I'm feeling a bit like I might want to do some babbling about music in these pages.  Music is important to me and I've definitely spent a lot of time over the years thinking about it, both in terms of being a fan of it and also trying to be a creator of it.  I'm trying to think about what sorts of things I want to discuss.  There's an old saying that writing about music is like dancing about architecture.  I think there's some truth to that.  You could write a million words about a specific piece of music and not come anywhere near the experience of actually listening to it.  

I also think I want to avoid anything that hews too closely to music criticism.  I'm not the biggest fan of music critics.  I think a lot of them are really pretentious pseudo-intellectual types who think they're the final word on music.  They like to present themselves as some sort of authorities on the subject and think their opinions are the be all and end all.  In reality there's no difference between a music critic and you.  All they've got is a pair of ears and an opinion, same as anybody else.  Sure, they may have time to listen to a lot more music, but that doesn't mean they know what you're going to like better than you do.  To me the only time a critic is at all useful is if I know their tastes align with mine and they're letting me know about something I haven't heard of.  Otherwise, what do I care what some critic thinks about something I already know if I like or not?  And if their tastes don't align with mine, then what do I care what think about anything?  I'm not into country music.  I couldn't tell you a good country song from a bad one.  To me, they're more or less all bad.  But country music fans don't think so, so why should they pay attention to anything I have to say on the subject?

The thing is music is truly the most subjective of all art forms.  It's very abstract.  I do think you could probably make a valid argument in regards to the quality of lyrics because they potentially have the most concrete meaning and it's easy to tell sometimes when some of them are just dumb.  But lyrics can be abstract and open to interpretation as well.  To me a lot of the best ones are.

You can for sure tell that some people are better singers or better guitar players or whatever than other people, but technique alone doesn't determine whether I enjoy a song or not.  There's plenty of music by people who are objectively good at their instruments that doesn't interest me in the slightest.

When it comes down to it, anything that has been professionally released is going to almost certainly be at least competently produced and performed.  So you're left judging the music itself, and like I said that gets really abstract and subjective.  It boils down to does it sound good to you or not?  And I don't know sometimes what the reason is why something does or doesn't.  There are certain styles I'm more drawn to.  At the end of the day, I'm a rock and roller at heart, but I sure as hell don't like every rock and roll song that's been recorded.  In the grand scheme of things I bet there are more I don't particularly like than I do.  

But style aside, one of the greatest mysteries of music to me, and something I've always been fascinated by is why exactly do certain combinations of sounds become pleasurable to us?  Why do I find one sequence of notes to be a beautiful melody and another sequence of notes to be boring?  I don't know!  I have no explanation for it, it just happens.  That's where I think the "magic" of music lies. 

I know I have a general criteria for what makes me more likely to enjoy something.  But this is just a guideline and there are always exceptions.  There's plenty of stuff it seems like I should like on paper, but in actual practice I just don't for some reason.  I'd say the primary element that's most likely to make me think a song is good is a memorable melody.  But even that's not set in stone, because there are plenty of catchy pop songs that get stuck in my head and irritate the crap out of me.  On the flip side I've been able to find I can enjoy some stuff that doesn't have much melody to speak of, but has a cool sound or hits on a nice groove.  I tend to enjoy unusual or interesting sounds and I do like having a sense that there is some creativity involved in a song.  With the immense amount of music out there it's probably nearly impossible to be entirely original, but it is possible to put some kind of fresh spin on your inspirations.  I'm less inclined to like something that sounds like a complete ripoff of another band, but if you take elements from a lot of different bands and combine them in interesting ways, I'm more likely to be aboard.  I suppose you could just make a whole bunch of racket with strange sounds and be somewhat unique, and I might even like that to a certain extent, but there's also a high chance of it being kind of unlistenable.  I think it can be interesting sometimes to see where the line is between music and noise, but most of the time I probably want to listen to something that falls firmly on the music side of the border.  I think a lot of the best stuff has an element of familiarity but finds a way to add something new or unexpected to it.

The other thing about writing reviews of music, is when exactly is the proper time to do it?  I'd say definitely not after only one listen because a lot of music takes a certain amount of familiarity to understand and appreciate.  But the number of listens it takes to wrap your head around something can vary.  It might only take three listens to "get" one song and it might take ten or twenty or more to "get" another.  Plus you can over familiarize yourself with a song and get sick of it.  I've completely changed my opinion on some stuff over time.  There are songs and albums that have grown on me and some that have grown off me.  There are albums that I loved the hell out of and would still consider favorites, and yet I almost never feel the need to listen to them because I listened to them so much in the past.  There's some stuff I didn't like at all that later on I came to discover I thought was pretty good, or at least not as bad as I initially thought.  Sometimes it's just the context you hear things in or where you're at in your life or who you hear it with or maybe it just catches you on a good or a bad day.  

In light of that, I think I'd like to once in a while discuss some bands or albums that were significant to me personally at certain times in my life and maybe the experiences that I had with them.  A lot of them I don't think I could even really assign a rating to.  I have no idea in some cases if they're really all that good or all that bad or if anyone else would or should like them in the way that I do or did.  I'm not going to presume to tell people that the music I liked is the music everyone should like.  If anything I write about sounds interesting and you want to check it out, by all means do so, but I go in fully understanding my word isn't law.  

As I said, it's highly subjective.  I do think that's something that can be easy to lose sight of even for me now.  Of course stuff that I don't like sucks.  I don't like it so how could it possibly be good?  But there's a lot of things I don't care for that are immensely popular.  Are the millions of people who love it wrong?  Well, they are to me, but you're never wrong to like what you like.  If it sounds good to you, rock on, and screw everyone else's opinion. 

I don't plan on turning this into a full-fledged music blog or anything, but some days starting soon-ish, if not possibly tomorrow, I'll definitely throw in some talks about some bands or albums that meant something to me.  Probably starting with R.E.M., my first favorite band.  I mean that in a chronological sense.  I'm not sure if they're still my favorite band, but they were the first band that I ever considered my favorite band.  

On second thought, tomorrow is looking like it's shaping up to be a really busy work day and I don't know how much writing time I'm going to have.  I bet I could probably ramble on about R.E.M. for a while.  Tomorrow might not be the best day to start it.  But soon!