Cacophony is a podcast about great music that you may or may not know, but we think you’ll love. Music (and a podcast) to help us Hear more, Feel more and ‘Be’ more.
New episodes are usually published three times a month – on the 10th, 20th and 30th (easy huh? There’s also an episode on 1 March), and there are loads of great episodes in the back catalogue here on the website: scroll through, or check the index of all there is.
In each episode we introduce a great piece of (largely ‘classical’) music (or maybe a couple) …a bit of friendly info and context and how it might enhance our lives. Then we play it – or point you to where you can play it. We trust your ears and trust the music, so won’t tell you what to hear or feel. Only that listening to Cacophony helps us ‘Hear more, feel more and ‘be’ more! Sometimes it will be resolutely happy or upbeat and other times it might ask searching questions about life and what it is to live. The biggest pieces generally come in more than one section or movement – so large pieces might get more than one episode, however many the piece requires and each episode’s length is, of course, determined by the length of the music…
Cacophony is like a magazine, packed with different features. Music is hugely varied in its sound-worlds and emotional worlds and Cacophony aims to give something from each one and something for everyone. Occasionally we group together a playlist of episodes around a theme.
Above all, this great music tells us all about life, and helps us live ours. All human life is here.
Sometimes you may not like the music in a given episode. That’s ok.
Sometimes you may feel that you don’t ‘get’ the music. That’s ok too. Try having another listen. Some music needs a few hearings to get through (and then you might be hooked on it or might not like it – see above). One of the great things about all the music on Cacophony is that it bears repeated listening.
So – pick from the menu and you choose the order in which to listen…
Listen at your leisure; listen again, tell me what you think!
Never miss it!
The best thing to do is to subscribe to the podcast, so you can listen however you chose to listen to podcasts.
Here’s a link to Cacophony on all the other major podcast apps
How to listen
I’m not going to tell you how to listen! The only thing to bear in mind is that the music in Cacophony often has a wide dynamic range (much more so than rock and pop music) and there’re often very quiet passages. So I offer two suggestions: you won’t get the most out of Cacophony if you listen somewhere noisy – it doesn’t really work on the tube; Cacophony should sound great regardless but, like all things, will sound best out of your best speakers – and that might even be your TV set up. The linked youtube videos of orchestras certainly look best on a big screen! Youtube ads are a pain. Sorry. You might want to investigate an adblocker… I certainly should! Spotify ads are worse – they seem to be designed to interrupt at the worst moments in the least appropriate ways. Oh, one more. Sometimes the bass gets turned up automatically, or ‘enhanced’ on whatever kit we’re using. If you can (and if you can be bothered), maybe turn that off, otherwise things might sound a bit, well, bassy.