Are there any albums by your favorite bands that make you think "Why didn't I listen to this sooner?" Or "Why is nobody talking about this one?" My unfortunate candidate for this title would be Maladroit by Weezer. It's such a weird shift in tone from Green and moreso from Blue or Pinkerton. It's a lot of short and sweet songs but between the kickass solos and chugging metal influenced chords, the whole album is a banger. You have songs like Burndt Jam and Slave that have a much more mellow and poppish, feel; and then you have more aggressive songs like Take Control and Dope Nose (The most well known hit off Maladroit). It seems that in the wake of people not liking the Green album much, this stellar poppy, metal-y, strange yet great little album was panned over, which is a crying shame.

5 tracks from my game Rashtal. Feedback would be appreciated.

Playlist

Or each song separately:

• Life in the Treetops;
• Song of the Forest;
• Through the Sunken Glades;
• The Canopy;
• The Forest Floor;

The game is still in development. Just sharing some music to get feedback.

How important are lyrics to you?

For me, the words are probably as big a part of my experience of a song as the music itself. It's unlikely that I'll come back to a song if the lyrics don't speak to me. On the other hand, I know other people who claim not to care about the lyrics at all.

So, I was curious. If you are a person who cares a lot about the lyrics of a song, do you also read poetry? How do you feel about purely instrumental music?

Personally, I can appreciate instrumental music, but it's not something I tend to seek out. I enjoy poetry a lot (probably as much as music), both reading it and listening to it.

I'm interested to see if there's a pattern to this. :)

I'm always on the lookout for more tracks to add to my gym mix. Here are a few from mine that I think work well, with YouTube links. This is rock-heavy; I do love hip-hop and R&B in my gym mix, but everything I have there is really well known.

• Julian Casablancas - 11th Dimension
• Robyn - Hang With Me
• Nielson Hubbard - Captain of the Teenagers
• The Wombats - Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves)
• Teenage Fanclub - Is This Music? (instrumental)
• Steriogram - Walkie Talkie Man
• The Go! Team - Huddle Formation (Original UK Version)
• Korn - Word Up
• Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction
• Rob Bailey & The Hustle Standard - Hungry

Any concerts you guys plan on going to/went to within the last/next few months? Last Friday there was a Kendrick Lamar concert I went to, it was pretty fun, although there were a lot of "odd" people there. This Friday I'm going to attend a Journey/Def Leppard concert. I also plan on seeing Pouya this summer, he's an underground rapper that I like, I also want to go to an Iron Maiden concert in Germany with a close friend but I'm not sure if I should spend the money at the moment.

I've recently been going through Youtube playing any song I can remember at 1.25x speed and some of them are just way better that way. A few of my highlights have been:
Africa - Toto
Rockefeller Street - Getter Jaani
Tetris Theme (though this one is kind of cheating)

Hi everyone,

Each and every hobby has a start. I'm going to learn how to play the piano. For this, I'm planning to buy an electric piano. There's a regular grand piano I have access to, but they come without headphone jacks, and until I get better I want to limit the scope of audible torture to my own ears as much as possible. So, I could do with some of your advice.

This list of requirements is not meant to limit you in your advice, but serves more as a guideline, to give you an idea of what I'm looking for.

Hard requirements:

• Headphone jack
• The sound library must contain at least a 'normal' piano sound and an electric piano sound (the more it sounds like a dirty Rhodes, the better!)
• At least 128 voice-polyphony
• At least 76 keys, but preferably 88

Soft requirements:

• Weighted keys
• Simulated hammer action
• High repetition
• Ebony and ivory key feel (don't like the sensation of smooth plastic)
• MIDI support so I can hook it up to a computer to try out other sound libraries

Completely unnecessary but cool:

• USB port
• Bluetooth compatibility

If you've learned to play the piano, especially as an adult, any advice you may have for me would be more than welcome, too.

Thank you!