Yea for sure. I’ve gone back and forth myself on whether I should include the music I listen to in my reviews. @SenyorC’s reviews have a very nice structure the way he does it. I think in the end though, I generally don’t because while I have a few songs I start with, I end up just setting my entire library on shuffle and listen to it over the course of a week or two so everything kinda blends and I get an “overall feel” rather than pointing out specifics in set tracks that might not be a problem overall. That’s just kinda my reviewing philosophy I guess.
At any rate though, here’s what I generally go for with music:
-
Rock/alt-rock makes up like 45% of my library. It’s from this genre why a lot of my reviews talk about the performance of the drums, hats/cymbals, and guitars. Something like Anberlin - A Whisper & A Clamor, Attalus - Sirens, or Switchfoot - The Sound (John M. Perkins’ Blues).
-
“Church music”, maybe around 15%. I used to play keys and do live sound mixing for church bands for years before COVID so it’s been a part of my rotation. Something like Phil Wickham - Doxology//Amen or Hillsong UNITED - Even When It Hurts. This last song in particular has a very sharp, sibilant ~5.5 kHz peak with the vocalist that shows up multiple times.
-
Instrumentals/soundtracks, about another 10%. Again, it’s more rock/prog-rock inspired stuff like Toe - C or Sawano Hiroyuki - EMA but there’s some jazzier things like DJ Okawari - Perfect Blue.
-
J-pop, about 20% in a similar vein to @Precogvision. Miki Matsubara - Stay With Me, IU - Sogyeokdong (technically K-pop), and Yoasobi - Racing into the Night. This sort of music tends to be brighter and shoutier but can be more mellow-y like Eiichi Ohtaki - Velvet Motel.
And there’s a smattering of other genres here and there like a bit of metal, a bit of hip-hop, Americana, etc. As mentioned, I usually start with a couple to get a quick impression or check if there’s an issue like sibilance or how well it handles messy rock songs before branching out to the rest of my library. What might be an issue with some of these starting test tracks may just be an edge case with a particular song.