r/musicology

You know what's the most emotional feeling ,when you have no one to talk on the days you don't feel like yourself and the days you question yourself and your existence

For me music is the most important on my darkest days sometimes music gets me and and for most people reading out this thing I know it's the therapy for you guys also and most importantly whenever I feel alone I listen to music in and I feelI that I am being listen and someone out there can also relate to this thing I think that music is so special for me some time artist make songs but they did not know the impact they will leave on the people like me and you I think even if you have people I know it's important and everyone should have peole around you who understands you but you should take music so important sometimes tunes , lyrics, instruments get me more than the most human being around me that it made me think that how I feel music is this important.

Whenever I am sad or I am crying I listen to music and when the song ends I think that makes most of the problem is solved

>For me i think magic shop by bts is the song which gets me I think that I have found a reason to carry on because of them, motivation the members and line which gets me"you give me the best of me so you give the best of you"

Hello friends!! I am studying for my diagnostic exams for grad school. It seems I've sold my copy of the 9th edition of History of Western Music by Burkholder, Grout, and Palisca..

Does anyone have a PDF of it I could study from? The exam is Friday 8/21.

Thanks!!

This discussion is for my literary studies course. The "Death of the Author" made me question my understanding of a story, and whether I only considered it from one perspective. After reading "The Death of the Author," I considered whether or not the performative part of an artist's concert/tour influenced the way a listener perceives the meaning of the song. For example, someone like Taylor swift, who may perform almost like a play, that depicts her intention of what she wants the song to mean, may be limiting to the listener's imagination. While someone like Adele draws less attention to the physical performance, and focuses more on the vocals, which provides an opportunity for her fans to develop their own meaning of the song. What I don't understand is how someone is supposed to "bury" the author when the "author" is the one preforming in front of you, in the way they want you to interpret the story.

I may be overthinking this, but I got some interesting feedback about a new pop song I helped write and produce.

Someone pointed out that the title has a biblical association, so people might see it and immediately assume it is gospel without listening. That honestly caught me off guard because the song itself is very much modern pop.

The title was chosen because of the metaphor and deeper meaning behind it, not because we were trying to label the song as religious music.

It made me wonder how often this happens. Have you ever skipped a song because the title made you expect a certain genre, only to find out later that it sounded completely different?

I’ve been thinking about this lately.
I’ve always been a music lover first. ❤️ I listen to music because I genuinely enjoy it — the vocals, instruments, arrangements, little background details and all those tiny layers you sometimes don’t notice on normal earphones.
Recently, I started getting more into FLAC, IEMs and better-quality audio. And now I sometimes find myself replaying a song just to listen to a particular instrument or background vocal I missed the first time. 😂
So my journey is basically:
Music lover ❤️ → FLAC collector 🎵 → IEM user 🎧
But I’m still not sure where the line is between being a music lover and being an audiophile.
Does owning/using better audio gear make someone an audiophile?
Or is it more about genuinely caring about sound quality and listening critically?
What do you guys think — when would you consider someone an audiophile rather than just a music lover?

The Menace of Mechanical Music
John Philip Sousa
Appleton's Magazine
Vol. 8 (1906)
pp. 278-284.

...

I foresee a marked deterioration in American music and musical taste, an interruption in the musical development of the country, and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue -- or rather by vice -- of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines.

...

And now, in this the twentieth century, come these talking and playing machines, and offer again to reduce the expression of music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, cylinders, and all manner of revolving things, which are as like real art as the marble statue of Eve is like her beautiful, living, breathing daughters.

...

Full article here:
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/21m-380-music-and-technology-contemporary-history-and-aesthetics-fall-2009/18ab3aba9fe7aa1502a55cd049333659_MIT21M_380F09_read02_sousa.pdf

In 2023, tools like Suno, Riffusion, and AudioCraft were in a very different stage compared to today. The early v0/v1 generations were often strange, imperfect, and experimental — short clips that felt more like prototypes of a new medium than finished songs.

What interests me is not just the technology itself, but the human perspective around that moment in time.

I was an early adopter who used these tools extensively during that period — not just casually experimenting, but being deeply immersed in the process. Over time, I naturally curated what I considered the most interesting, unique, or memorable examples rather than simply keeping every raw generation.

That makes me wonder: does that kind of firsthand curation have historical value?

When early synthesizers, computer music systems, samplers, and electronic instruments first appeared, many of their early experiments were also viewed as strange or disposable. In hindsight, those recordings became important because they documented the first stages of a new creative technology.

AI music may eventually have a similar history. The earliest generations may not be valuable because they are technically impressive by today's standards, but because they capture what it felt like when this technology first became accessible to everyday creators.

AI companies may have enormous internal datasets of generations, but a raw database does not necessarily contain the human context of:

• which generations stood out
• which represented interesting breakthroughs
• what creative approaches produced memorable results
• what early AI music actually felt like to experience at that moment

I'm curious whether early AI music should be preserved as part of music history — similar to early electronic music, computer music experiments, or early internet art — or whether these artifacts will ultimately be viewed as disposable experiments.

Working on a listening space here in New Orleans and want to build a catalog for discovery across genres, artists, labels, etc. Also, build a list of other amazing resources online. Hope you like it.

https://catchthefrequency.com/back-catalog
Find artists. See timelines. See mind maps.

https://catchthefrequency.com/back-catalog/albums/jazz
Dig into albums.

https://catchthefrequency.com/back-catalog/mindmap
Mind Map across all Genres

https://catchthefrequency.com/explore
Music Resources/Indexes

Work in progress.

I've recently noticed that listening to music on my private time tends to usually create negative or stressful thoughts, more specifically it makes me feel like I'm living my life wrongly.

I am regularly able to cope with life or ignore my thoughts, but whenever I feel like I could listen to some music, these overwhelming emotions start to bother me, it feels like I've been bottling them up and the music only reminds me of them.

It doesn't have to be a music specifically about the topic that bothers me, it just has to be an emotional song and it makes me spiral in my mind about random things.

I am generally not in the best mental state myself, so I'm confused onto whether these emotions are impulsive or unhealthy temptations themselves or if I'm being escapist and the music only reminds me of my escapism and bad habits.