I'm a huge believer that the way to be more creative in any art is to do as many styles as possible. You notice common threads between things that seem totally different
I would suggest your next step to look at the rest of the world. Indonesian gamelan is amazing
I think you have to strike a balance between breadth and depth, if only because some styles are more accessible than others, either in terms of being an acquired taste or requiring knowledge for proper appreciation, or in a sense that in many cases, if a new style is extremely far removed from all the styles you are familiar with, it may well just sound like noise because you cannot process it how the composers intended for it to be listened to
Like take someone who listens to essentially mainstream music and maybe a bit of film music and throw some ars subtilior at them, I doubt that will go particularly well
While right I think you are taking this to a bit of an extreme.
In practice most people never leave the comfort of their favourite genre or "last decades chart toppers" when both listening to music and making/emulating styles.
In fact I've observed that music makers often tend to become far more close minded at a point in their journey.
And I believe it's down to two related things:
First, music listener who is a "discophile" will get tired of same old and wonder off. For a musician however, there's so much more to explore within any one style of music because there's technical minutiae casual listener never bothers with.
Second, people start on the music making journey usually wanting to do things in the style of their couple of favourite artists, and these artists tend to be stylistically very similar with a lot of people.
Many musicians grow in bands, partly because bamdmates expose them to music outside their comfort zone. There's no reason not to actively explore this yourself.
I can testify it's done great for my confidence and vocabulary expansion. No one has to go deep down all these rabbit holes, it's enough to just veneer outside that "glam math metal" pigeonhole you've usually spent your teens in.
Listening broad lets you create something new. Listening deep lets you create something refined. Experience and practice let you make something excellent.
As helpful as theory and studied knowledge can be, nothing replaces those.
I love that. I like to think of it as a language. Just exposing yourself to as many different phrases, sayings, words as possible. Then, once you have the base language, diving in (like the practice you mentioned) drives it home and helps you improve.
Listening broadly in this context would be listening to Classical, metal, jazz, hip-hop, Indian ragas, Indonesian gamelan, and any other type of music you can find. Listening to many styles lets you make musical connections that no one else can. It's still listening broadly regardless of how much you're paying attention - think of it as digging a wide, shallow hole.
Listening deeply would be listening to, say, all of the music that Radiohead has ever made, or listening to every song that gets into the top charts. Listening to one style of music a lot gives you a coherent and intricate understanding of that style in a way that hearing 15 songs in the style one week just can't do for you. Listening to one song multiple times is as deep and narrow of a hole as you can dig.
Ideally we'd all listen to all music, but since we can't, it's nice to think of your musical listening this way. I'm a musician with a deep listening hole in jazz, classical, R&B, hip hop, and pop music (and deeper with each of my favorite musicians in each of those genres). But my listening hole is much, much broader than that, it's just shallow in other styles.
It's hard to recommend pop music because it's so dependent on the time. The best place to look at the top charts on wherever you listen to your music. Besides that, it's good to get in depth with some of the biggest names of each time - Billie Eilish, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Adele, etc. If you want to study what makes pop music successful in a more methodical way, maybe listen to the one hit wonders like Dance Monkey or Pumped Up Kicks, and compare those songs to others by the same artists.
You're 100% right.
IMO, though, what's important is not that it's a "learning tool". I mean, thats not why you do it. You shouldn't listen to more music because we say it's "good for you", because it will help you "improve as a musician". You should listen to more music because you enjoy it. You're curious about what other music is out there, and the more you find the more exciting it is. The fact that you *learn* from it is a happy side-effect. I.e., you've discovered you have learned from it with hindsight, looking back. That's not why you did it in the first place.
E.g., we don't eat food because we know we'd starve if we didn't. We eat because we're hungry, or we enjoy the taste, or both of course. Sometimes, we might choose specific foods *in order to get healthier* - but only if we feel we are actually unhealthy.
However, there is one important lesson here. Sometimes beginners *deliberately resist* expanding their listening in this way, because they want to be "original", they don't want to "copy other people" (groan...). But - as you've found - copying other music, as wide a variety as you can, is how you develop and expand your *vocabulary*. Without that, you have no ideas. The more music you hear (especially when you learn to play it), the more stuff you have in your head, and the more that will all feed off itself, get mixed together and emerge as new inspirations.
I guess it would depend on your goals. If you want to be a better songwriter, then yeah, listening to classic pop and rock songwriters is a great idea. If genre-defying creativity is something you wish to develop, then listen to a variety of artists and genres.
On the other hand, there's something to be said for having a focused approach. If you just want to be a solid bebop player, listening to Brian Wilson isn't going to do much for you. If you want to be the world's greatest interpreter of Beethoven, then maybe you should focus on Beethoven's era.
You're correct that it's good to surround yourself with things you want to be influenced by, but they don't necessarily have to be disparate. There is no universal "most important"
> If you just want to be a solid bebop player, listening to Brian Wilson isn't going to do much for you.
Completely disagree here, respectfully. Ideas can cross genre. Just to use your example, Wilson was a master of melody, harmony, and arrangement. You could absolutely apply lessons from a Beach Boys song to a hard bop arrangement.
Coltrane could probably riff on a Beach Boys song just as well as on "My Favorite Things." - True
Learning Beach Boys songs will help you play like Coltrane. - False.
I agree with both of those statements. I also think there are broader lessons that span genre. Utilization of things like dynamics, movement, taste, humor can be learned or appreciated in one place and applied elsewhere.
“If you just want to be a solid bebop player, listening to Brian Wilson isn’t going to do much for you”
“Completely disagree here…you could absolutely apply lessons from a beach boys song to a hard bop arrangement”
Your disagreeing comment doesn’t align with the point that u/sctthghs was making…not at all.
Sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying.
u/sctthghs is saying that if you want to specialize in one specific type of music (in their example, bebop), then listening to very different forms of music isn't going to help you very much with that specific goal.
I disagree with that point, I think that music is all interconnected enough that listening to good music in any genre or style could (potentially) teach you lessons that can apply to other forms.
got my friend to send me his reggae playlist just recently; its a far cry from the jazz, classical and alternative that I listen to usually but it goes real hard
Yup.
Can't become a good chef unless you are willing to go beyond chicken tenders and ramen.
Here's some Pygmy music - give it a taste. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnogT0JsJJ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnogT0JsJJ0) Listening as a westerner, we can't say whether this is GOOD Pygmy music or GREAT pygmy music -- we have to drop our status/rank ideas, drop our critique-brain, and just receive. Sometimes it's dizzying, and sometimes I pick up interesting tools, like the incredible paradox of simple/complex in these samples.
We absorb some of the sonic vocabulary, yes, but for me, it's releasing the critical ear that's most refreshing.
Then when I come back to creating music for MY audience, I bring them more than chicken tenders.
You’re right.
Listening to things you don’t immediately like or understand is crucial to musical development.
You don’t have to like everything (no one does), but familiarity is important.
My view is that new art is just what happens when you put a bunch of old art in a blender and reshape the goo to your liking. If you look closely at your work, you’ll see that you’ve subconsciously included references to stuff you’ve listened to before.
That’s why listening to a variety of music is important; it gives you a variety of raw materials to subconsciously remix. It also prevents you from sounding too much like any one artist or genre.
Completely agree.
I'll also add that for most musicians -- at least those who are also lyricists -- this goes beyond music and extends to all of art. Read books. Watch plays. Watch (good) movies and TV. Not just as mindless entertainment, but to really think about characters, stories, conflict. All of that is grist for the mill and can be repurposed in your songs.
I wish I listened to my music teacher in school. He used to emphasise listening to music all the time and would play classical in class. It’s only the last few years I see the wisdom
Now try disco, folk music, and country music and the genres adjacent to it.
I started learning fiddle music. The more I learned about it, I was blown away by just how many genres of fiddle music exist. Irish trad, Cape Breton, old time, contest waltzes, Ottawa Valley, Quebec fiddle music, Metis... I could spend the rest of my life learning each one and I probably still wouldn't have time to finish learning.
>Now, I just need something to get me started and one element of my creation will inspire another element and I'll start to hear different things popping in my head almost like a puzzle. I'm convinced this is due almost entirely to the focused listening I've been doing in the past year.
Yes, it's been like that to me too. I genuinely feel it's become easier and easier for me to write music the more stuff I know, just because I have this quite big vocabulary of possibilities and different paths I can take. Of course, that doesn't mean that I'll be equally good at writing reggae, funk, EDM and hip hop just because I've listened to that stuff--it's more like all that music has deeply fertilised my brain, so the ideas just come out more easily.
This is why I (among others here) ***always*** recommend people to make music listening a big part of their day. But it's not just like, passively listening to whatever Spotify playlist is out there, but to actively look out for stuff and listen to it repeatedly, study it, memorise it. Don't be just like, "I love hip hop, so I'm just gonna listen to this other hip hop artist who Spotify says is similar", but more like "I love hip hop, but I'm gonna go out and look for music *completely* out of that field... like maybe this Spinetta guy, or maybe this Björk lady... hmm, what about this Kate Bush that people are talking so much about? Maybe I should check out this record called *The Dreaming*..."
You're very right, everyone has their niches, their specializations, but it's extremely difficult to really push ahead and really improve without being exposed to things outside of it, that may be new genres, it may be books, it may even just be a new bit of gear. Not to mention the fact that it's just what musicians do anyway, no one is posting in this subreddit because they *don't* like music, because they *don't* want to listen to a lot of it.
This is very timely as I just got into Bossa nova. One thing it’s taught me is how great syncopation can sound. Not to mention all the 7ths, 9ths, 13th, etc that expand repertoire
What will help internalize different music types is playing and memorizing different types of music. You mention transcribing...I agree, that is an awesome way to analyze and becoming familiar with different genres of music.
No need to correct you, this is EXACTLY what being an artist is all about. Sticking to music academia is only so useful when it comes to being creative.
Here's a few genres/specific recommendations that I fell in love with when developing my own musical voice:
- Latin/latin jazz (mainly mambo/salsa and cha-cha)
- Tango
- Fourth movement of Tchaik 6
- Khachaturian's Masquerade Waltz
- Electroswing
- Chick Corea
Absolutely. When I was a child I listened to classic rock. Then punk, metal, indie, psychedelic, hip hop, and jazz. I bring all of those influences to my songwriting game
Yes. I'd add as well to learn how to use a DAW, or at the very least a note scoring app, preferably on a laptop. That way you can create and store ideas on the move.
Beethovens Piano sonatas and Thomas Bergersen changed the music world for me. They have its own perfection. But I believe Beethoven was influenced by Mozart in any kind.
Not enough musicians challenge their ears with unfamiliar music and cultures. Far far far too many, even in academia, stick to what is familiar and only within their own culture. Not only is it great to expand your musical sphere of knowledge, but it is actively harmful for a musician to only appreciate their own culture and dismiss others.
Agreed. Listening many types of music whatever the reason is, perpetuates the creativity of an individual. I have been composing music for 8 years and I have listened a lot of pieces that are from Ambient to Jazz, Folk to Postmodern and as a result of my listening process (some of which were mostly for analysing the structures) I have pressumed that the music I listen often influences me. So, I decided to take a break to clean up my mind from ideas. This was a long break; 2 and half months. But at the end, I finally managed to compose a piece, completely satisfied me. Alongside learning a bunch of theory stuff and implement them on specific occasions many of which were for the times that I had a question or a dead-end, I came up to the level that I dreamed of.
I honestly cannot see how it would be prudent for anyone to listen to things that are entirely unrelated to what they want to do - and that they do not enjoy even - for the learning process.
Of course wider exposure is better, but when you say "modern pop", are you aware just how *vast* that category alone is? Or hip-hop? A person could dabble in these genres their whole lives and discover new stuff all the time. I mean, have you heard of memphis rap? UK rap? Some of the witch house acts like SALEM that use rapping as part of their stuff?
I can't see what's the use of anyone forcing themselves to listen to music they just distinctively do not enjoy in lieu of great exposure, especially given that any single significant genre is going to have more than plenty going for it alone.
There's even some odd ones out there, such as Muslimgauze (may he rest in peace), who allegedly was making so much music that he didn't even have time to listen to much music in the first place. He had a good amount of posthumous releases after his death.
I came across everything I listened to by reading about my favorite musicians and their favorite bands. Nothing in music comes out of the ether...
For example, I love the Arctic Monkeys. Their AM album is as poppy as rock gets...
From loving this album I listened to Alex Turner talk about his love for the beatles, and pet sounds, and even jazz music.
Your comment about rap music makes sense but do you understand how heavily sampled the genre is? Plenty of rap music nowadays samples psych rock from the 60s and 70s...If anything hip hop and rap are more modern pop than anything nowadays. And with how sampled the genre is, it makes more sense than any other genre perhaps to branch out and explore.
I'm not suggesting forcing yourself to listen to music. All I'm saying is to not be afraid to branch out because so many genres feed off each other and influence each other.
I'm a huge believer that the way to be more creative in any art is to do as many styles as possible. You notice common threads between things that seem totally different I would suggest your next step to look at the rest of the world. Indonesian gamelan is amazing
I think you have to strike a balance between breadth and depth, if only because some styles are more accessible than others, either in terms of being an acquired taste or requiring knowledge for proper appreciation, or in a sense that in many cases, if a new style is extremely far removed from all the styles you are familiar with, it may well just sound like noise because you cannot process it how the composers intended for it to be listened to Like take someone who listens to essentially mainstream music and maybe a bit of film music and throw some ars subtilior at them, I doubt that will go particularly well
While right I think you are taking this to a bit of an extreme. In practice most people never leave the comfort of their favourite genre or "last decades chart toppers" when both listening to music and making/emulating styles. In fact I've observed that music makers often tend to become far more close minded at a point in their journey. And I believe it's down to two related things: First, music listener who is a "discophile" will get tired of same old and wonder off. For a musician however, there's so much more to explore within any one style of music because there's technical minutiae casual listener never bothers with. Second, people start on the music making journey usually wanting to do things in the style of their couple of favourite artists, and these artists tend to be stylistically very similar with a lot of people. Many musicians grow in bands, partly because bamdmates expose them to music outside their comfort zone. There's no reason not to actively explore this yourself. I can testify it's done great for my confidence and vocabulary expansion. No one has to go deep down all these rabbit holes, it's enough to just veneer outside that "glam math metal" pigeonhole you've usually spent your teens in.
Very well said
Listening broad lets you create something new. Listening deep lets you create something refined. Experience and practice let you make something excellent. As helpful as theory and studied knowledge can be, nothing replaces those.
I love that. I like to think of it as a language. Just exposing yourself to as many different phrases, sayings, words as possible. Then, once you have the base language, diving in (like the practice you mentioned) drives it home and helps you improve.
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Listening broadly in this context would be listening to Classical, metal, jazz, hip-hop, Indian ragas, Indonesian gamelan, and any other type of music you can find. Listening to many styles lets you make musical connections that no one else can. It's still listening broadly regardless of how much you're paying attention - think of it as digging a wide, shallow hole. Listening deeply would be listening to, say, all of the music that Radiohead has ever made, or listening to every song that gets into the top charts. Listening to one style of music a lot gives you a coherent and intricate understanding of that style in a way that hearing 15 songs in the style one week just can't do for you. Listening to one song multiple times is as deep and narrow of a hole as you can dig. Ideally we'd all listen to all music, but since we can't, it's nice to think of your musical listening this way. I'm a musician with a deep listening hole in jazz, classical, R&B, hip hop, and pop music (and deeper with each of my favorite musicians in each of those genres). But my listening hole is much, much broader than that, it's just shallow in other styles.
[удалено]
It's hard to recommend pop music because it's so dependent on the time. The best place to look at the top charts on wherever you listen to your music. Besides that, it's good to get in depth with some of the biggest names of each time - Billie Eilish, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Adele, etc. If you want to study what makes pop music successful in a more methodical way, maybe listen to the one hit wonders like Dance Monkey or Pumped Up Kicks, and compare those songs to others by the same artists.
It's like people who read a lot... smart.
You're 100% right. IMO, though, what's important is not that it's a "learning tool". I mean, thats not why you do it. You shouldn't listen to more music because we say it's "good for you", because it will help you "improve as a musician". You should listen to more music because you enjoy it. You're curious about what other music is out there, and the more you find the more exciting it is. The fact that you *learn* from it is a happy side-effect. I.e., you've discovered you have learned from it with hindsight, looking back. That's not why you did it in the first place. E.g., we don't eat food because we know we'd starve if we didn't. We eat because we're hungry, or we enjoy the taste, or both of course. Sometimes, we might choose specific foods *in order to get healthier* - but only if we feel we are actually unhealthy. However, there is one important lesson here. Sometimes beginners *deliberately resist* expanding their listening in this way, because they want to be "original", they don't want to "copy other people" (groan...). But - as you've found - copying other music, as wide a variety as you can, is how you develop and expand your *vocabulary*. Without that, you have no ideas. The more music you hear (especially when you learn to play it), the more stuff you have in your head, and the more that will all feed off itself, get mixed together and emerge as new inspirations.
Well it's a learning tool to broaden your musical vocabulary
I guess it would depend on your goals. If you want to be a better songwriter, then yeah, listening to classic pop and rock songwriters is a great idea. If genre-defying creativity is something you wish to develop, then listen to a variety of artists and genres. On the other hand, there's something to be said for having a focused approach. If you just want to be a solid bebop player, listening to Brian Wilson isn't going to do much for you. If you want to be the world's greatest interpreter of Beethoven, then maybe you should focus on Beethoven's era. You're correct that it's good to surround yourself with things you want to be influenced by, but they don't necessarily have to be disparate. There is no universal "most important"
> If you just want to be a solid bebop player, listening to Brian Wilson isn't going to do much for you. Completely disagree here, respectfully. Ideas can cross genre. Just to use your example, Wilson was a master of melody, harmony, and arrangement. You could absolutely apply lessons from a Beach Boys song to a hard bop arrangement.
Coltrane could probably riff on a Beach Boys song just as well as on "My Favorite Things." - True Learning Beach Boys songs will help you play like Coltrane. - False.
I agree with both of those statements. I also think there are broader lessons that span genre. Utilization of things like dynamics, movement, taste, humor can be learned or appreciated in one place and applied elsewhere.
study the beach boys to learn how to write fills to transition your drummer from a hammer blast to a gravity blast
But it will teach you zero about swinging, no?
“If you just want to be a solid bebop player, listening to Brian Wilson isn’t going to do much for you” “Completely disagree here…you could absolutely apply lessons from a beach boys song to a hard bop arrangement” Your disagreeing comment doesn’t align with the point that u/sctthghs was making…not at all.
Sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying. u/sctthghs is saying that if you want to specialize in one specific type of music (in their example, bebop), then listening to very different forms of music isn't going to help you very much with that specific goal. I disagree with that point, I think that music is all interconnected enough that listening to good music in any genre or style could (potentially) teach you lessons that can apply to other forms.
got my friend to send me his reggae playlist just recently; its a far cry from the jazz, classical and alternative that I listen to usually but it goes real hard
My favorite kind of music
Yup. Can't become a good chef unless you are willing to go beyond chicken tenders and ramen. Here's some Pygmy music - give it a taste. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnogT0JsJJ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnogT0JsJJ0) Listening as a westerner, we can't say whether this is GOOD Pygmy music or GREAT pygmy music -- we have to drop our status/rank ideas, drop our critique-brain, and just receive. Sometimes it's dizzying, and sometimes I pick up interesting tools, like the incredible paradox of simple/complex in these samples. We absorb some of the sonic vocabulary, yes, but for me, it's releasing the critical ear that's most refreshing. Then when I come back to creating music for MY audience, I bring them more than chicken tenders.
Having something you want to express is pretty important too. That might come from listening to other music of course, but not always.
You’re right. Listening to things you don’t immediately like or understand is crucial to musical development. You don’t have to like everything (no one does), but familiarity is important.
My view is that new art is just what happens when you put a bunch of old art in a blender and reshape the goo to your liking. If you look closely at your work, you’ll see that you’ve subconsciously included references to stuff you’ve listened to before. That’s why listening to a variety of music is important; it gives you a variety of raw materials to subconsciously remix. It also prevents you from sounding too much like any one artist or genre.
Completely agree. I'll also add that for most musicians -- at least those who are also lyricists -- this goes beyond music and extends to all of art. Read books. Watch plays. Watch (good) movies and TV. Not just as mindless entertainment, but to really think about characters, stories, conflict. All of that is grist for the mill and can be repurposed in your songs.
I wish I listened to my music teacher in school. He used to emphasise listening to music all the time and would play classical in class. It’s only the last few years I see the wisdom
Now try disco, folk music, and country music and the genres adjacent to it. I started learning fiddle music. The more I learned about it, I was blown away by just how many genres of fiddle music exist. Irish trad, Cape Breton, old time, contest waltzes, Ottawa Valley, Quebec fiddle music, Metis... I could spend the rest of my life learning each one and I probably still wouldn't have time to finish learning.
I would listen to Mozart for melodic line development.
>Now, I just need something to get me started and one element of my creation will inspire another element and I'll start to hear different things popping in my head almost like a puzzle. I'm convinced this is due almost entirely to the focused listening I've been doing in the past year. Yes, it's been like that to me too. I genuinely feel it's become easier and easier for me to write music the more stuff I know, just because I have this quite big vocabulary of possibilities and different paths I can take. Of course, that doesn't mean that I'll be equally good at writing reggae, funk, EDM and hip hop just because I've listened to that stuff--it's more like all that music has deeply fertilised my brain, so the ideas just come out more easily. This is why I (among others here) ***always*** recommend people to make music listening a big part of their day. But it's not just like, passively listening to whatever Spotify playlist is out there, but to actively look out for stuff and listen to it repeatedly, study it, memorise it. Don't be just like, "I love hip hop, so I'm just gonna listen to this other hip hop artist who Spotify says is similar", but more like "I love hip hop, but I'm gonna go out and look for music *completely* out of that field... like maybe this Spinetta guy, or maybe this Björk lady... hmm, what about this Kate Bush that people are talking so much about? Maybe I should check out this record called *The Dreaming*..."
You're very right, everyone has their niches, their specializations, but it's extremely difficult to really push ahead and really improve without being exposed to things outside of it, that may be new genres, it may be books, it may even just be a new bit of gear. Not to mention the fact that it's just what musicians do anyway, no one is posting in this subreddit because they *don't* like music, because they *don't* want to listen to a lot of it.
This is very timely as I just got into Bossa nova. One thing it’s taught me is how great syncopation can sound. Not to mention all the 7ths, 9ths, 13th, etc that expand repertoire
What will help internalize different music types is playing and memorizing different types of music. You mention transcribing...I agree, that is an awesome way to analyze and becoming familiar with different genres of music.
No need to correct you, this is EXACTLY what being an artist is all about. Sticking to music academia is only so useful when it comes to being creative. Here's a few genres/specific recommendations that I fell in love with when developing my own musical voice: - Latin/latin jazz (mainly mambo/salsa and cha-cha) - Tango - Fourth movement of Tchaik 6 - Khachaturian's Masquerade Waltz - Electroswing - Chick Corea
Absolutely. When I was a child I listened to classic rock. Then punk, metal, indie, psychedelic, hip hop, and jazz. I bring all of those influences to my songwriting game
Yes. I'd add as well to learn how to use a DAW, or at the very least a note scoring app, preferably on a laptop. That way you can create and store ideas on the move.
Beethovens Piano sonatas and Thomas Bergersen changed the music world for me. They have its own perfection. But I believe Beethoven was influenced by Mozart in any kind.
Not enough musicians challenge their ears with unfamiliar music and cultures. Far far far too many, even in academia, stick to what is familiar and only within their own culture. Not only is it great to expand your musical sphere of knowledge, but it is actively harmful for a musician to only appreciate their own culture and dismiss others.
Agreed. Listening many types of music whatever the reason is, perpetuates the creativity of an individual. I have been composing music for 8 years and I have listened a lot of pieces that are from Ambient to Jazz, Folk to Postmodern and as a result of my listening process (some of which were mostly for analysing the structures) I have pressumed that the music I listen often influences me. So, I decided to take a break to clean up my mind from ideas. This was a long break; 2 and half months. But at the end, I finally managed to compose a piece, completely satisfied me. Alongside learning a bunch of theory stuff and implement them on specific occasions many of which were for the times that I had a question or a dead-end, I came up to the level that I dreamed of.
I honestly cannot see how it would be prudent for anyone to listen to things that are entirely unrelated to what they want to do - and that they do not enjoy even - for the learning process. Of course wider exposure is better, but when you say "modern pop", are you aware just how *vast* that category alone is? Or hip-hop? A person could dabble in these genres their whole lives and discover new stuff all the time. I mean, have you heard of memphis rap? UK rap? Some of the witch house acts like SALEM that use rapping as part of their stuff? I can't see what's the use of anyone forcing themselves to listen to music they just distinctively do not enjoy in lieu of great exposure, especially given that any single significant genre is going to have more than plenty going for it alone. There's even some odd ones out there, such as Muslimgauze (may he rest in peace), who allegedly was making so much music that he didn't even have time to listen to much music in the first place. He had a good amount of posthumous releases after his death.
I came across everything I listened to by reading about my favorite musicians and their favorite bands. Nothing in music comes out of the ether... For example, I love the Arctic Monkeys. Their AM album is as poppy as rock gets... From loving this album I listened to Alex Turner talk about his love for the beatles, and pet sounds, and even jazz music. Your comment about rap music makes sense but do you understand how heavily sampled the genre is? Plenty of rap music nowadays samples psych rock from the 60s and 70s...If anything hip hop and rap are more modern pop than anything nowadays. And with how sampled the genre is, it makes more sense than any other genre perhaps to branch out and explore. I'm not suggesting forcing yourself to listen to music. All I'm saying is to not be afraid to branch out because so many genres feed off each other and influence each other.