Music Starter Pack with Mitchell: Instrumental Music

Welcome back BGSU students! It's Mitchell here, welcoming all returning students and especially our new-coming freshmen. If you are new to the blog, feel free to check out the blog's first post and our most recent post for some more information about the blog, Music Industry Club, and myself. At the start of the new school year, it's important to find a study routine that works best for you. If you're anything like me, you listen to music while studying. Whether you have a study playlist, listen to the same album every time you work, or you work in complete silence, my goal today is to give you some new additions to your "study music" catalog.

Starter Pack: Instrumental Music

"What is a Starter Pack?" If you're asking this question right now, don't be ashamed. This is a new segment where I will give you an introduction to a certain category of music or musical genre while showcasing some essential artists and albums in said category. Today, I thought it would make some sense to cover a style of music that especially helps me when studying: instrumental music.

If you already have a general idea of what instrumental music is, feel free to skip past the next few paragraphs to get into the suggestions. These will start when you reach the line: Instrumental Hip Hop

Instrumental music is a style of music that shifts the focus of the listener away from the vocals, sometimes completing omitting vocals as a whole. The intention here is to perhaps convey the artist's emotion through how the music is played or arranged rather than singing or vocalizing how they are feeling. In hip hop, instrumental music can be used as advertisement to get rappers that are looking for beats to hop on a track. While there are many reasons for why instrumental music is made, I think the key aspect that draws students to it while studying is the background noise it provides without vocal interruptions. Too many times, I've found myself typing out the lyrics to a song I'm listening to while writing an essay because the singing pulls my attention away from the task at hand. With instrumental music, this problem becomes seemingly trivial.

Instrumental music isn't a genre as pretty much any genre can have their fair share of instrumental projects. With that being said, this would be a very long blog post if I were to go over instrumental entries in every genre I can think of. Instead, I have compiled three lists, separated by genre, of interesting, yet accessible albums for you to listen to while studying. While it was difficult for me to narrow down what three genres I found to be most helpful to listen to while studying, I believe that these options offer the most room to branch out for those of you that enjoy these selections. I decided to go with hip hop, jazz, and ambient/electronic music. I find that a lot of people also listen to classical music while studying, but because of that, I felt that the people who already do that probably aren't the people that need to read this blog. Without further ado, let's get into the recommendations!

Instrumental Hip Hop

Instrumental Hip Hop, as the name implies, focuses mostly on the beats present on the album. While some albums contain features or even some bars from the producers themselves, these records are filled to the brim with instrumental tunes to study to. 

If you were to ask me who would be on my 'Mount Rushmore' of instrumental hip hop producers, I'd have J Dilla, Madlib, DJ Shadow, and Nujabes sitting up there. Albums like Donuts by J Dilla and Modal Soul by Nujabes are essentially the cream of the crop when it comes to beat tapes. Usually featuring frequent loops, you can listen to these tracks and get a fulfilling experience without being overwhelmed by constant variation and/or changes of pace. Some other notable projects here are Pete Rock's PeteStrumentals and MF DOOM's Metalfingers Presents: Special Herbs Box Set which is a complete collection of all 10 Special Herbs beat tapes produced by the late legend. If you're in for a more experimental experience, try DJ Rozwell's NONE OF THIS IS REAL. Set your streaming service's crossfade to about 5 or 6 seconds and hit shuffle to get an entirely new, yet seamless album tracklist each time.

Cambridge University conducted a study which theorized that hip hop "provides an uplifting effect on its listeners that can help them accept, manage and deal better with mental health issues." If hip hop is a bit too energetic for you, this next segment might be up your alley.

Ambient and Electronic Music

Electronic music, Ambient especially, can help relax students while they work as the general vibe of the music is said to increase brain functionality. It's quite easy to see why. Electronic music is a meticulously engineered artform with heavy emphasis on that stuff that just tickles your brain. I tried to do a steady mixture of IDM and ambient music as both can have their general benefits when it comes to studying. 

At the top left, I've given some suggestions by Aphex Twin, a monumental electronic artist with such a large catalog to explore. I felt that Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and Richard D. James were good starting points for getting into this pioneer of the craft. I also have some features from Brian Eno's ambient works. If that name sounds familiar, it's because Eno produced the coveted Talking Heads album, Remain In Light. While this was Eno's third album with the band, he had also established a name for himself in many other genres of music, including ambient. Oneohtrix Point Never is likely a name you've seen on several movie soundtracks or even some songs by The Weeknd most notably. Other artists such as Grouper, Boards of Canada, and Autechre are such important names when it comes to this style of music. Music Has The Right To Children by BOC is a must-listen.

Now, we're going to move on to my personal favorite studying genre. I hope that this blog will make it one of yours too.

Jazz Music

Jazz features such a wide array of subgenres that it was hard for me to narrow down 15 albums that I'd like to share with you. I decided to kind of reach into the grab-bag of my mind and put down whatever felt right. 

For starters, I knew that Miles Davis would be a great pick. His cool jazz entries such as Kind Of Blue and 'Round About Midnight make for some good entry-level jazz that sounds great and soothing in the background. I also went with a similar route for my John Coltrane selections with Blue Train and Ballads. While both of these artists have works that are much more explorative and emotional, I felt that a more subtle introduction was appropriate. Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders were my go-to choices when I was thinking of adding some spiritual jazz to the list. Eerie, soothing pieces that build on to themselves are found all over Journey in Satchidananda and Promises, the latter being an album that got me through numerous study sessions in my 2021 Fall semester. At the bottom of this collage, I offered some jazz fusion artists and albums. Sometimes the jazzy stuff just needs to take a back seat and you want something more upbeat. Herbie Hancock, Casiopea, and Freddie Hubbard are great for a late-night study session. That jazz fusion is like caffeine in music form sometimes, I promise you.

Wrap-Up

Well that pretty much does it for the music recommendations for you all today. If you are returning to the blog, I appreciate you sticking around, and if you are new to the blog, I hope you enjoyed enough to keep checking us out. Make sure to tell us what your favorite entries of the blog were and let us know if you've added anything new to your playlists! Down below, I'll have some information as to where you can find us on social media as well as some events with the Music Industry Club that you may be interested in. Here's to a new school year, Falcons. Until next time!

- Mitchell

News

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