listen music

There are many ways to listen to music but this is how I listen to music these days.

1. Listening to Albums not Songs

When one buy/download music, I usually don’t get them by song. I get them in

units of album. The reason behind this is to get to know the artist better. A band

might have the hottest summer track, but can he back it up? Is there more to this

band? or was it a one-hit-wonder. I’m talking about you Passion Pit!


2. Background Check

How did they become a band? I go to wikipedia to do a little bit of background

check about the band. Bands like BLK JKS, and The Vanguard has a unique story

makes their music more exciting than the rest of the gang.


3. Memorization

If you were like me in the old days, I enjoyed music for the sound of it. But I never

tried to memorize the album name or even the song name. Once you get a habit of

memorizing album names, title names, genre, and published year your brain will

have an organized database of sounds.


4. Knowing the Influences

We live in a world where music is no longer original. A different perspective of old

music, a mix of old music is all we got in today’s world. Knowing which band

influences who, and what song did they sample from is not only fun, but gets you

to have RESPECT for the musicians before your time. Influence comes

from all the way back to classical music, to the recent hit of the summer. If you

listened to MSTRKRFT’s recent album, Fist of God, you see a lot of the sounds used

on the Justice album.


5. Please see them LIVE!

The only way to listen to music at it’s full potential is listening to it live.

Don’t judge a band before you see them live.



If you are like me and have too many albums to listen to, here is quick way. is an internet database of all published music. Most of the albums will

be reviewed by the staff of But the feature I love the most is the

recommendation feature. Once an album is reviewed, the staff chooses 3 songs they

liked the most. Listening to these 3 songs will give you an idea if you dig this band or

not. If you do, please proceed listening to the entire album.


DJ Lesson #8 + Jangula at Trash Bar



A-Trak Battle Vinyl, $14.08/$14.08

“Monkeyboy Breaks” by A-TRAK (aka The #1 Spinna) is a battle vinyl for DJs.

The difference between a battle vinyl and regular vinyl is the collection of

scratch samples, word samples, and cool breaks to be used when turning

music  on for the BBoy battles.


The reason I bought this master piece is for my DJ lessons at DJ Scratch

Academy. We first learned how to scratch to a beat. That made us familiar

with equipments and operation of turning music on. But the main point

of a DJ is to create music. DJs would normally just turn on well known

music. As the role of DJs’ importance grew, so did their taste and artistic

ability. DJs now create their own version of musics by using the techniques

used from turntableism. A lot of music making is done digitally. It might

seem old school to buy an actual vinyl with scratch samples in it, but I

wish to know how I can express myself through music. And the biggest

step I can take today is through the old mechanical ways of

sampling, scratching, and beat matching with REAL BATTLE


%A fellow DJ student of mine told me that TRUE OLD SCHOOL DJs don’t

accept the concept of using battle vinyl. They believe the journey to the

actual source of the sound you are looking for is important. The journey

gives you more appreciation to the musicians before you. RESPECT!