alt Hacker NewsAnother recommendation is jazz music. Modern music, and especially modern pop music, is incredibly harmonically simple. You rarely hear anything beyond a 7th chord. But step into jazz and all of sudden you're hearing augmented, diminished, and other more complicated chords and sounds that in just a raw way sound more complex and interesting than a lot of modern music. (Classical is even more out there, but that's a harder sell in 2026 unfortunately)
Replies
Heavy recommendation for jazz, also.
I'll take it all a step further: even better if you can find a place to take in some live jazz. Also, on your point about classical: live classical music is also incredibly moving.
While Kansas City isn't necessarily "special" in this regard, it's where I presently call home, and we have an amazing live jazz scene here, and the symphony at Kauffman Center has amazing classical music performances - both of which I cannot stress enough to check out to break apart from the "boring" of the gridified music this essay discussed. Find some live music in whichever locale you're based.
Granted, I'm biased... as I was already jamming out to some jazz when I hit your comment.
There is a level of melodious incoherence with Jazz that I can't get onboard with. I think that's the entire point of it but parts of it start to sound like a Sam Ash music store.
I agree, but I prefer old jazz from before I was born. Modern jazz doesn't appeal to me, it sounds too clean and unoriginal to me (maybe gridification, I don't know, I'm not a musician), with some exceptions. But maybe I didn't find the good modern jazz.
Suno and the AI models are actually better at generating jazz and classical music due to the smoothness of the waveforms.
My classical music friends have unbeknowingly been listening to a lot of AI classical music
There’s also music outside North America. As an example, South Indian Carnatic has some similarities to jazz but some great divergences (tunings/microtonalty, complex percussion, devotional, etc).
also time signatures, most pop music is just 4x4 loops repeating again and again. Jazz is more free form and surprising
I love jazz, but my problem with newer stuff is a lot of it feels like the composition is second to the players showing off their chops. Maybe I just listen to bad playlists, but often it will be a 7-8 minute track where everyone takes turns vaguely riffing on the melody. That's cool from a technical perspective, but doesn't interest me compositionally.
Compare that to some of the older stuff like Take 5, Giant Steps, or any of the big band stuff from the 50s. Sure, there was a lot of incredible skill on display, but the music itself didn't seem to take a back seat.
One of my favorite albums of the last couple of years was Against the Fall of Night by Sungazer. Whalefall, the first or second track is probably my favorite song on it - there's still a lot of technical skill, but the composition is also on display. So you get this conversation between the song and soloists, instead of a backing track with a few skilled players. Moon Hooch and Fox Capture Plan are also in this same vein IMO.
So... Any recommendations of newer groups like that? Would love to find more like it.