I've enjoyed music my entire life. When I was little my parents would sing to me before bed, and I would sing along. In elementary school, I started on trombone, looking up to my grandpa as inspiration (as I'm writing this I just got home from one of his band concerts). Around high school, I started to explore more outside of classical and jazz music, and I got into other genres, most notably progressive rock. Now I have a wide variety under my belt, with just a few eluding me, such as country.
As a trombone player, it would be wrong of me not to start with some good old jazz. Jazz music is the lifeblood of my music taste, the genre with which all others compare. I love jazz for so many reasons. The smooth licks, the gorgeous voices of Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald, the rompin' rhythms of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and so much more. Below are just a few of my favorite songs.
There are so many more that I couldn't possibly list them all here, this is just a taste of what I can think of off the top of my head.
Jazz Fusion, Funk, and a bunch of other tangentially related genres were a big development in my music taste. I found the group Casiopea in college, and my brother put me onto Snarky Puppy. From there, the rest is history. The following are just a few of my favorites.
Of course, if you're going to start listening to jazz fusion, you might as well take the plunge into progressive rock. One day in the car, we were listening to music and my dad queued Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-5), and I was just blown away. I had discounted rock as without subtlety, due to some of the more screamy stuff I had heard. But this, this was something I could work with. I listened through the entirety of Wish You Were Here, and I was hooked. Here's a short list of songs I've grown to love.
There's room in my heart of the harder side of progressive rock and metal, but I also love a good atmospheric track. In particular, this was cultivated by the Minecraft Volume Alpha and Volume Beta soundtracks, with the tracks Aria Math and Moog City standing out as my favorites.
Pop music has never been my favorite, and I stand by the fact that a large majority of pop music lacks real substance. However, there are a few artists who have caught my attention, most notable the wonderful Florence + The Machine.
There's so much music that I like, I could spend days listing it all down. I missed so many artists, like Polyphia, or InsaneInTheRain, or girl in red, or Lydian Collective, or Victor Wooten, or OR3O. I really, really like music.
