My mother, after picking up my car from where I left it at work, because I was injured and had to be taken home:

"I know why you write music the way you do. Because I drove your car last night, and that stuff is what you think is normal."

Talking about Bartok's string quartets.

@ziphi Bartok is good listening though. haven't been in the mood for classical stuff in a while but definitely good choice
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@Felthry She's not the best with dissonance. Likes a lot of prog rock, but just doesn't get into any classical past the Romantic Period.
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@ziphi I thought prog rock was one of those genres that used dissonance a lot? though I guess Bartok is probably about the most extreme you can get with dissonance before going into atonal stuff
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@Felthry It can be. Depends on what you listen to though. She's really into Rush and Yes, with Rush being pretty straight-forward with a rock sound, and Yes a bit more jazzy. As for newer stuff (relatively), she likes Porcupine Tree, which can get a little dissonant. It's just done in a way that sounds more familiar to her, so she doesn't recognize it as "wrong." But some of the stuff I write, as well as my more post modern tastes strike her as sounding like "the wrong notes being played," probably due to unfamiliarity.

@ziphi We just like weird (usually implying dissonant, but sometimes surprise octave jumps) note choices keeping us guessing, sometimes
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@ziphi certainly something that can be done very wrong! but also that can be done very right.
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@Felthry It's hard to qualify what I like in music. I'd say "complexity" but that can be a useless descriptor. Counterpoint, dissonance, rich harmonies contrasted against stark monophonic sections, dense and difficult rhythms, as well as odder things like polyrhythms and polymeter.

I suppose I'm looking for anything that pushes my understanding of music in a way that fascinates my brain.

@ziphi yeah it's hard to put words to it for us too

we value familiarity, which is why most of what we listen to is video game music from games we enjoyed, but the stuff that makes us interested in the music in the first place is hard to pin down
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We can certainly list things that we *don't* like in music, though.
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@Felthry I'm not sure I can even list the things I dislike. Other than bad musicianship, just about everything can be done well.

Except for soulless Christian Contemporary Music, written to be as simple, easy to play, and generally inoffensive to people who might have accidentally wandered into the contemporary service at church instead of the traditional as possible.

And sidechain compression making the rest of the music quieter every time the bass drum is played.

@ziphi that sidechain compression thing is one of the things we dislike because it's just viscerally uncomfortable for us to listen to

the other thing is music with singing
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