Comfort Zone --- Good or Bad?

[Iota]

Interesting thread.

For myself, I'm not sure I really have a comfort zone. There are a core of composers who are important to me, but I feel 'comfortable' with most music.
There are areas of music to which I rarely listen because they have little/zero appeal for me, but I don't feel in any sense 'uncomfortable' with them other than being bored. If I only listened to composers or areas of music which I know and like, I'd feel very claustrophobic, it would be like being confined to the house. I enjoy exploring the unknown, whether or not I end up liking it, it's exciting, and I feel very fortunate to live in a time when the magic of streaming makes such explorations almost limitless in scope.
I get a very different kind of feeling from rock music than the one I get from classical. It's an apples/oranges kind of situation, perhaps even a turnip/banana one. All kinds of music appeal to me at certain times though, but the majority of my listening is classical.

[Karl Henning]

Interesting thread.

For myself, I'm not sure I really have a comfort zone. There are a core of composers who are important to me, but I feel 'comfortable' with most music.
There are areas of music to which I rarely listen because they have little/zero appeal for me, but I don't feel in any sense 'uncomfortable' with them other than being bored. If I only listened to composers or areas of music which I know and like, I'd feel very claustrophobic, it would be like being confined to the house. I enjoy exploring the unknown, whether or not I end up liking it, it's exciting, and I feel very fortunate to live in a time when the magic of streaming makes such explorations almost limitless in scope.
I get a very different kind of feeling from rock music than the one I get from classical. It's an apples/oranges kind of situation, perhaps even a turnip/banana one. All kinds of music appeal to me at certain times though, but the majority of my listening is classical.

Solid, Jackson!

[Iota]

Solid, Jackson!

Well, thank you! I admit I had to google that to discover it's full meaning/origin, but in doing so I was also offered the track below, which I liked a lot! So double thank you! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdXUj-W8TGA

[Que]

I guess Classical Music can be considered a comfort zone in of itself.
Yes, guilty to that... I do like old style Jazz, particularly some of the legendary Jazz singers.
Whether this is a some fringe phenomenon, is debatable.... Only a small group of people listen to it.
But objectively - if we look at time span and variation of styles - it is the size of a musical universe.

Like many, I started out with Late Classical and Romantic symphonic repertoire. In my late teens I progressed in time till the 2nd Viennese School. That didn't really caught on... I thought I would get there, and beyond,  in due time. But sofar it didn't happen... Instead I branched out into chamber music and vocal music and started to move backwards in time: Bach, the rest of Baroque, harpsichord and organ music came with that, and then Early Music.  More than enough to keep me happily occupied for the last decades.

I don't really force myself out of my comfort zone: if I'm curious, I'll try something. If I like it, I'll try some more.

[Karl Henning]

Really, it's all Comfort Zone, you know.

[Brian]

True enough, but I hope he remains pure (sort of like Richard Nanes, the winner of eight consecutive Silver International Angel awards, or Neil Breen - or to be GMG specific: Rob Newman [http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,10960.0.html]).

Thanks, I will put him onto my list as well.

Invoking Neil Breen invites a whole 'nother kind of conversation about eccentric artists in all media 

Personally I'm fond of the novels of Harry Stephen Keeler, whose style is abominable but unforgettable, whose plots were conceived by literally pulling ideas written on scrap paper out of a drawer at random and throwing them together, and whose politics are incomprehensible (heavy national/racial caricatures created in the service of his theory that, to eliminate racism, everyone should intermarry until we're all light brown).

[Madiel]

Hmm. I don't see purity as admirable if the thing you've distilled so purely isn't actually of worth.

[Mandryka]

Hmmm. I don't think that is the right word, as I believe he is being authentic and sincere; he just holds onto a reality that the rest of us (save his mentor?) live in. Okay, I will now have to listen to Barto's Schubert. Things rated that low are always worth at least a go when it comes to classical music which seems inundated with hype.

That is the truth - Ivo, Barto, Kocsis - the poofier the better!

The one who Barto always makes me think of is Emil Naoumoff - it's not the "romantic" interpretation style which makes me put the two together, it's a sensual approach to piano sound, just sort of wallowing in the gorgeous piano sounds.

Tzimon Barto gets a bit of kudos in romantic circles because of his drug use (like Cortot and Coleridge), unfortunately it was a dirty drug (crack) 

[Florestan]

Hmm. I don't see purity as admirable if the thing you've distilled so purely isn't actually of worth.

Aye, for instance doing things differently for the sake of doing things differently.

[Todd]

You're selling me more and more on Barto. He did crack? My man knows how to get down. 0:)

He also took steroids.

Has anyone mentioned he is from Florida?

[Brian]

Lol. I had never heard of Keeler, but this paragraph on Wikipedia has me very, very intrigued:

"Keeler typically padded the length of his novels with the following device: his protagonist would find a magazine or book, open it at random and discover a story. At this point, Keeler's novel would insert the complete verbatim text of one of his wife's short stories, this being the story his novel's protagonist was reading. At the end of the story, the novel would continue where it left off, several pages nearer to its contractual minimum word count. These stories-within-the-novel typically contained only a few scraps of information that were relevant to the novel in which they appeared"

That is quite ingenious, and reminiscent, to a degree, to Dos Passos's U.S.A., the cut-up technique associated with Burroughs, or just pastiche, in general. In fact, you might have just convinced me to go and get some of his books.

The insertions become more frequent in his later work, particularly after ~1940, which is also around the time that he started to be preoccupied with circuses, clowns, sideshow freaks, fortune tellers, and other misfits as central characters or plot devices. There are a handful of books available for free as RTF files here. "Try before you buy"  0:)

[staxomega]

The only real, keen, committed interest I ever had besides "classical music" was on heavy metal, go figure! I grew my hair long, wore leather jackets and boots and was a dedicated fan of Metallica and Manowar --- and all this was taking place a few years after discovering "classical music", more precisely during my university years. After I graduated, my interest in heavy metal dwindled more and more until it faded away for good. I haven't played my heavy metal cassetes or CDs since I can't remember when, nor do I feel any need to hear this kind of music again. Péchés de jeunesse 

Manowar sounded familiar, so I looked them up. One for the best album art thread!

[Jo498]

I had a friend 30 years ago who was a manowar fan and sometimes recited bits a silly spoken scene from one their albums where a grandfather? recounts a tale of an epic battle (Conan-style or maybe Vikings). The song or album is probably called "The kings of metal".

[Florestan]

I had a friend 30 years ago who was a manowar fan and sometimes recited bits a silly spoken scene from one their albums where a grandfather? recounts a tale of an epic battle (Conan-style or maybe Vikings). The song or album is probably called "The kings of metal".

https://www.youtube.com/v/qTf3NsLiG58

My favorite of them is "Heart of Steel"

https://www.youtube.com/v/rY_ewcSaRho

[staxomega]

These surveys were for pop music: https://skynetandebert.com/2015/04/22/music-was-better-back-then-when-do-we-stop-keeping-up-with-popular-music/

[steve ridgway]

I stopped listening to pop music because if anything it had regressed, rather than an age-related "taste freeze", as I have become keen on a number of different genres since then such as krautrock and classical.

[DavidW]

I stopped listening to pop music because if anything it had regressed,

I agree that the top pop has, and it is not even common for teenagers to listen to that music.  However indie music has exploded.  It has become much easier for actually talented musicians to record their music and release it on streaming platforms.  The problem is that while it is effortless for younger generations to find that music, it is a complete mystery to me.  I've listened to some really good stuff but only sporadically.