Music related YouTube channels to understand and appriciate music more
I'm trying to learn to listen more consciously to albums and not just individual songs that get recommended by the Spotify algorithm. Unfortunately, I'm at a point where I struggle with appreciating good music as I'm mainly used to just use it as background noise.
Can anyone recommend good channels that dive deeper into songs and talk about the individual instruments? I'm also interested in artist showcases that explain what it took to create the song, their inspiration and reasoning behind it.
I think I just want to be able to appreciate music more and be able to understand whats going on.
My favorite genres are Rock, Hard Rock, Metal, and Rock and Roll type of things.
I've been watching a bunch of
https://www.youtube.com/@DrumeoOfficial
https://www.youtube.com/@MusoraOfficial
and found it really interesting.
Any input is greatly appreciated :)
Polyphonic does a fantastic job doing deep dives from the cultural side of things: https://youtube.com/@polyphonic
12tone is more of a nuts and bolts approach: https://youtube.com/@12tone
Both channels are excellent, and also on Nebula.
Hadn't seen Polyphonic before. Looks great. Subscribed!
https://youtube.com/@adamneely https://youtube.com/@pianoteofficial https://youtube.com/@DavidBennettPiano
Stop using spotify/streaming for enjoy music (you can use it for discovering) and download/rip FLACs instead. Start your album collection by your favorites and find good albums using albumoftheyear.org and asking to audiophiles (like me!) for album suggestion, also Wikipedia.
3 essentials:
Also learning to play an instrument and watching musicians play live can help you.
Low End University analyzes songs from the bass players' perspective. I discovered the channel when he reacted to The Decline by NOFX. I knew the song before, but LEU brought so much analysis and a fresh perspective into it, that I appreciate the song even more now.
Check out https://www.youtube.com/@RickBeato for some background on the music industry and history (including interviews with industry veterans).
Also for rock history specifically (mostly 1970s to 1990s) see https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorofRock He includes a lot of background on why certain songs / albums were made and what motivated & influenced the artists. Clickbait titles though; I don't like that practice...
The podcast Song Exploder might be of interest? They have an artist on to explain every bit of how they made a song. Lyrics, samples, instrument choices, etc. It's really interesting.
Captain Pikant's "Drum Patterns Explained" can be interesting, even as someone not into music theory/not a musician
I don't know if this
fortsort of thing will float your boat, https://www.youtube.com/@TheCharismaticVoice, Beth is an Opera singer and she does deep dives on firstly songs then continues to dive deeper into artists/bandsSeconding this. I'm generally not a fan of reaction videos but Charismatic Voice is amazing at picking out vocal techniques and explaining them. There's genuine joy in what she does and it shows. It's also been fun watching her get acclimated to metal over the years... pretty sure she has more tolerance for screaming than I do lol.
I feel besides watching stuff, learning to play practically any instrument or even just software to make music will also give you a lot more insight into music.
I think also good making of docs and recording session stuff will help. Hard part is finding the good ones.
I like this channel https://www.youtube.com/@RadiorockTheOriginal
it often publishes entire albums, often new ones.