Well, basically the title says it all. What is your favourite music? Do you listen to a certain kind of music or are you someone who just likes it all? Do you have a guilty pleasure, which you will not speak of to anyone but listen to every day?

My favourite kind of music is any melodious music, with a guitar in it. I really like bands from the '80's like a-ha, but also Live and Gino Vannelli. I seem to prefer male voices, but I also love Duffy's voice.
And for a guilty pleasure: I like my classical music on Sunday mornings, yes. Nothing better than Beethoven and a glass of orange juice.

My music collection is ridiculous. (It continually competes with my book collection, which borders on insane.) At heart, I am a rocker. Am I getting too old to admit that I still love Led Zeppelin? Ahh, the perils of being too old to be cool...

I love the blues. There's something about the sound of a blues guitar that takes me to a place all my own.

Modern folk, country, celtic, new age, jazz, and some classical.... no rap and hip hop tries my patience.

I think many people do prefer a male's voice, though I don't know why that is. I agree about Duffy. She has a great voice. I also love female singers like Sharon den Adel, the lead for the group Within Temptation.

I don't think I have any guilty pleasures. I'm right out there with my eclectic taste. If I want to listen to the Bee Gees sing about my home state, I'll do it at full volume with no apologies!

Darcia wrote:

My music collection is ridiculous. (It continually competes with my book collection, which borders on insane.) At heart, I am a rocker. Am I getting too old to admit that I still love Led Zeppelin? Ahh, the perils of being too old to be cool...

My book collection also starts to border on insane, because I can buy ridiculous amounts of English books for the low low price of 2 euros a piece at a local book shop, which also boasts many second-hand classics. It's like being at a sweet shop and I can't pull myself away...
However, I've only got a few CD's, of which most are by Live, and one given to me by my uncle: Paco de Lucia plays Manuel de Falla (it's melodious guitar playing, but I love it!)
And you're never too old to be cool

Darcia wrote:

I love the blues. There's something about the sound of a blues guitar that takes me to a place all my own.

I like it too, but I don't like eleven blues songs in a row... Three at a time is good enough for me. Sometimes I just get too depressed by it. Do you experience anything similar or are you able to listen to eleven songs in a row?

Darcia wrote:

I think many people do prefer a male's voice, though I don't know why that is. I agree about Duffy. She has a great voice. I also love female singers like Sharon den Adel, the lead for the group Within Temptation.

Nationalism kicks in once again
I don't know why either. Most bands have a man as a leadsinger, although very few men have really got great voices. The women tend to be far better technically (although my ears generally prefer the jazzy ones, I don't like most of today's pop singers).

And I've found another guilty pleasure: I really, really like Christmas songs. I have no idea why. Maybe it's because they are all so happy and giddy and Christmasy.

Bookstores are addictive, aren't they?
Apparently, we Americans have a myopic view of the world since I rarely see books here in other languages. Then again, my ability to speak or read anything other than English is severely limited. Europeans stomp all over us in the language area! Where are you from?

Live is a great band. I love Ed Kowalczyk's voice. I've never heard of Paco de Lucia but I will have to check it out. I have some amazing guitar music. I also love the violin.

I agree that listening to an entire blues CD can sometimes border on depressing. That's especially true of certain types of blues music. (For me, anyway.) Modern blues or the more guitar-drive stuff (like Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Corey Stevens, Jeff Beck) doesn't make me sad. But the older stuff and some of the more mellow blues can definitely be tear-jerkers!

I don't tend to listen to one entire CD as much these days. I've gotten in the habit of plugging in my iPod and putting it on shuffle. That way I get always get an interesting mix.

Have you heard Peter Framptom's CD Fingerprints? He is amazing with the guitar. The CD is a mix of blues and jazz. No vocals.

I also agree about female pop singers. Though, honestly, I don't get into pop much in general, including the male singers. It feels rather... weak? I'm not sure if that's the word I'm looking for but it fits for now.

Christmas songs? Ha! Yes, they can be very upbeat and happy. Some can also be sad and melancholy. I don't like those. The holiday season can be stressful enough without sad Christmas songs.

Bookstores are definitely addictive... luckily for me the library is two minutes away from that particular bookstore preventing me to buy more than my wallet affords me...

Apparently, we Americans have a myopic view of the world since I rarely see books here in other languages. Then again, my ability to speak or read anything other than English is severely limited. Europeans stomp all over us in the language area! Where are you from?

Europeans are not necessarily stomping all over you in the language area. It's just unfortunate that you Americans already speak English so you don't need a second language.
I'm from the Netherlands (hence nationalistic feelings when it comes to Within Temptation) and as we like to think of ourselves to be the country where the first recession took place (yes, after tulip speculation failed...) we kind of boast we're a trading nation. Which makes our government put a lot of languages onto the school programme. I was taught German for two years, still take French classes even though I still speak better German than French (the similarity between Dutch and German definitely helps) and as English is now the only obligated language (two years ago, German and French were both obligated too) we do three hours of English a week and I do five because I'm enrolled in this Cambridge English programme. And I had a supershort course of Italian as we went to Rome and I followed a course of Russian. That's the Dutch language program for you
I thought, though, that Americans did have French classes, or am I mistaken?

I don't tend to listen to one entire CD as much these days. I've gotten in the habit of plugging in my iPod and putting it on shuffle. That way I get always get an interesting mix.

Same here. I don't really have the time anymore to sit back, relax and listen to a CD. I only do it when I'm dancing, I think. That way I can do a little mix of everything - warming-up, stretching, muscle training, the actual dancing and a cooling-down.

I will go and check Peter Frampton out!

I also agree about female pop singers. Though, honestly, I don't get into pop much in general, including the male singers. It feels rather... weak? I'm not sure if that's the word I'm looking for but it fits for now.

Sometimes I like it. But most of the pop music is so extremely generic these days - make a beat, write texts about love and get a famed singer to sing them - ta dah, you have an instant number one. That little wonderful thing called creativity often lacks nowadays. It all sounds the same. Only a few manage to do something different.

I have never liked sad Christmas songs either. Christmas is supposed to be a joyful, cosy time.

I love classical violin, there is something magical about it. My favorite CDs are from The Bond Girls, or just Bond, and Vanessa Mae. It is relaxing and invigorating at the same time.

Suzanne, do you like Prokofiev?

On another note. I would have to say my favorite pieces are Chaconne, Clair De Lune, Rachmaninoff Op.2 No.3, Well-Tempered Clavier, among others.

Hello Jlane5516:

I am not familiar with Prokofiev, thanks for the recomendation, I will have to take a listen.

lottebeertje wrote:Well, basically the title says it all. What is your favourite music? Do you listen to a certain kind of music or are you someone who just likes it all? Do you have a guilty pleasure, which you will not speak of to anyone but listen to every day?

My favourite kind of music is any melodious music, with a guitar in it. I really like bands from the '80's like a-ha, but also Live and Gino Vannelli. I seem to prefer male voices, but I also love Duffy's voice.
And for a guilty pleasure: I like my classical music on Sunday mornings, yes. Nothing better than Beethoven and a glass of orange juice.

Thanks lottebeertje! I like all music. I play classical guitar and piano and didgeridoo and sing. Today at church I played and sang part of the bass air 'he is become like a refiner's fire' from The Messiah by Handel. We also sang a lovely old hymn tune, Leoni, with new words, and my favourite, the Worker's Carol, written in Poland in 1942. I also got to help light the second candle of Advent, for peace.

On guitar, my favourites to play are the JS Bach first lute suite and A minor fugue. I can play the fugue in A minor badly. This lute fugue is also in the violin partita in G minor. I have adapted the prelude to the E minor lute suite as an introduction to Roll Over Beethoven by Chuck Berry, also covered by the Beatles. Others I best like to play are the Etudes and Preludes by Villa-Lobos, a collection of fifteenth century spanish vihuela music, Folk Songs of Cecil Duarte and Ralph Vaughn Williams, and pop music. I have made a collection of about two hundred of my favourite pop songs, many from http://guntheranderson.com/ , with words and chords for guitar. Some also are ones I have written, including settings of poems by William Butler Yeats. I'll have to post it on my website!

My favourites to sing are Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Australian rock music, the list goes on. My favourite songs to sing by Johnny Cash are Big River, Home of the Blues and Folsom Prison Blues.

On piano, I can play Chopin's first and second Nocturnes in G flat minor and E flat major, and struggle with the others. These days I tend to play piano with just melody, alto and simplified base line.

I also like Prokofiev, especially Peter and the Wolf, but imagine him quaking in his boots for fear of Stalin.

My daughter Diana Tulip is likely to star as Anita in the Radford College production of West Side Story here in Canberra next year. Anita is the Puerto Rican lady with the lead on America. Get your tickets early.

Australia to win the World Cup!!!

Thanks again for thinking of this question.

Robert

Jlane5516 wrote:On another note. I would have to say my favorite pieces are Chaconne, Clair De Lune, Rachmaninoff Op.2 No.3, Well-Tempered Clavier, among others.

Clair De Lune is so invigoratingly beautiful!
I like Prokofiev as well, I stumbled by chance on a production of Romeo and Juliet with Nureyev the day before yesterday on the BBC... absolutely stunning music and it fits really well with the story.
Have you ever listened to Khachaturian? His Armenian background provides a very different sound than all the others have. I especially like 'Masquerade'.
Having said this, I also love Stravinsky.

On guitar, my favourites to play are the JS Bach first lute suite and A minor fugue. I can play the fugue in A minor badly. This lute fugue is also in the violin partita in G minor. I have adapted the prelude to the E minor lute suite as an introduction to Roll Over Beethoven by Chuck Berry, also covered by the Beatles. Others I best like to play are the Etudes and Preludes by Villa-Lobos, a collection of fifteenth century spanish vihuela music, Folk Songs of Cecil Duarte and Ralph Vaughn Williams, and pop music. I have made a collection of about two hundred of my favourite pop songs, many from http://guntheranderson.com/ , with words and chords for guitar. Some also are ones I have written, including settings of poems by William Butler Yeats. I'll have to post it on my website!

On piano, I can play Chopin's first and second Nocturnes in G flat minor and E flat major, and struggle with the others. These days I tend to play piano with just melody, alto and simplified base line.

My daughter Diana Tulip is likely to star as Anita in the Radford College production of West Side Story here in Canberra next year. Anita is the Puerto Rican lady with the lead on America. Get your tickets early.

It's great that you're able to play so much! I don't play an instrument (well, on the piano I can play Für Elise badly and Ode to Joy - but my fingers are too short to reach an octave, so I play half octaves - and on the guitar I can play the opening tune of Nothing Else Matters (which really isn't that difficult), Smoke on the Water and some song by Nirvana). Great that you play the didgeridoo!

I will give a listen to Villa-Lobos. Sounds exactly as if I will enjoy it greatly. I also love Ralph Vaughn Williams, especially Fantasia on Greensleeves. Great that you have set Yeats on music. I read yesterday that classical composers put poems to music all the time - Grieg did Peer Gynt, Beethoven of course An die Freude, someone else did Goethe...

And you definitely seem to like deep male voices!

Good luck to your daughter in her West Side Story production! (Bernstein is also very good!)