Ask HN: How to Become a Music Buff?
Knowing what music you <i>like</i> would be helpful in a discussion like this.  (Context:  I&#x27;ve spent a lot of my career working in music or music software.)<p>It&#x27;s difficult to expand your musical horizons just by shooting in the dark at things you <i>should</i> like.  But often you can build bridges to new things by exploring their musical ancestors and descendants.  Like classic rock?  Start listening to some blues, then go from there to jazz.  Like hip hop?  Move backwards through disco, funk, soul, and, well, there we&#x27;re back to jazz.<p>Classical music is a somewhat harder nut to crack if you don&#x27;t gravitate towards it.  What I&#x27;ve found, however is that some people think they don&#x27;t like classical because they don&#x27;t like Mozart, but then you play something a bit more modern (say, Stravinsky or so) and that grabs their attention.<p>If you like electronic stuff, one great book that I read years back, and have since passed on to several people is this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Electronic-Experimental-Music-Technology-Culture&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1138365467" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Electronic-Experimental-Music-Technol...</a><p>It does a very good job of drawing a line from musique concrète and impressionism all the way through modern stuff like DJ Spooky.  There are older editions of the book that are cheaper used and should be just fine.<p>If you list some of the things you <i>do</i> like, then it&#x27;d be easier for riff off of that to give you some suggestions for what might expand your horizon.  There&#x27;s no shame in having unsophisticated tastes at first.  I remember having a student who started off wanting to learn Limp Bizket, and we worked from there to Rage Against the Machine, then from there to things like King Crimson and eventually a couple years later he was into pretty sophisticated fusion stuff.<p>(Edit:  fixed the link)