Me, I tend to stick with the simple stuff. Simply put, I like things that
sound nice. Of course, I dabbled with electronic music and natural
sound-scape stuff when I was in University. I may still have some of
those tapes around. Seems silly to me now...an intellectual excerise at
best.
We can have a very long discussion about this indeed. "Sounds nice" is a
very personal subjective term, and I think no real definition is possible
other than this. I find Xenakis and Peter Brotzman "sound nice", but my
wife (and perhaps you) would beg to differ. Nothing is more subjective and
difficult to pin down than musical taste. Mine has changed tremendously
over the years. I suppose that one can try to define "sounds nice" as
"stays diatonic" or something like that, but even this runs into trouble.
Fully "in key" music gets very boring to any pair of ears, so one needs to
slip into and out of key frequently to maintain tension and therefore
interest. Very difficult problem.
I would be especially curious to hear your electronic music, even if you are
not into it anymore. I have a great fondness for electronic noises, which I
do not find silly at all when it is well done. I did take one year long
course in electronic music at (making my thesis supervisor very angry
at me, since I was supposed to be doing math, but spent all free time in the
studio), and since then have been self taught. This has been my only formal
music training.
