I was just thinking of music that’s longer than usual myself and remembered the artist Mike Oldfield. So I was wondering, what genre is he usually grouped in? The only guess I have is “Instrumental” but that’s a bit vague, I feel.
His album Tubular Bells has a lot of progressive rock elements, like the sudden changes of musical style and the use of a variety of instruments. Haven’t heard much of his other stuff, but if it sounds similar to that album, it can probably be grouped in the same genre.
More piano music.
Sorabji, for all his fame, is one name you never hear in the concert halls, or practically anywhere else at all, but for good reason. It’s tantamount to pianistic suicide to play it in public - not only difficult, but exhaustingly complex. If you ever think you’re good at the piano, you can make yourself feel like a scrub by attempting even a few bars of anything he’s ever written. The reason why there’s no Sorabji competition is probably because you’d be hard-pressed to find enough qualified competitors, when each piece can take months for professionals to play. It literally sounds like a bunch of garbage if you don’t play it well, and you can’t slow-practice your way through it because the music is usually so dense that it won’t make sense that way. The most famous of his works, Opus Clavicembalisticum - generally considered to be a Godzilla of piano, lasting 4 hours in total - is a fine example of him “foaming at his mouth”, according to one critic, what with the imagery of chaos and strife neatly packed into the first 5 minutes of the intro.
But perhaps what distinguishes him from other post-modern composers for piano, is his romantic roots. The notes are deployed gratefully, and by some measure, gracefully. Take this performance of Gulistan (The Rose Garden), for example. Below is a video of the composer himself playing it, indubitably the best performance of this piece thus far by a mile.
And as you can hear, the intricacy and control over voicing is practically superhuman - an absorbing trip into the rose garden, reminiscent of the progressions of Indian classical music, and if your listening skills are dank meme, you can hear Chopinesque, or Debussian melodies playing throughout.
Of course, it’s not for everyone - until you’ve sort of made sense of his winding melodies, if they can be called that, it’s almost impossible to make heads or tails of it. And Gulistan is probably one of the most “comprehensible” of his works. He is quite literally, the edgelord of piano; no one has ever been this edgy, to my knowledge. But ultimately his works are admired for how evocative and, one way or another, gorgeous they can be.
Postclassical? Sorabji is post-everything, a one-man musical apocalypse.
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So today’s Valentine’s day. So I thought about sharing a type of love song that’s actually pretty rare (warning: may contain dark humor):
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So I accidentally came across this:
It’s just a a piano arrange, I don’t know the guy, don’t know the song, I don’t know anything, but I still think that both the arrange and the way it’s played are awesome, so here it is for all of you to enjoy it.
Music has been one of my favourite art mediums of all time for a while now. Its impact on my life was huge and I would never be the same without it. I will (try to) keep this short since I could easily go on a huge tangent on my favourite music alone and how my musical tastes have changed (in great detail, anyway). In general, the usual criterion for me to like a band, album or even a song is for it to in some way move me. What I mean by that is I tend to love powerful, heavily emotional music that leaves an everlasting impact on me and something I won’t soon forget. It doesn’t always have to relate to me, but that shouldn’t matter if the songwriting is excellent and the performance by the musicians is great. I will be posting some of my favourite bands/soundtracks in my favourite genres of music.
Bearing that in mind, my tastes mostly lie with metal. Seeing is how metal is a very general and vague genre, I would say what really got me into metal and my favourite metal sub-genre is Metalcore. When I say Metalcore, I more or less mean bands like Killswitch Engage, August Burns Red, early Trivium (mostly Ascendancy), Shadows Fall, As I Lay Dying, Bullet For My Valentine, early to mid Parkway Drive and early Avenged Sevenfold (basically Waken The Fallen). Another genre for me recently that I have really grown to love is Progressive Metal, though I admit I don’t have a ton of experience in it. Some of my favourite bands in this genre are Dream Theater (Scenes From A Memory Part 2 and Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence are some of my favourite albums of all time), Periphery (especially Juggernaut and PIII) and Tool (though I need to actually listen to more of their discography).
Another big genre for me is Nu-Metal. It was how I made the transition from listening to hard rock to embracing heavier genres. In fact, the first ever metal (though some will debate whether or not this album was actually metal) record I listened to and loved was Meteora by Linkin Park on my CD Walkman (I am more than a bit old). I still treasure that album and that band, even if they have had a spotty discography in my opinion. Sometime after, I started listening to bands like Disturbed, Korn, System of a Down and Slipknot and because of those gateway bands, I would eventually become a metalhead. Some other great genres in metal that I love are Thrash Metal (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Testament, Black Fast), Melodic Death Metal (early In Flames, Dethklok, At The Gates, Arch Enemy) and Groove Metal (Lamb of God, Machine Head, Pantera). I have also recently dabbled into other genres like Hardcore/Power Violence (Nails), Slam/Technical/Death Metal (Dying Fetus, Gojira) and Power Metal (Gloryhammer, Dragonforce, Stratovarius).
I don’t only listen to metal, however, and still often find myself coming back to a few non-metal bands that people have mentioned already. Since I am still an emo at heart, I somewhat recently re-discovered My Chemical Romance and fell back in love with them (still think The Black Parade is a fantastic album regardless of the emo culture they are associated with). I also like some variances of punk, including Rise Against, Billy Talent and A Day to Remember (though are also kinda Metalcore). Hard Rock is a genre I have found some good bands in, like Stone Sour, Breaking Benjamin, and Three Days Grace. I have also found a lot of love in some bands that sorta defy traditional genre labels, like Opeth and Deftones.
Naturally, another two genres I love (though vague) are Video Game and Anime OST. As others have mentioned, I love Nobou Uemetsu but other famous game composers I love are David Wise (Donkey Kong Country), Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts, Xenoblade Chronicles), Koji Kondo (Mario, Legend of Zelda) and Shoji Meguro (Persona 3-5). In terms of anime composers, there is the aforementioned Hiroyuki Sawano whom I really like but other ones I love are Shiro Sagisu (Bleach, Evangelion Rebuilds, Magi), Jun Maeda (Clannad) Yuki Kajira (Sword Art Online, Madoka Magica) and Yoko Kanno (Zankyou no Terror).
Below I will post some of my favourite songs of all time or favourite songs from a particular album or soundtrack I loved (most of them tend to be less heavy/slow/sappy, oddly enough):
Video Game OST:
My current favourite song of all time and one which I have a lot of personal meaning attached to:
A cover of one of my favourite songs ever but I think is the best version of the theme:
Metal:
Probably my favourite metal song of all time is a really well-known one (pun intended), but one that I love dearly:
Another softer song I recently fell in love with but another amazing ballad and my favourite song from Periphery (not heavy by any means, so I think just about anyone can like this):
Anime OST:
A track that I never tire of and love more and more with repeated listens:
I neglected to mention this soundtrack but this song still tears me up nearly every time I listen to it:
(I would have posted a lot more songs, but this was getting big enough as is)
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As someone who used to be really into metal and everything around it I was just happy to see you mention all the stuff I listened to as well, Killswitch Engage, BFMV etc. And ofc the almight Breaking Benjamin. good shit fam.
One last thing: I am really REALLY glad you posted a bleach OST and specifically that one cuz I love that one to death <3.
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I know you said you used to be into metal, but since you mentioned BFMV and Killswitch Engage, I have a couple recommendations to anyone who is a fan of those bands as they have some good side projects associated with them.
In BFMV’s case, there is AxeWound who has Matt Tuck (BFMV’s frontman and rhythm guitarist) along with some other members from other bands. It is a little different (heavier in my opinion) from BFMV’s stuff but I think it has BFMV’s fingerprints on it and the whole Vultures album (that includes this song) was pretty great:
As for Killswitch, there is a criminally underrated side project of Adam D (lead guitarist of Killswitch) and Jesse Leach (lead vocalist for their first few albums and their last couple) called Times of Grace and like AxeWound, only have one studio album in their discography so far. However, I think Times of Grace’s album Hymm of a Broken Man is honestly the best thing Adam and Jesse ever did. It’s certainly not an all out metal fest, but it has easily some of the best songwriting, performances, composition, and lyrics I have heard in any melodic metalcore/metalcore album. Definitely recommend the entire album, but it can certainly be an emotionally intense listen for some (the song I linked is the single from the album, which is more akin to Killswitch Engage’s usual stuff):
Regarding Here to Stay, yeah it is definitely one of my favourite anime OST’s and I share that love and passion you have for it. Another song that sounds rather similar (I suspect Shiro was inspired by this song while making Here To Stay) was Theme of Love from the FFIV soundtrack. I love this song a lot too and thought you might like it as well if you hadn’t already heard it anyway. Fun fact: this song is used in music textbooks over in Japan for study purposes (for Grade 6 and above students). This one is my personal favourite version of this theme:
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the piano collection version, as I love piano only versions of JRPG songs:
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Here’s 3 video game songs with very different feels that I feel are slightly underappreciated.
Cheerful and Upbeat-
Dramatic and Epic-
Melodic and Emotional-
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Here’s the OP’s from the Berserk 2016 and 2017 that I feel can easily go overlooked if someone gets too absorbed in the bad animation.
Made by 9mm Parabellum Bullet, I’d say they’re some of the only good things to come out of those anime.
Well so looking back at this topic, I decided to share some songs from my own country as well. Here are some picks :
- 로비로모여 (Translation : Gather at the lobby) - Hanhae, Dynamic Duo, Chung ha, Muzie : A song from Show me the money season 6 : Round 1
2) 꿈이뭐야 (Dream chaser)by Gray, Dok2, Crush : The title would actaully be translated as “What is your dream?” But the artist has chosen an English title called Dream Chaser
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Time to share another song. So for the past few months, there’s a song I’ve been listening to from a group called Cut Copy and I thought I’d share it with you guys.
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Currently replaying Chrono Trigger.
G-Senjou no Maou is one of my favorite VNs, with a soundtrack composed of mostly remixed classical music.
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There have been a lot of mentions of Edguy which a certain someone helped me find and other metal bands, but I’d like to share two others that I really like that haven’t been mentioned this year. 
For the first band, you may find other songs in their catalog to connect with you much more. For the second band, their earlier albums are all one connected story. Sorry for my lack of experience with sharing YT links ahead of time so please let me know if something is wrong or missing.
Alter Bridge
Coheed and Cambria
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I’ve got a soft spot for the Xenoblade OST, and I’m almost tempted to replay the game to see where these pieces of music are brought up.
It’ll be a while before I get tired of this OST.
But that aside, here are two songs with their overall tones above the video, hope you enjoy.
Uplifting and Cheerful
Tense and Epic
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This isn’t really a great song or anything like the past ones I posted, but it is a pretty good meme.
I especially like the contrast between the lyrics, visuals and the background music.
Just a quick warning, there is some harsh language, but it’s infrequent.
I can’t even think of what tone this has.
Agreed, this is one of my favorite soundtracks, and they brought back the original composer for Xenoblade Chronicles 2! @any13th Check out the official site, there are a few tracks from the game!
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I’ve been trying to find some good Japanese EDM, does anyone have suggestions? (I’ll also take suggestions for more traditional Japanese music artists, I have no clue where to start looking there).
Thanks!
-Tomoya
