The Decade in Music

Well, allow me first to introduce myself:

I'm Justin.

There, now that's over with I suppose I can tell you a little bit about where I'm coming from and how I ended up writing this blog:

• I just graduated a few months ago with an unfortunate degree in Psychology. No, I'm not saying Psychology degrees are worthless, it's just that I've long since decided that it isn't really where I want to pursue a career.

• See, about halfway through my college years I began studying digital arts, or more specifically 3d Modeling, Animation, and Visual Effects. I fell in love with it almost immediately, and it really is where my passion lies. However, my school's program was brand new and not yet offered as a major, so....

• So, I finished my psychology degree, and with the rest of my schedule space I took every digital arts course available and worked hard to learn the craft.

Now what on earth
Does any of that have to do with a blog about music?

• Well, in the process of learning digital arts, my time spent in front of a computer increased drastically, and so did my time spent listening to music.

• When i read, and to a slightly lesser extent when I write, I find music to be very, very distracting, almost to the point where it's pretty impossible for me to effectively read with music on.

• Working on art is an entirely different monster though, and when I'm drawing, painting, modeling, or animating, playing music is far from distracting and can really inspire my ideas and creativity.

• Naturally, as my hours spent listening to music increased, so did my interest in finding new artists and albums to listen to, and I started using Pandora, Last.Fm, Amazon, Metacritic, iTunes, etc. to build my awareness of what's out there in the music world today.

Like many, I'm very interested in how music has been revolutionized and influenced by technology over the last decade or so, and this interest paired with my recently increased interest in music discovery are really the impetus for initiating this project of mine.

To conclude,

I want to emphasize that I don't have any sort of special training in music, nor am I particularly knowledgeable on the subject. I don't intend to "review" any albums here, nor do I intend to listen with a particularly critical ear. My write-ups are meant more to convey my personal experience and reaction than anything else, and maybe give readers a better feel for artists and albums they haven't heard.

This project of mine is really about discovering and listening to a lot of artists and albums from the past ten years that I probably never would have heard otherwise, and maybe helping others do the same.