Give music you don’t often listen to, or don’t listen to at all, a try. It might have more in common with what you’ve been trying to say with yours more than you think it does.
Music is music is music. Defining genre and style to music will only minimize your learning experience. When you say ‘I don’t like country music’ it might just be that you don’t the word ‘country.’ It is possible. Classical music has similar connotations. It brings to mind suits, monocles, hand fans, and overweight, sweaty singers. Don’t blame you.
But those images are maybe what keeps you from giving classical music a try. If you’re a guitar player, you’d be losing out by only listening to guitar. Guitar is just one voice. There are many other voices that have similar feelings, similar heartache, similar dreams your voice – the guitar – does. Listening to what they have to say just may be what you need…to ‘speak’ clearly and have meaning.
Classical music is just music with a three syllable identifier. It reeks of ‘Do Not Trespass’ a sign. Fuck that. Let it introduce itself to you the way it knows best – without human-made definitions and without rules that shouldn’t have been attached to it in the first place. But if you must require a person to introduce you to classical music – music – let it be someone like Ben Zander.
