What’s on my iPod? | The Buzz | Music

Kashmir - Led Zeppelin
This song signals an important turning point in the history of rock music. The result of extra-homework by guitarist Jimmy Page and drummer John Bonham, this is one of my all time favorites.

Who Made Who – ACDC
This song is straight from the mid 80s, and I love this song because it is hard rock yet is soothing to my soul.

Yesterday
- The Beatles
The song that holds the record of being covered by the maximum number of artists, no need to explain why.

Wild Horses
The Rolling Stones
A true melody created by Gram Parsons and Keith Richards Richards' 12-stringed guitar makes it sound even more majestic.

Everybody Hurts - R.E.M.
The voice of Michael Stipe is so magical and the lyrics of this song literally touch my heart.

Paranoid Android - Radiohead
I listen to this song throughout the year because of its darkly humorous lyrics combined with an insane musical creativity that very few other bands can boast of.

Sano Prakash - Atomic Bush
Had this song been released in the US or Europe, it could have made them millions. Such is the beauty of this song. I think this is arguably the best metal song ever created in Nepal.

Hurricane- Bob Dylan
Hurricane is more than just a song. Every time I listen to it, I feel I am listening to a story, or watching a movie.

Dakota - Stereophonics
A Beatles influenced band makes their ultimate song with the simplest of musical details.

Shine On You Crazy Diamonds
- Pink Floyd
A 13 and half minute journey through
the dense psychedelic cloud created
by the genius called Pink Floyd.

A MUSICAL Journey

Deexit Amatya

By better understanding what music is and where it comes from, we may be able to better understand our motives, fears, desires, memories, and even communication in the broadest sense. Is music listening more along the lines of eating when you're hungry, and thus satisfying an urge? Or is it more like seeing a beautiful sunset and knowing innately what you feel?

It was the year 1997 when my father bought me a stereo system at the Sony hi-fi shop. I spent long afternoons in my room, listening to music: The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, CCR, Muddy Waters and Ray Charles mostly. I didn't listen particularly loud, at least not compared to my college days when I actually set my loudspeakers on fire by cranking up the volume too high, but the noise was evidently too much for my parents. My father is a businessman, and being the businessman that he is, my father made me a proposition: He would also buy me a pair of headphones if I would promise to use them when he was home. Those headphones forever changed the way I listened to music.

I had never before heard the depth that I could hear in the headphones—the placement of instruments both in the left-right field and in the front-back (reverberant) space.

To me, records were no longer just about the songs anymore, but about the sound. Headphones opened up a world of sonic colours, a palette of nuances and details that went far beyond the chords and melodies, the lyrics, or a particular singer's voice. The swampy Deep South ambience of 'Green River' by Credence Clearwater Revival, or the open-spaced beauty of the Beatles' 'Mother Nature's Son'; the sound was an enveloping experience. Headphones also made the music more personal for me; it was suddenly coming from inside my head, not from out there in the world.

I came across many people who listened to different genres and I tried to listen to the songs they liked and recommended, but it was as if we lived in two different solar systems. I found most of the pop music of the day largely imbecilic and most other types just discordant. My friends never seemed to understand the simple soothing air which comes out of a saxophone and the drum beat which makes you tap your feet for hours, like the music of Ray Charles or Muddy Waters and Miles Davies can. It wasn't until my late teenage years that I had understood what it is that music makes me feel. When a musical piece is too simple we tend not to like it, finding it trivial. When it is too complex, we tend not to like it either, finding it unpredictable as it isn't grounded in anything familiar.

Music, or any art form for that matter, has to strike the right balance between simplicity and complexity in order for us to like it. Simplicity and complexity relate to familiarity, and familiarity is just another word for schema. Music that involves too many chord changes, or unfamiliar structure, can lead many listeners straight to the nearest exit, or to the 'skip' button on their music players.

The power of music to evoke emotions is harnessed by advertising executives, filmmakers, and mothers. Advertisers use music to make a soft drink, beer, running shoe, or car seem more hip than their competitors'. Film directors use music to tell us how to feel about scenes that otherwise might be ambiguous, or to augment our feelings at particularly dramatic moments. Think of a typical chase scene in an action film, or the music that might accompany a lone woman climbing a staircase in a dark old mansion: Music is being used to manipulate our emotions, and we tend to accept, if not outright enjoy, the power of music to make us experience these different feelings. Mothers throughout the world, and as far back in time as we can imagine, have used soft singing to soothe their babies to sleep, or to distract them from something that has made them cry.

Today I hear music in even the most mundane of activities and appreciate different sounds, tunes and varieties. Norah Jones and Madeleine Peyroux soothe my senses, Kidrock makes me want to sing along and Albatross is one of the finest Nepali rock bands around today. But at the end of the day, having navigated a musical journey spanning different genres, across distance and time, Ray Charles crooning 'After my Laughter come Tears' is what music to me is still all about.