The Groove

It's amazing how much I end up posting about music considering that my original intent for "music" posts were revolving around UTA. But, seeing as I'm about 500 miles away from the rest of the band members, I'm stuck talking about other people's music. Fair enough.

So I'm here, sitting in my apartment, trying to figure out just what to post about today. The Snowpocalypse fail? No, we'll save that for later. Egypt getting their internet back? Hmmm, not yet. Image reduction processes in astrophysics? Yeah I know, but that's what I spent most of today working on. Then, it hit me thanks to a friend's tumblr post: the groove (or in some cases it's known as the zone). What is the groove? It's something you're in, and when you're in it you know it, and when you're not you struggle to find it. Where is it? It's all relative I'm afraid, but it's based on your mindset.


My personal groove is fueled by good vibrations, and one of the best ways to feel these vibrations (and get your minds out of the gutter) is music. I strap on the headphones and let the beats rock my head, and everything else just becomes fluid. Frustrating things just become less frustrating, and have less of an impact on my mood, and other clichés like things that have to do with colors and tastes also happen to some degree. It's physics actually. I use the positive waves of music to cancel the negative vibes or waves around me. Yup, that simple. The trick is finding the appropriate soundtrack to your groove that will (a) bring a smile to your face, (b) make you move, (c) make you feel good or funky, but the good kind of funky.

The soundtrack to my groove usually involves some Daft Punk. This French techno duo has the ability to create the perfect beats for pretty much any mood and put them in a single album, for example Discovery. I have no doubt that if you've never heard of Daft Punk (which I find extremely hard to believe) you've heard one of their songs, most likely off of this album, and let me just run through the excellent versatility of it:

• Want to dance? "One More Time", "Voyager", and "High Life"
• Need a happy tune that fills you with love? "Digital Love" is where you want to go
• At work and need to feel like a machine? "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" is where it's at
• Feeling down? Try the smooth tones of "Nightvision" or "Something About Us" to bring yourself back to equilibrium
• Relationship troubles? Yeah, they've got you covered with "Face To Face"

And those are just a few examples. I just listened to the entire album this evening while washing dishes and I was smiling, dancing, singing, and cleaning. Needless to say, I was in the groove. Worries about getting work done, relationships, the future, anything, it all just melted away. It's a (legal) natural high.

I'm sure you all have a particular band, album, or playlist that does this for you. I've definitely mentioned these [happifying] effects in an earlier post, but it's always nice to be reminded about just how powerful this stuff can be, especially when you begin to fall in the mindset that things aren't going your way. You don't want to do that, and whenever you begin to slip into that mindset crank your soundtrack and cancel those thoughts out with some epic beats. One last piece of advice before I go, I mentioned that a good soundtrack to get you into your groove should make you move, and I mean really make you move, no matter where you are. In class, at the office, in the shower (we all sing in there, don't deny it), on a boat, with a goat, in the rain, on a train, in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse, here or there, your music should make you move anywhere. That's the sign of a good soundtrack to your groove. If you're not moving, you're doing it wrong. On that note, here's a little music to get you grooving "Around the World".

Question: What's your soundtrack for getting into the groove?

Groove on.

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