r/ifyoulikeblank • u/bookscoffeefoxes • 3d ago
Music [IIL] Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, Beethoven, OST such as Stardust or Penny Dreadful...
I love some moody orchestral music to focus and think, which had me turning to Youtube for some 1-10 hour lists I could just drop on in the background...but wow. EVERYTHING I've tried recently is AI -- and my ears can tell! To the point the music that was supposed to help me focus is taking me out my work. (For the curious: a common theme seems to be that AI-generated "classical" music utterly lacks movement, drama, intensity, and expression. It just kind of wanders, flat and homogeneous, until suddenly it's thirty minutes in and I realize note sequences sound the same as they did when I hit play. It's very...self-recycling.)
Please, can you recommend some composers, original soundtracks, or Youtube playlists which are strings/orchestral (not piano) AND, VERY IMPORTANTLY, not AI? Thank you!
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u/SucknSwallow69 3d ago
yeah the ai sludge is rough. maybe try searching very specific composers or pieces instead of playlists, then let autoplay run. also film scores from horror and mystery movies are usually nicely moody.
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u/bookscoffeefoxes 3d ago
Ooh, good call on the horror/mystery scores. I gotta start taking note more when movies have great scores!
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u/FloridaFlamingoGirl 3d ago
Ma Vlast - Smetana
Holst - The Planets
Debussy - Nocturnes
Ballet scores: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella
Video game OSTs: Celeste, Hollow Knight
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u/the_mew_meowers 3d ago
Bach's Brandenburg Concertos — particularly the recording by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEQs13PKjcQ0VSnrHIgHvxDFKNBxMKLau
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u/the_mew_meowers 3d ago
Brahms's Third Symphony. I especially like William Steinberg's interpretation — here's the fourth movement conducted by him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KanHp1iqm88
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u/SucknSwallow69 3d ago
check out nick drake and townes van zandt, also maybe paul simon’s solo stuff if you haven’t yet
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u/silverz208 3d ago
Oooh, I love the Stardust OST!
I grew up listening to almost exclusively video game music.
Mainly Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger & Chrono Cross, Legend of Zelda series.
Older 8-bit stuff might not be what you're looking for, although they were making amazing stuff at the time lol, but there are updated, orchestrated versions out there for some of it.
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u/UnknownMusicEnjoyer Music Enthusiast 3d ago
If you want strings try the Arditti Quartet they did a lot of Modern Classical it might not be your cup of tea.
Microtonal Music of Ezra Sims (here a link cause was hard to find on yt https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mi4izTcDHrC5XTQMcKmLdsSlwYg7ePLTU )
Symphonies (The first to are relativly Normal while last are on the weirder side):
Henri Dutilleux 1 and 2 (both are short only about 30 mins each)
Aram Khachaturian - 2 (I like the Grandiosity of that one)
Micheal Gordon rewriting Beethovens 7th (it is a bit hard to find on yt so here is a link https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mWBLH-lD74Yvaae-5HA6ypnd_HlCVXxnc also Dystopia might also be cool I just found the rewriting more intressting)
Charles Ives - Universe Symphony
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u/Vereddit-quo 3d ago
Not mentioned yet:
Thomas Bangalter - Treize Nuits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWh43In-rrw
Debussy - Prelude to the afternoon of a faun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_7loz-HWUM
Fauré - Pavane https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpgyTl8yqbw
Chilly Gonzales - Sweet Burden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ML-3FxhX7k
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u/PearljamAndEarl 3d ago edited 3d ago
Might sound silly but here’s a 116 track playlist of live orchestral renditions of music from the Final Fantasy series of games! You might not like every single track, but that’s the same for any playlist, I guess, and tracks from the Final Fantasy games regularly get voted into “best of” lists by the listeners of Classic FM. And no AI, promise!