I have to admit that as much as music has always been my overriding primary interest, the more you get involved in the actual business side of things and delve into writing, recording and producing your own songs, the more the magic of music gets stripped away under a veneer of detail. More and more I’ve found myself listening not necessarily to a song, but the instrumentation, the mix, what production techniques have been used and any number of other things that are, well, not the song. This has just been a kind of evolution from when I started playing the drums and so for a couple of years really listened to nothing in music except what the drums were doing.
I went to see Dream Theater on their Systematic Chaos tour, and supporting them were Symphony X, a band I had heard of but never really listened to. I thought their performance was great, and the music came across really well. So I promptly waited almost 12 months before buying their latest record when casually browsing the music section on Amazon. It’s the first album in absolutely ages that I’ve had and just played because the songs blow my socks off. And it’s a great feeling. For those of you who don’t know Symphony X, they’re a Progressive Metal band, which means heavy playing, odd time signatures and technical prowess on the instruments. In other words, plenty for an anorak like me to sit down and soak up, working out where ‘1’ is and absorbing every technical musical detail. But I don’t want to. I currently love just rocking out like a kid discovering music for the first time. It’s something that has been missing from my listening for quite a while, and I’m keen to retain it. It’s possibly the only downside to being a musician, in that because I ‘understand’ it, I’m wont to analyse it, rather than just enjoy it. So I’m just going to spend a bit of time listening without prejudice again. At least until next time I hear a drum part that goes over the barline...
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