Is there any music that you genuinely could listen to every day?

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Justin's thread about not listening to Williams in a while got me thinking about this.

Every bit of music that I own (this applies to other stuff too but let's just talk about music) has some situational requirement or association that limits when I feel it's "ok" to listen to it. It could be weather, the time of day, the season/time of year, my mood, when the film was released if it's a score... really anything you could think of. All of these conditions point me in a specific listening direction and rule out all else. To violate this is uncomfortable. Like drinking hot coffee in a sweltering desert. Being forced to eat well after you've lost your appetite.

I thought, "something must be the exception" and set about browsing through my library. To my surprise I found nothing that I could confidently say I could listen to at any time.

Does anyone else identify with this? I'm curious if it's foreign to those of you who just listen to music rather than almost constantly thinking about it and dealing with it. Maybe that makes me more sensitive to it somehow? I feel a bit bad that there's seemingly no musical constants in my life.

[Jay 37,378]

[publicist 4,643]

Probably some Sam Cooke songs.

[Thor 7,529]

No, there is no music that I could listen to every day. I need my versatility. That being said, there are a myriad different parameters that decide what I'm going to play. Sometimes, it's just a pragmatic decision of listening to the newest acquisitions, so that they can reach a level of familiarity. I receive a lot of promos, so I have to get through them (both the good and the bad).

But then, fortunately, there are days when I can choose more according to mood -- as you describe, TGP.

[mrbellamy 6,298]

Never as specific as all that. I wouldn't say I even have "sad music" or "happy music." I'll just get an urge to listen to things, something gets in my head and everything else seems kinda dull in comparison. Lately I've been on a Williams kick and would probably get bored listening to The Beatles all day, but I know eventually something will come up to get me interested in them again, like Boyhood's "Black Album" scene getting me back into the solo stuff last summer Or I'll make a new discovery and suddenly they're both "been there, done that".

[Joni Wiljami 1,206]

CE3K

[Bespin 8,484]

There is music that will always come back, like the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 of Bach.

That one, eveything in it... it's... how to say this. Me.

Periodically, it's a need to listen to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DmLWops678

And of course, there will be always Charles Aznavour and that particular song, that is as beautiful in french, in english or in spanish and ask the only one question : Who?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWqPnoGeMoY

Who, when my life is through?
Who will know the joys
I have known with you?
Who will touch your face?
Sleep in your embrace?
Who will take my place...

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

CE3K

That one is too linked to summer nights for me. Must have been on tv a lot then when I was a kid.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Streetlight Manifesto. I listen to them nearly everyday. There are times where I take a break but I never go more than 2-3 months without returning. I have a 6CD player in my car and every slot is filled with one of their CDs. So whenever I'm driving somewhere they're on.

Discovered Everything Goes Numb at a pivotal time in my life so I use it as a crutch. Never get tired of Kalnoky.

[gkgyver 1,646]

Anything Middle Earth, and Henry Mancini.

[Bilbo 3,709]

The Star Wars main title and Don't Look Back in Anger. Just those two things.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

I still can't think of anything.

[Cerebral Cortex 3,357]

[Not Mr. Big 4,643]

No, but The Patriot comes close.

[Glóin the Dark 1,223]

Nothing except for John Cage's 4'33". Listening to the extended version right now.

[Not Mr. Big 4,643]

I can play the Indiana Jones theme on my Casio for hours on end and never get tired of it. Does that count?

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Is this your example, or a suggestion for me?

As the film release itself moves more into the past, it's becoming easier to revisit the score whenever I want, as always happens for me. Soon, perhaps, it'll be autonomous enough a listening experience for me to listen freely. It's certainly a very keen reminder of the great magic of cinema and cinema music and why I do what I do.

[publicist 4,643]

Whatever it is, it ain't film music. Seems too heavy, at least what isn't pop anyway.

[Faleel 5,365]

The Fellowship of the Ring, Angela's Ashes, or Back to the Future.

[Quintus 5,399]

Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 Adagio Un Poco Mosso

"Raindrop" Prelude Op. 28, No. 15

Canon in D

Divenire

And I think that's about it.

[A24 4,348]

No, there is no music that I could listen to every day. I need my versatility.

This!

What can I say? I just need it.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Say you need it! I want to hear you beg for it! SAY IT!

[Quintus 5,399]

Of course the reality is that none of us (except KM and gkgyver) ever listen to the same music day in day out, but if for whatever reason I were to it'd be something completely inoffensive and ambiatic which I could enjoy passively.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Yes you have a point. To be perpetually listenable, something would have to be completely unobtrusive I guess. Not emotionally versatile itself, but "empty" enough to suit whatever psychological state you're in.

[Quintus 5,399]

Empty yet stimulating! How is it possible??

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

There is a whole musical discipline devoted to this idea! Perhaps there I will find my answers.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,068]

Kind of in the vein of Quint...ambient/inoffensive music. Video game music. Skyrim. Things like that.

[Quintus 5,399]

Funnily enough Far Horizons crossed my mind after making my initial post. Basically, anything serene and rather abstract might work for me.

There is a whole musical discipline devoted to this idea! Perhaps there I will find my answers.

How can we sure we aren't just talking about muzak here?

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Well Soule's Elder Scrolls scores crossed my mind too and yet they also have at least vague seasonal associations....

Here's something transcendent that might work.

[pixie_twinkle 48]

Back in 2013 around the time of the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, I started a viewing marathon. I'm watching a single episode every night before bed. If I'm really tired and can't keep my eyes open I spread an episode over two nights. The plan is to watch every single episode from 1963 to the present in broadcast order. If an episode is missing from the BBC archives, I watch it as a recon. Now, almost two years later, I am up to 1979 and approaching the end of the Tom Baker era. After all this time, I can honestly say that the Doctor Who title theme music still fills me with excitement every night. It's an astonishing theme. So I have quite literally listened to that particular piece of music every day for almost two years, and I still love it.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

This is often a good choice. It's not demanding emotionally in any direction. It's a bit tied to my youth in NYC/NYC suburbs though.

[Jay 37,378]

If an episode is missing from the BBC archives, I watch it as a recon.

What does this mean?

[Datameister 2,044]

Although my job often forces me to hear the same selections of music day after day, it's not something I would voluntarily do. Variety is indeed the spice of life. Besides, nothing can quite match the elation of hearing a favorite tune after weeks or months of NOT hearing it.

[EdwardHall 30]

Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.8 "Pathetique" Second Movement

[leeallen01 2,136]

I'd have no problem listening to Ludovico Einaudi every day. And Shore's Middle Earth Saga. Williams' The Terminal. McCreary's Battlestar Galactica. JNH's The Village.

[KK 3,307]

As other have said, there really isn't anything that fits that bill. Music does come to me in doses, where I might be hooked to something for days or weeks, but even then I have to move on.

The closest thing I can think of is this. Not to say I find Glass' music "empty", just that I find there's a neutrality to his more minimalist efforts that seem to reflect my more general day-to-day goings. That and I think I've always been more of a "fall" person, which is the kind of seasonal vibe of most his person, so it works better than most.

Chopin works sometimes too.

Canon in D

Blech.

[Not Mr. Big 4,643]

Canon in D

Blech.

[Quintus 5,399]

Not keen? Annoyingly made a cliché by weddings; it's still one of my absolute favourite soothing pieces.

[mrbellamy 6,298]

Canon in D

Blech.

Only on JWFan.

[KK 3,307]

Used to be one of my favourite pieces growing up actually. But along with the overplaying, it was completely ruined by every junior pianist's clumsy attempt at trying to "show off" with it. At this point, it's almost as bad as Fur Elise for me.

I much prefer Elgar's more stirring Nimrod.

[Not Mr. Big 4,643]

Not keen? Annoyingly made a cliché by weddings; it's still one of my absolute favourite soothing pieces.

Bingo.

Though the "Merry Christmas" song set to it is equally responsible for my dislike of it.

[Quintus 5,399]

So we all "blech" when we hear the Star Wars opening crawl, right? And the Jaws theme. 007...

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Speaking of....

[Sharkissimo 1,973]

I find this erotic yet soothing

Some of the few albums I could listen to again and again, day in day out.

[Uni 306]

Film music.

Seriously. Any day of the week, pretty much any time of day. Which film music? Any of it. I don't subscribe to any notions of requisite moods or settings—although the right choice can sometimes enhance both of those elements, to be sure. But I can't imagine expending mental effort on making so specific a choice. I let the music take me where it's going, not the other way around.

Of course, even that gets its stimulation from variety. I don't think there's any single score I could listen to every single day for years and not eventually tire of it. (That's really what did in the Star Wars main title for me. Too many hearings dulled it for me, so that it's become probably my most-avoided piece of JW music over the last 10 or 15 years.) There are some that have shown remarkable durability—Superman, for instance—but I need a break from even the best of themes and scores after a while.

That's what made the advent of playlists and the shuffle option so magnificent. I used to have a set of 3x5 cards with lists of all my scores printed on them (this is back in the day when my collection was still solidly encamped in 2-figure totals). I knew most of the music so well that I could "play" it in my head at will. I would carry those cards and set of dice with me. I had a whole system set up to determine what results led to which scores. At odd moments, when I needed to occupy my mind with something, I would roll the dice to randomly select a score, and I would choose a piece to start replaying in my head. It was the closest thing I had back in those Stone-Age days to a shuffle option. I could put together randomly assembled lists on cassette or (eventually) CD, of course, but I was the one putting it together so I knew what the order would be, and eventually I'd learn the order anyway and it wouldn't work any more. I dreamed of a time when technology would do it for me. And like flight, space travel, and measles vaccination, one day my dreams became reality.

I do have certain playlists for certain activities or arenas—you can't write to distracting action music, and each major composer has his own collection of best-ofs—but for the most part, I let the collection go where it will and enjoy not knowing what's coming next. And it never gets old for me.

[Sir Hilary Bray 235]

Indeed film music. Sometimes stuff from Star Trek III. I find the main theme helps before I sleep. Beats me.

Sometimes the odd song or playlist I have but it's mostly film music. The other week I fairly knackered what tracks of Wind and the Lion I could find. Couldn't get enough for the week.

[pixie_twinkle 48]

On ‎8‎/‎14‎/‎2015 at 10:32 AM, Jay said:

What does this mean?

Sorry, only just saw your question. The BBC junked over 250 B&W episodes of Doctor Who in the mid 70s. They have since found copies of many of the episodes, or have had them returned from other countries the episodes were sold to. Now only 97 episodes remain missing, and fans hold out hope that they will eventually be found somewhere. In the meantime...

 

Back in the 60s, two dedicated fans recorded every single episode of the show on audio tapes by placing a microphone in front of their TV as the episode aired, so every missing episode exists as an audio recording. Some diligent fan groups have taken these recordings and added visuals to create a reconstruction, or "recon." The recons are created from still production pictures, telesnaps (photos taken from the TV screen at regular intervals by TV archivist John Cura during original transmission), occasional surviving clips taken with cinefilm by viewers, or clips cut out for being too violent when the episodes were shown in Australia (the episodes don't exist, but the scary clips cut out by the Australian censors do! Love the irony!). Occasionally the fan groups get clever and add in their own short animated scenes or specially filmed clips to help show a more action-based or complex scene. The recons combine all of these techniques to help make them fun and interesting to watch. The best recons are made by a group called "Loose Cannon." Check them out on YouTube!

[Not Mr. Big 4,643]

The Force Awakens

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

2 hours ago, pixie_twinkle said:

Sorry, only just saw your question. The BBC junked over 250 B&W episodes of Doctor Who in the mid 70s. They have since found copies of many of the episodes, or have had them returned from other countries the episodes were sold to. Now only 97 episodes remain missing, and fans hold out hope that they will eventually be found somewhere. In the meantime...

 

If they can dig up Richard III somewhere in a car park in Leicester, then can find those missing stories.

[pixie_twinkle 48]

There's that Dunkirk spirit!