To be clear, YES I know this is a very broad question and YES I know there are a million different answers. I’m just very curious what everyone thinks about this and would love to hear as many perspectives as possible. In your opinion, what makes people enjoy listening to music/ what makes music compelling/ what makes you want to listen to it again, There are no wrong answers…GO!
In your opinion, what makes the biggest impact on music?
envelope3
#2
When it makes me feel. It is usually a little part. A chord change. Something that kills me. That, or stuff that is just super cerebral. That is fun to study but usually doesn’t stand the test of time for me.
relic
#3
That even depends on the kind of music for me. For house and techno it is the infectious groove–I want a dance record that I can listen to all 7-8 minutes (on the longer side of things) and still want to listen to most of the record using. I don’t care about fancy sound design or any of that shit. Keep your fancy Serum patches if I can’t get lost in the percussion and bass line. If you can’t do it for me with like 7-8 samples and a a couple FX sends, go home.
envelope3
#4
I always say I love dirty basslines and melodies that kill. I think that sums it up. lol
this bassline never changes and it doesn’t have to. I think this has everything I love.
It’s probably generic, but good writing tends to win over everything else. I get sucked into novelty genres with blisteringly fast guitar licks or crazy post-noise (I have to stop using this phrase) textures like everyone else, but typically the best music (for me) is highly melodic and “campfire test”-friendly, just with a lot of grit behind it.
Unk_Nown
#7
Originality. The wonder of unknown.
Expression. The story of life behind the track itself.
morphic
#8
Honesty - writing something that comes from the heart, means a lot to you first and foremost is often the difference between good music and great music, regardless of technique.
Telling little impressionist stories that can take the listener to other places & times.
Music that generate emotions - happy, bittersweet or sad. Music helps us all navigate the highest points as well as the lowest points in our life. One song can bring back powerful memories - the impact of music on our brains can be quite phenomenal.
Lug
#12
To me it’s the freak factor. And I like music that’s bored with itself
The biggest factor is probably reliability. I think people have abstract brains and they’re able to feel the mindset that a piece of art is created in, whether it has lyrics or not, beyond what the lyrics say anyway. And they feel drawn to it or it feels alien and that’s what people react to.
Lug
#14
what happens if you play a sinewave at the frequency of the brain’s alpha waves? men get huge boners and women get all wet all over their legs and feet
bfk
#15
Not bragging about how awesome your music is…let it speak for itself.
Bragging about music, idk listen to Kenny lamar stay humble.
Dollhead
#16
Short answer: The Artist’s skill, intent and ego.
Long answer:
When you hear something in a track that speaks to you (a hook, a sound, a moment, a groove), you go to the same place in your brain that compels you to admit ‘that’s a good one’ when you hear a good joke. Or, if the track/song/piece is great in general, it can feels at bit like where your brain goes when you meet someone who you think is a good person in general.
Music is like, a little bit of ‘created sound beauty’, or ‘sound truth’, or ‘sound expression’, that we listen to like how we listen to a joke, or eat a meal, or view a painting.
In my opinion, what makes the biggest impact in music is when you can sharply, unequivocally know (just by listening) that the music perfectly inhabits it’s own character and identify with no contrivance, no ego, no inkling/suspicion that this is a “next best thing” of a form that could be ever better realized, were it slightly different/improved/altered.
This is what Aphex twin does, that’s what Miles Davis did, that’s what Beethovan did, and it’s what happens (sometimes through hard work, sometimes fortune) in most “really good” pieces of music.
I think the way you begin trying to get this intentionally into music (or any art) you create for-the-sake-of-wanting-that-creation-to-have-impact is:
A:
Be really, really good: i.e., be more technically competent and knowledgeable about your craft, then what is required to compose/produce/record the music you intend to make perfectly and with only little effort.
B:
Learn what ‘removing the artist’s self / the ego’ from your work actually means. i.e., how to let music be what it is, and not look at it as something that reflects back onto it’s author.
I believe you should tackle these two things if you want the shortest, most direct path to being a fundamentally important and influential music artist. (easier said then done though, ehh? LOL)