpha Juno 1, which is a cheap analog board. It's got a great sound, and it's digitally controlled, which gives it the stability that "true" analog synths lack. The only drawback I guess is the way in which the digital clock and the analog oscillators work together. Since a digital clock is nothing more than an on/off gate, the only resulting sounds you can get are pulse waves, which may be actual pulses or pulses with ramped amplitudes. It's still a cool sound, and it's unmatched for techno/rave music and D'n'B.

Guys, this is love and dating, and fetish talk isn't allowed.

Just kidding...

There are some truly phenomenal softsynths out there. I still remember back when I first started that software was somewhat frowned upon, people played with Rebirth 338 maybe as a mild add on to techno, then Reason came along and made people think a bit differently. Now, you have software synths like Absynth (5th addition now - have it and love it), the Rob Papen series (Albino 3 is big), and another thing that people have been talking about a lot lately is the Spectrasonics Omnisphere which seems to boast some amazing potential.


There's a lot of really cool vintage gear I'd love to get my hands on and play with, seems like having that much hands on control definitely adds something. Space unfortunately can be a bit of a challenge with such things. I've owned to date.... a Roland MC-505 (my first synth/sequencer), sold that and tried a Novation Nova - not enough, bought a Yamaha Rm1x...liked it a lot but after a while needed more, upgraded to a Yamaha RS7000 - I banged out a lot of tunes on that for a few years, still have it but it mostly just sits in my closet collecting dust. Right now on what I have on tap for software are Absynth 5, Reason 4, Massive, ProTools, Kontact controlled VIOne (awesome bank, makes me realize that I still want more), a lot of Blue Cat plugins that I got (mostly freeware), if I do go for hardware I'm thinkind I'd have to go with something in the Access family or check out some of the better modeling synths out there. Its been a while since I've checked those out though. Having an Oxygen 49 though I'd probably just go with rack only, otherwise I'll start running out of space to move .

I don't keep up with current popular music, as I don't find it worthwhile at all.

As for relationships, my girlfriend and I have quite different tastes, with just a tiny bit of overlap. She mostly likes the country music on the radio, and I mostly like '70s-'80s rock and a bit of newer (but not radio) stuff. Our slight overlap is in a bit of popular '80s music.

We don't particularly care for each others' respective music preference, but we get along just fine because we accept that people are entitled to their own. I'll let her play her country music on my hi-fi system when she wants, and she gets to hear my music whenever I want to play it, too.