Music explorer

I don’t want to sound like an old fart, but when I was young teenager, I would have done pretty much anything to have access to as much music as we do these days with all the streaming services, Youtube, Soundcloud… I must admit there was something romantic about swapping tapes with our friends and discovering new music. Now we give out about the quality we loose when we convert music to mp3’s. Try copying from vinyl to cassette, or even better from cassette to cassette. It was muddy as hell!

Now we have access to all our favourite artists records as soon as they pop up on Spotify or Youtube. And think for second how many new artists have you found based on Spotify recommendations, or the YouTube recommended play lists? I love it, and I am not shamed to say it.

Still, with these automated music suggestions, most of the time the A.I. fails in knowing what I might like. But hey, you got to love the machine for trying 😉 I still find most of my new music through recommendations of friends or people online. Twitter has been a real treasure trove for that.

Again I am not sure if this is an age thing, or just normal highs and lows of life, but when I was young I was hungry for new music. I listen to songs that spoke to me over and over again. I fell a sleep with my headphones on listening to music.

After I moved to Ireland, music became my work. I started to play more and more. I still had friends who gave me CD’s to listen to and I would buy an occasional album. But in my late twenties, somewhere between playing six to seven days a week, I lost the hunger.

This was a dark time in many ways. But somehow with time I found my way back to the music. Slowly and surely it became more than just a job, and made its way back to my life. I felt almost like I had reborn. Thinking back now I think we sometimes associate music with things in our life’s, and sometimes those things might not be good. That’s what had happened to me. Now I listen to music a lot. I look for new artists all the time.

For some of us (if you are reading this, more than likely this means you) music is much more than just form of entertainment to keep us amused. It is a life line. It keeps us going when all else fails. And even though creating music is my life, still deep inside I am that little kid falling a sleep with the headphones on. I am a music explorer 🙂

What does music mean to you? And has your relationship with music changed over the years?

J.P.

The author J.P. Kallio is a singer songwriter
To get EIGHT of his songs for free go HERE