Best Cities With Great Music Scenes

[derzai]

dont get me wrong. the other day there was a sportsprogram on dutch tv and they discussed the move of dutch soccer player that went to southampton.

one of the reporters said: mwah, southampton, that would be the last place i would go, and then a discussion started about southampton. the other reporter disagreed, he said, yeh, southampton, not a city where spectacular things happen, a quiet place, but he said for him a good place to stay.

you see, its all subjective.

of course it sounds "cool" to tell people you were living in new york, but what if you have been living there in the gutter in your own pee and vomit.

might have been better time in some anonymous place nowhere nobody ever heard of and had a good time.

[Division Monarchy]

I just did not appreciate your tone.

mutual, hence the whining remark.

That is fair.

[Division Monarchy]

My original question is a very subjective one anyways. I might love one place & everyone else may hate it & vise versa. I've lived in a few places & traveled a bit through Europe. Some places I liked, some I just wasn't feeling. Traveling to a place & living there are two different things as well. For example I love Rome & Paris, but I don't know what it would be like living there. Barcelona seems like it might be cool, but I hear you get your instrument taken for busking. I have yet to visit Amsterdam to see what it's like, but heard mixed things on the place. Sometimes the big city in a country is not the best one, but rather the smaller cities. I just like to get other people's opinions on places, the good, bad & ugly. I'm even contemplating Istanbul, but have no clue what it is like there.

[TomViolenz]

If people can't just be cool & answer questions without being snide,

That would be great

Go back to twiddling knobs while pretending to be a musician, because that's all most computer "musicians" are.

Oh, I see...
Leading by example is not your strong suite, huh?!

[TomViolenz]

My original question is a very subjective one anyways. I might love one place & everyone else may hate it & vise versa. I've lived in a few places & traveled a bit through Europe. Some places I liked, some I just wasn't feeling. Traveling to a place & living there are two different things as well. For example I love Rome & Paris, but I don't know what it would be like living there. Barcelona seems like it might be cool, but I hear you get your instrument taken for busking. I have yet to visit Amsterdam to see what it's like, but heard mixed things on the place. Sometimes the big city in a country is not the best one, but rather the smaller cities. I just like to get other people's opinions on places, the good, bad & ugly. I'm even contemplating Istanbul, but have no clue what it is like there.

Going there and checking the places out is always the best thing to do. The next should always be to get into contact with locals.
I still didn't hear you say, what exactly you want from the place.
Are you looking for a place where you can make your art and maybe find an audience? Or do you just want to find the best artists playing for you?!

These are often very different things.
Renown artists like to get paid as much as possible (who can blame them with record sales as low as they are). So to listen to many of them you need to be in a city with a lot of wealthy enough people. (London is certainly a good start for that)
But wealthy cities also usually price still unknown artist out of the city limits, by making it difficult to live there and making it hard to find affordable places to organize parties/concerts.

To find a good mix of both is a difficult balancing act and one that I think Berlin is managing best in the world at the moment.

You should also see how liberal the cities you look at are. Dry laws, or curfews?! (Many western european cities have them). Rampant homophobia? (Many east and south east european cities). Strict drug laws and enforcement of them? Also many places. (The enforcement of them can even vary widely within a country. Smoking a spliff in a Berlin bar?! Yeah, you will get thrown out. (because you smoked, spliff or not ). In Munich?! You will definetely answer to the police. (though the actual consequences will probably be a fine and nothing more))

So go to the places and talk to locals (from the scene you'd like to get into, no use in talking to the lady selling flowers on the train station )

And I would be curious to hear what kind of hype about Berlin you heard that made you think that guitar music is big here


Oh and: Berlin winters certainly are dreadful, but if you spend last winter here, you actually experienced the nicest winter in recorded history

[Division Monarchy]

The more I think about it, I realize the perfect place does not exist... I mean, a city where I can make my art & find an audience, with lower cost of living, warm weather, beautiful streets & a liberal attitude is more of my fantasy... I might just have to swallow the fact that I will need to move around a lot, but a nice base outside the US would be great... I like the liveliness of London, the charm of Paris, the cost of Berlin, so it's complicated. My biggest reasons for not wanting to move back to Berlin are more personal in that I spent most my time there with an ex & it depresses me there. The hype that I had heard about the place was it being a mecca for international artists & lots of music, which is somewhat true, but I just felt that for as many artists that live there, it didn't feel like it was taken seriously like in the US or UK, but that is my perception. But I never got thrown out of a bar for smoking a spliff ... I heard Leipzig is nice for art & music, is that true?

I guess my best bet at this point is to compile a list of cities that sound interesting & keep on moving around until whatever happens happens.

[TomViolenz]

but I just felt that for as many artists that live there, it didn't feel like it was taken seriously like in the US or UK, but that is my perception.

Why does it matter what the US and the UK (of all places ) take seriously?!
Did you like the art?! That's what matters, no?!

But I never got thrown out of a bar for smoking a spliff ...

I was going for the cheap shot of smoking in general being outlawed in bars and that the only ire you'd draw here would be from the non-smokers.
But in a bar with a smokers section, people would probably not even conciously notice or care.

I heard Leipzig is nice for art & music, is that true?

I don't know Leipzig that well and heard nice things about it in the 90s. Not so much anymore though. A smaller city like Leipzig seems to have fallen to the capitalists sooner. But if you are still around Berlin, checking out Leipzig would not be a bad idea. It's almost a day trip.

But if you lived in Berlin for a while you will have noticed, that it is just as popular to publicly show extrem Berlin fatigue, as it is to fawn over it.
I often have the feeling that naming smaller East German cities as alternatives is always part of the former. People usually don't follow through though, but it's all part of the hype. Berlin is just the sort of place you'd love to hate and hate to love

It would be hilarious (to me) though if Leipzig would win in the competition between London, Paris and Barcelona

Regarding Barcelona, which I had always also been interested in, and which would check quite a few bullet points on your list: I wonder if it might get good again after the people are poor now, with the crisis n'all...
Does anybody have news on this?!

[TomViolenz]

Go back to twiddling knobs while pretending to be a musician, because that's all most computer "musicians" are.

But this is seriously curious to me. We just had a discussion about this topic in another thread.

So as a presumeably young person, who probably considers himself open towards new things (all that traveling around would indicate as much), you come to a forum of a music software(!) company and think it's somehow clever to call the musicianship of the present people in question, because they may "only" twiddle knobs.

What about twiddling guitar strings is so much more difficult, creative or musical, that you think it makes you somehow more of a musician than me for example?!

Granted, I might not be the best example, as what I do really is not music in the usual sense, but in any case I don't understand where this extra pride in you comes from of being a musician.

I mean I had to listen to some pretty terrible people on the guitare in my lifetime (not wrong, just bad!) and none of the current singer/songwriter revival appears overly creative to me.
What makes any of them better musicians?!
You know, I didn't choose not to play the guitare because I found it too difficult, but because the sounds it makes were not enough for me.
So I chose a more powerful instrument, the computer.
You wouldn't berate a drummer or tuba player for their choice of instrument, would you?!

[stringtapper]

What about twiddling guitar strings is so much more difficult, creative or musical, that you think it makes you somehow more of a musician than me for example?!

Granted, I might not be the best example, as what I do really is not music in the usual sense, but in any case I don't understand where this extra pride in you comes from of being a musician.

Well there are definite differences in people who "play music" versus those who have dedicated their entire lives to mastering at least one instrument (mastery being the ability to play in any style, to be able to read, sight read, and improvise) and studied music theory and history in depth.

The difference between the two is the same as the difference between someone who can speak a language fluently and someone who can both speak and read/write in a language fluently.

Doesn't mean that "twiddling knobs" isn't "playing an instrument," I believe it is.

[TomViolenz]

Doesn't mean that "twiddling knobs" isn't "playing an instrument," I believe it is.

That was my point.

That there are different levels of mastery playing any instrument is without a question and I'm not even claiming that mine is particularly high.

But if someone playing 3 chords in a neo punk band is by definition a musician, I think I'm at least one to that same extent

[stringtapper]

Doesn't mean that "twiddling knobs" isn't "playing an instrument," I believe it is.

That was my point.

That there are different levels of mastery playing any instrument is without a question.

But I'm not only talking about mastery of an instrument. I'm talking about musical literacy.

[TomViolenz]

Doesn't mean that "twiddling knobs" isn't "playing an instrument," I believe it is.

That was my point.

That there are different levels of mastery playing any instrument is without a question.

But I'm not only talking about mastery of an instrument. I'm talking about musical literacy.

I know that's your favorite topic, but did the OP mean such a thing with his derision towards knob twiddlers?! I doubt it.

Regarding musical literacy: I have quite a wide literacy in making sounds and arranging them in time and space. Much of this involves techniques so advanced that they would have appeared to the masters of yore like wizzardry.

So without any disrespect, you have extreme literacy in one language of placing sounds, while I work on perfecting myself regarding a different one.

Neither should look down on the other, no?!

[stringtapper]

Regarding musical literacy: I have quite a wide literacy in making sounds and arranging them in time and space. Much of this involves techniques so advanced that they would have appeared to the masters of yore like wizzardry.

So without any disrespect, you have extreme literacy in one language of placing sounds, while I work on perfecting myself regarding a different one.

Neither should look down on the other, no?!

Eh, no disrespect, but I would consider myself literate with both, which is sort of my overarching point. I'm an absolute music fanatic and am on a lifelong mission to learn and to be able to do as much as possible in all styles and forms.

[stringtapper]

Overarching point for the OP being: there's always a bigger snob.

[TomViolenz]

Regarding musical literacy: I have quite a wide literacy in making sounds and arranging them in time and space. Much of this involves techniques so advanced that they would have appeared to the masters of yore like wizzardry.

So without any disrespect, you have extreme literacy in one language of placing sounds, while I work on perfecting myself regarding a different one.

Neither should look down on the other, no?!

Eh, no disrespect, but I would consider myself literate with both, which is sort of my overarching point.

I have no doubt of that