Music That Has Shaped Your Musical Conception

jbenzola · Joined: Dec 11, 2003 Posts: 77 Location: NY

For some reason (probably because of the snow) I was thinking about music that has formed my approach to music. Most of the time, influences can be pretty obvious and others can be a bit more obscure but present anyway. The following is a list that has most certainly (for better or worse) has and continues to inform my approach to music making (in no particular order):

The Beatles: Revolver, Rubber Soul

John Coltrane: The Complete Village Vanguard, My Favorite Things, Kulu Se Mama, Meditations, Interstellar Space

Miles Davis: Nefertiti, Water Babies, In A Silent Way, Big Fun, On the Corner, Live Evil

Eric Dolphy: Out to Lunch (Especially the playing of Tony Williams)

Art Ensemble: Live at Mandell Hall, People In Sorrow, Nice Guys, Baptizum

Roscoe Mitchell: Sound

Don Moye: Sun Percussion

Milford Graves: Grand Unification, Stories, Love Cry (with Albert Ayler)

Stockhausen: Ceylon, Prozession, Bird of Paradise, Kalvierstucke's, Momente, Zyklus

Cage: Sonta for Prepared Piano, Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra, Constructions in Metal, HPSCH, Williams Mix

Feldman: King of Denmark, Crippled Symmetry

Herbie Hancock: Sextant, Crossings, Mwandishi

Xenakis: Kraanerg, Metastasis, all of his electronic and percussion music

Nonesuch Exploerer Series: The whole series of recordings from Africa, India, Bali, etc

Sun Ra: Heliocentric Worlds, The Magic City, Atlantis, Angles and Demons at Play, Live in Montruex, Solar Myth Approach, all three of his solo piano albums

Cecil Taylor: Nefertiti the Beautiful One has Come, Unit Structures, Indent, Air Above Mountains, Buildings Within, Into the Hot, Duets with Max Roach

Beach Boys: Pet Sounds, Smile Bootleg

FZ: Studio Tan, Uncle Meat, Lumpy Gravey, Hot Rats, Jazz From Hell, Weasles Ripped My Flesh

Captain Beefheart: Trout Mask Replica

Keith Jarrett: Koln Concerts, Treasure Island

Ornette Coleman: Skies of America, All of his Atlantic albums

Alice Coltrane: Universal Consciousness, Transcendence

Max Roach: We Insist, Percussion Bittersuite

Monk: Everything

Lamonte Young: All of the Theater of Eternal Music Bootlegs (Young-Zazella-Conrad-Cale-Maclise), The Well Tuned Piano,

Albert Ayler: Spiritual Unity, Witches and Devils, Live in Greenwich Village

McCoy Tyner: Sahara, Super Trios, Enlightenment, Song for a Friend

Reich: Drumming, Music for 18 Musicians

David Behrman: On the Other Ocean

Anthony Braxton: Creative Orchestra Music 1976, Creative Orchestra Music Live, 1978, His series of duets with Richard Teitlebaum

George Lewis: Voyager, Homage to Charlie Parker

Robert Ashley: Perfect Lives, She was a Visitor

Chick Corea: Circle/Circling In/Circulus (Braxton, Holland, Altschul)

I probably forgot a few. Will edit upon remembering!

seraph · Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 10:36 am Post subject:

this one is going to become a very interesting thread.
I'll be back later Very Happy

mosc · Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 11:53 am Post subject:

Interesting. I could probably have as long a list, many are the same. I would add, J. S. Bach and W. A. Mozart.

But the most influential piece of music for me is Charles Ives' 4th Symphony. This piece's 4th movement is amazing. I think it has 3 orchestra ensembles and at least two choirs - two conductors. I(t is performed very rarely because it is so huge. The last movement is polyrhymic and polytonal. The first three movements are very beautiful, but not as experimental.

jbenzola · Joined: Dec 11, 2003 Posts: 77 Location: NY

Yes...the Ives 4th is amazing. I forgot to add Ives to my list. In particular, the Concord Sonata as played by John Kirkpatrick (Which was on Columbia and never reissued...shame on them!!!) Also, Mr. Harry Partch and Conlon Nancarrow must also be on that list as well.

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 12:50 pm Post subject:

Interesting thread. I will be back here with a list or ten.. later... Very Happy

Michael Chocholak · Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 2:03 pm Post subject:

Yes, most excellent thread! Very Happy

Actually I have an abbreviated series of links off my homepage mapping out a very summarized version of the major impacts on my artistic development since I was a kid; http://www.eoni.com/%7Emishamez/badgelink.htm.

I can't limit my influences to music (always been a bit of a synaesthetic)...

Philosophical, cultural & technological; shortwave radio, Boing Boing cartoons, Alexander Scriabin, Walt Disney, Les Paul, Betty Boop cartoons, Hugh Le Caine, the Theremin, Carl Stalling/Warner Bros, John Cage, the tape recorder, Miles Davis, Edgard Varese, cassette tapes, digital sampler, sound poetry, the pc.

Literature & film; science fiction, Edgar Allen Poe, Pablo Neruda, Theodore Roethke, Misha - actually I have a page for lit & flick favs too; http://www.eoni.com/%7Emishamez/favs.htm .

Art; Salvador Dali, Sandy Calder, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Bosch, Modigliani, tribal sculpture

Sex; SEX. Shocked

Music; Beethoven, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Les Paul, The Ventures, Martha & the Vandellas, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zepplin, Zappa doing Uncle Meat live, Joni Mitchell, the guitar ragas of Robbie Basho, John Fahey & Sandy Bull, Kraftwerk, BB King, Wes Montgomery, ESP, In a Silent Way & Bitches Brew by Miles, Alice & John Coltrane, Pharoh Sanders & Sonny Sharrock, Monk, John McLaughlin, Gary Burton, Eberhard Weber, Ralph Towner & Oregon, Jan Garbarek Quartet, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock Sextet, Varese, Stockhausen, Holger Czukay, King Crimson, Eno & Fripp, David Sylvian, Bill Nelson, Kohari Kisaragi, Sakamoto, Laurie Anderson, Rik Rue, Richard Truhlar, Croiners, Eric Muhs, Arcane Device, Wiredogs...

The world at large; the squeaking of the old willow limbs in a strong wind, the gate hinge that never gets oiled, the chain knocking against the tetherball pole in the playground, the wind whistling over the metal rack in the back of my pickup, my cats purring, heartbeat...

And all the other people & things I left out...
Cool

seraph · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 4:36 pm Post subject:

Going back in time I remember listening to pop music like Steely Dan, Jethro Tull, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby Stills Nash & Young etc.
A milestone was the discovery of jazz-rock improvisation with Soft Machine (their Third, Fourth and Fifth albums were very influential).
I discovered Nucleus, Mahavisnu Orchestra, Frank Zappa (I loved Freaks Out, Hot Rats, Grand Wazoo), Oregon (Distant Hills was way ahead of his time with those "world music" soundscapes when that word did not exist yet. btw I still love Ralph Towner's music).
From there the move to jazz was the natural development.
I concentrated my attention on jazz created between the late 50's and early 60's: John Coltrane (Giant Steps, Africa Brass, A love supreme, Plays the blues, Crescent, to name a few), Miles Davis (from Kind of Blue to Bitches Brew), Gil Evans (everything with Miles plus everything else like New bottle Old wine with Cannonbal Adderley), Eric Dolphy (Out to lunch and everything else), Freddy Hubbard (Body and soul), Booker Little, Oliver Nelson (The blues and the abstract truth), Bill Evans (my piano idol: I love everything by him but that trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian was pure magic), the Jazz Messengers (Moanin',Thermo), Cecil Taylor (the early things with Steve Lacy and those for Contemporary Records. I can not listen to stuff like Unit Structures or Conquistador anymore, I am getting old, I guess!), Thelonius Monk (those albums with J. Coltrane and everything else), Charles Mingus (The saint and the sinner lady and everything else), all those "cool white cats" like Gerry Mulligan (the quartet with Bob Brookmeyer, Red Mitchell and Frank Isola was fantastic), Lennie Tristano (I love all his few albums), Chet Baker, Lee Konitz, Phil Woods, Lennie Niehaus, Third Stream stuff like that by Gunther Shuller etc.
Thanks to Cecil Taylor I discovered Bela Bartok (I love his piano music), thanks to Frank Zappa I discovered Edgar Varese (Ionisation) and from there I moved on to Schoenberg (Pierrot Lunaire) and slowly started listening and studying classical music like Samuel Barber (Adagio for Strings amply demonstrates two principles: Some of the greatest ideas are essentially quite simple, and not everything popular is junk), Gabriel Faure' (Requiem), Heitor Villa Lobos (Bachianas Brasileiras), Darius Milhaud (Le Boeuf sur le Toit) and much more music going backwards in music history.
After all these musical explorations I can say that I appreciate many styles of music from funky stuff like Prince (Sign of the Times) to ragtime ( I love to play music by Scott Joplin), from Donald Fagen (Nightfly) to Wendy Carlos (my all time favorite synthesist. her Beauty in the Beast is a masterpiece)
....well, basically I simply love music Very Happy

mosc · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 9:09 pm Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2003 7:14 am Post subject:

The topic kinda restricts what I can put in my list.. "Music That Has Shaped Your Musical Conception". hmmm....

This will render a far shorter list than if the question had been shaped in a slightly different way. I guess the correct answer will be "I have no idea, but I blame norwegian public broadcasting and whatever they put out in the period of 1961-1970". We had one radio station.. and that one was pretty much like the BBC... perhaps even more like the BBC than the BBC ever was. various weird stuff was played.. we had sections of 30 minutes traditional norwegian folk music, then 2 hours of opera... etc etc.. and a fair amount of avantgarde music too. So I guess I reckoned what was NOT speech had to be music.

The list of stuff I like is different.. and long.. and it contains names like Pergolesi and Serafini.

seraph · Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2003 10:12 am Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2003 12:29 pm Post subject:

I guess your wonderful scandinavian wife is living with him.... Shocked

mosc · Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2003 12:57 pm Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2003 1:07 pm Post subject:

Well, the shocking truth! Actually, she is not scandinavian.. but she looks like she is it least swedish.. Very Happy

seraph · Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2003 3:56 pm Post subject:

Michael Chocholak · Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2003 12:44 pm Post subject:

mosc · Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2003 1:16 pm Post subject:

seraph · Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2003 4:19 pm Post subject:

egw · Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2003 4:46 pm Post subject:

Yes, I can verify that Howard likes noise!

mosc · Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 8:54 am Post subject:

Yes, I can verify that Greg likes noise too. Laughing

mosc · Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 9:11 am Post subject:

Michael Chocholak · Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 1:22 pm Post subject:

Well... there is no noise... or one person's noise is another person's music... or

seraph · Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 3:27 pm Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 3:33 pm Post subject:

Not even an upmarket one?

Michael Chocholak · Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 3:34 pm Post subject:

mosc · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2003 8:12 am Post subject: