The Music Thread

[nick_op]

Nice idea for a thread.

I'm a classically trained pianist (and have been for 11 years) and also an electric guitarist. Music is the one thing I'm good at - if you took it away from me you'd find that I have no other useful skills whatsoever.

I'm a music tutor (teaching piano and electric guitar) and also a gigging musician (though I won't provide a link at the moment as two members of the band I'm in left recently and we're in the process of re-jigging everything to work for the remaining four of us).

In terms of interests, on the classical side of things I'm a huge fan of Rachmaninoff, Bach, Kuhlau, Granados and Chopin. I also quite like Debussy and Lizst - anything a bit quirky is interesting to me.

On the rock side of things, my favourite band is Muse. The sheer craftmanship of their music combined with the grandiose operatics is something that's too rarely seen in music these days (Queen got it right). Other rock bands I like are Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against The Machine.

To be honest, though, I'm pretty open minded about music - give me something that makes use of the harmonic minor and diminished chords to generate tension and I'll be happy. Anything that's quirky is also good in my book. In general I tend to identify what's popular and go for the opposite - sometimes intentionally, but most of the time it's unintentional. This applies to all aspects of my life, not just music.

I'll stop now before I get seriously talking about music theory - I have a habit of baffling people by getting carried away talking about theory.