Music history

Yo yo yo, I forgot about this for a while. Or maybe I was too lazy to post. Anyways, I've been discovering new music lately so I thought I might write about my music history. Music is pretty important in my life... these days, I spend most of the day listening to new songs and downloading them.

The classical period
I don't know when I first started listening to music, but I was probably around 10 or so. I remember always turning on the radio when I was in the car, and going to 96.3 - the classical channel. At that time, I didn't even know about having a music collection, much less the wonders of P2P. I just listened to a bunch of classical songs while traveling, and sometimes at home when I was bored. This period wasn't very influential to me, as I was probably too young to appreciate the fine art of classical music. And that is why I moved on after 2 or 3 years.

OMG TOP 40 (minus the black)
In 8th grade, we would have these days once a week(or every other week, I can't remember) in gym that were deemed "fitness days". What a useless name, since during those days I was about as fit as I was every other day - not fit at all. During those days, we would run around in circles in our gym. It was retarded, to say the least. Our teacher was nice and let us (or maybe she was forced to) bring in CDs of our music to play on the stereo system while we ran. So a bunch of white kids brough in these CDs of pop, rock, and black music. I didn't care much for the black music or the pop (since most the pop was black anyway), but when I first heard rock I was like, "hmmm... this is interesting". Eventually, I decided that I had liked that music enough to go explore it on my own time. This began the period of ROCK [special fx and such here]. The first band that I got into was Green Day, back when their BOBD was getting all the radio time. So, of course, using my newly acquired 1337 Kazaa-ing skillz, I got their album. And I still have it today, with their improperly tagged, low-quality, transcoded, and generally bad songs. The next band was Linkin Park, probably due to the same reason. As the years went on and I discovered new bands using the radio or Yahoo! Music, I would download their albums from Kazaa. As Kazaa started getting filled with spam, I moved on to Limewire. Yahoo! Music also gradually changed into Last.fm. Sometime during this period, I realized that everyone listened to this music. I didn't know if that was a good or bad thing, but that did lead me to begin exploring other genres.

The unknown period
This wasn't really a well-defined period, because it kind of bled in with the previous and next periods. Sometime in high school, I stopped only downloading rock albums. Sometimes I would grab a whole bunch of black songs that friends recommended to me, or I would get the newest #1 song. For a period in sophomore year, I was semi-into jazz, though that collection today is still very small. I also got a few parodies, such as Ludakrishna (gangsta fob represntin' yo). While nothing productive came out of this, I did learn one important thing - not everything is rock, pop, or black. There are genres, and they can be good, too. One important day in 2006 (maybe it was '07, I don't have the exact date) I stumbled on this site called "Ishkur's guide to electronic music". I was like, "ok, what's electronic music?" and Ishkur explained it to me. Then, I was like, "ok Ishkur, thanks. Bye now!" and I stumbled away. A few weeks later, I played DDR. At first, I didn't notice anything. But after repeatedly failing to dance, I suddenly remembered Ishkur's guide. I was like, "hey, this music kinda sounds like that electronic stuff I found". I went home that day and my desire to be a pro DDR player died (not that I ever had that desire, anyway). However, my love for EDM (electronic dance music. But since some of it isn't even danceable, the D is pointless. Still, it's easier to say EDM than electronic music all the time) was born. I began by downloading a bunch of DDR songs from Limewire. I listened to the stupidity of those songs for a few days, then returned to Ishkur's holy grail to find more music. I explored each genre in depth, and finally found one that I liked - trance.

TIIEEEEESSSSTTOOOOOOO!!!!111 (minus Tiesto)
My beginnings of trance was simple - download all the ones that I liked from Ishkur's guide. Though few, these songs would become the basis of what I would listen to for the next year or two. I had picked songs from the Progressive trance, Anthem trance, Epic trance, and Goa trance subgenres. Initially, I listened to all of them equally, but over time, it became mostly anthem and epic. I checked trance forums, lists online, and Last.fm for new artists and songs. Many of them recommended classic and acid trance, and even Ishkur himself preferred classic trance to anthem and epic. Still, I never really got into those genres. I just downloaded many compilations and mix albums, and they were all of the anthem and epic variety. In the beginning, I even searched for "trance" when I wanted to download something. Yeah, I was pretty noob at first. As I became more educated in trance, I established favorite artists. Gouryella, Rank 1, Pulp Victim, Binary Finary, and a bunch others were "old anthem/epic", while Alphazone, Airbase, Ian Betts, Nu NRG and a bunch others were "new anthem/epic". For some reason, I never really got into Tiesto as all the other tranceheads do. After a few months of listening exclusively to trance, I decided to return to my old music.

Return to rock. Also, TIEEESSSTOOOOO!!!1
While I was listening only to trance, I forgot all about the rock world, so when I returned I probably had to download a few new albums. Nothing really new happened during this period, except that now I had to follow two genres instead of the one that I was always used to. I also gave up on P2P programs and started torrenting. Actually, that's not completely true. For my last few months at home (before Cornell) I started experimenting with DC++, and used a bunch of public hubs to obtain rare stuff. Anyways, this half and half style continued all the way until around October-ish of 2008. At that time, I was in college already, and because of the limited monthly bandwith, I couldn't torrent as I usually did. My music collection became very stale, and the few rock albums that I did torrent were boring. I stopped listening to rock for a while, until I was re-introduced to blink-182. I got their discography and listened to it heavily, but other than that, I listened mostly to trance. The weird thing was, though my trance collection was 10s of gigs, I only listened to a few hundred songs. Obviously, they were anthem and epic. As college ended, my musical tastes still hadn't changed (well maybe I did like I'm on a boat, and had a small interest in Asian music). I went home for summer, and with nothing to do, started listening to music.

Gtfo Tiesto, hai EDM
While browsing through my music collection, I found this one odd song that my friend sent me: The Prodigy - Voodoo People (Pendulum remix). I forgot what it sounded like, so I listened to it again. I was amazed. Right then and there, I opened up torrentz.com and got both The Prodigy's and Pendulum's discographies. I just stepped foot into breakbeat and drum and bass. I also downloaded Trancemaster 6006, which would become the last trance album that I downloaded. From then on, I discovered the great big beat artists, and got into dark DnB (neurofunk/darkstep). I listened to these two genres for about a month and a half, and towards the end, DnB emerged the victor. In July '09, I once again Ishkur'ed some new genres, this time being house and techno. But mostly techno. I am currently using lists from Listology for techno and classic trance (it can never go away), and will get into house at a future time. My current goal for the summer is to finish classic techno, trance, and possibly house and jungle too. Among the things I have learned from this period is, again, there isn't only a trance - other EDM genres exist too. I guess I forgot this important fact during my trance years. You might be wondering what I'm listening to now, as I write this. I started the post with some Adam Beyer and am now listening to some Crystal Method. Neither of those artists are trance. I am proud of myself.

Chronological list of my music genres and tools:
~2000 - Late 2003
-Classical
-Radio

Late 2003 - Late 2006
-Rock
-Kazaa, Limewire
-Radio, Yahoo! Music, Last.fm

2005 - Late 2006
-Rock, black, pop, jazz, misc.
-Limewire
-Last.fm, friend recommendations

Late 2006 - Mid 2007
-Trance
-Limewire, Frostwire, torrents
-Last.fm, tranceaddict.net, Youtube

Mid 2007 - October 2008
-Trance, rock
-Torrents, DC++
-Last.fm, tranceaddict.net, Youtube, discogs.com

October 2008 - May 2009
-Trance
-Torrents
-Last.fm, Youtube

May 2009 - July 2009
-Drum and bass, breakbeat
-Torrents
-Last.fm, Youtube

July 2009 -
-Classic techno, classic trance, drum and bass
-DC++, Torrents
-Listology.com, Last.fm, discogs.com, Youtube

Today

Today is 07/08/09. Just thought you should know.

MLIA

Today, I discovered MLIA. MLIA.

What do you get when you combine psytrance and guitars?

This.

Known as buttrock goa (?) or heavy metal goa, it's goa/psytrance with rock and metal elements. And it kicks ass. Some other artists include S.U.N. Project and 1200 micrograms, but there's a bunch more. This just might become my new favorite genre.

Halo 3

Well, after almost a year, I'm back to playing Halo 3. I started playing that game around April '08, by abusing the free Xbox live accounts. Each Xbox 360 comes with 3 free trial accounts for a month each (although I didn't know there was a limit at that time) so after my first month, I made another one, and it actually worked. I was like, "OMG, FREE XBOX LIVEZ!!" and then made another account used for betraying. So for the next month I alternated accounts and used my real one to play real games, and used the betraying one for betraying. Ah, good times. Too bad it only lasted a month. After those two expired, I tried making more accounts, but it didn't work :(. So then I was forced to buy an account. Then me and my friend played almost everyday during the summer, and I got semi-good. Then August came around, and I had to leave for college. Unfortunately, I couldn't bring along my 360, but fortunately, I became friends with some people that did have a 360, and played Halo a bunch. They were pretty noob, though, but owning noobs is fun. Then spring semester came and I kinda stopped playing. And now, it's summer again, which means days and days of Halo 3. I'm pretty bad now, though, but I'll get better. Don't worry.