This Is How We Experiment

I’m finding it hard to get to sleep at night. In the lecture this week, we learned that Wagner described discovering the work of Liszt as being like a sedative that enabled him to sleep. My favourite music by Wagner is Ride Of The Valkyries:

It’s no wonder he couldn’t sleep with that sort of thing going on in his head.

Maybe Liszt would work for me too. I did some extensive research and discovered that Liszt’s music is rather more prosaic:

This is a great example of how purposeful exploration can not only expand our musical practice, but improve people’s lives.

Truth be told, the coronavirus lockdown doesn’t affect me because the mountain of homework I have for my Psychology 1001 research assignment means I don’t have time to leave the house anyway. But I was starting to wonder why I was even studying music at university in the first place.

And it’s only week 7 of a 4 year degree.

So I took a bit of time out and tried just listening to music for enjoyment again, starting with my favourite indie band Foster The People on YouTube, and seeing what other recommendations I got. I felt restless just sitting there listening. Well, actually I was watching the music videos, but I wanted to get up and do something productive.

But heck, what’s the point of studying music if you can’t enjoy just listening to it any more?

I pushed through my restlessness and kept listening. In the process I discovered that Foster The People had featured on the song Ride Or Die by an awesome EDM duo called The Knocks:

Why the heck I hadn’t heard of them before? Fortunately, collaboration made it possible. Since then, I can’t get their song Trouble out of my head; probably because I play it over and over several times every day:

I’m a bit like that; when I really like a song, I put it on autorepeat. I once played Paul Kelly’s Pouring Petrol On A Burning Man continuously for over 2 hours while driving to a camping trip with my friends. It’s no wonder nobody wanted to ride with me.

By the way, if you liked Trouble, check out this video where The Knocks talk about how they made it, and why Ableton craps all over Protools:

Next week maybe I’ll probably check out Absofacto, and see where the collaboration train takes me next. Hopefully in the meantime Liszt will grant me the good night’s sleep I crave.