Sidebar: Learn to like things

“I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony. Then I listened to it a couple more times, because I couldn't believe Frank Zappa could do this to me – and because a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realized they were doing it on purpose; they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I'd ever heard.”

- Matt Groening on Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart

A little point of doctrine here— like, this is how I believe musicians are supposed to be. There are certain liberties average schmucks in the street are allowed, that people who are serious about music are not. 

We're not free to indulge our immediate taste. You don't get to only listen to what you like, or play what you like— you don't get to skip or ignore things you don't immediately like.  

When I was a student, there was no endless free music. You had to buy records, or a friend of yours had to play them for you. Or you could get them from the library. Music was fairly scarce, so when you spent the money to get something, you would listen to it a few times and make an effort at learning to like it. You would give some credit to the idea that if it got put on a record, and people say it's good, you give it a chance. 

Professional-aspiring musicians— either you're a professional, you want to be a professional, or you want to be like a professional, because that's what being a good musician is— have to play a lot of music that is not to their personal taste. Most of us can't only do gigs we like— and in order to not be miserable, you have to embrace those types of music a little bit. Enough to enjoy the gig, and play well on it. 

And no blanket dismissal of music based on “genre”— what genre is/is not is a subject for another post— no dismissal based on marketing labels or categories. You have to listen and make your assessments based on individual pieces of music. 

And you limit your critical assessments. You listen like a professional and you figure out what a recording can teach you related to your job. On hearing an unfamiliar piece of music, “do I dig this” is the last thing you should be thinking about, not the first.  

We are creative artists, not just employees, so you do have to have music that speaks to you personally and immediately— you may also find that a much wider variety of music does that, once you start listening this way.