WHAT I APPRECIATE IN MUSIC & HOW TO Here are some criteria which I find ap between them all, but

they still ue, and there may be other criteria

EVALUATE IT FOR OTHERS very important, and true, there may be overl have their specific shades and colors of val to add.

1. AUTHENTIC : the emotions have to be real, genuine and truthful, the prime obj ective should be to create good music for the sake of the music itself (not in o rder to sell, or to show off, or any other thing ...). That's why I like improvi zed music, because the link between emotion, musician, sound and listener is to be found in its purest form. It's your immediate emotion you're transmitting, no t someone else's. Paradoxically enough, this also includes "absence of self", as a prerequisite for true interplay, listening skills and communion between band members. 2. ADVENTUROUS : the artist/band should be looking for new ways to express what they feel and have to communicate. What's the point for the listener to hear the same kind of approach as others have tried. The surprise element, the creativit y, the musical vision are part of the adventure. As a listener I want to be take n along, and explore new musical horizons. 3. ACCURATE : when you hear the sounds, you must have a reaction of "Yes, that's it!", as the sublime translation of feelings through skills and mastery of the instrument, the total sound created by a band or the newly created musical langu age. The sound, or just obtaining that single note which encapsulates it all, ye s, then you know you've transmitted something as a musician, that you've receive d something as a listener, that you share something. Doing that requires accurac y and concentration. 4. ARTISTIC : by that I mean the more cerebral aspect of music. There is some co ncept behind it, which leads to structure, balance, length, interplay, selection of instruments, of musicians, of new approaches. This does not go against impro visation, quite on the contrary : great improvised music is all about artistic v ision, clever group interaction. 5. ATTENTION-GRABBING : though music can and should require an effort from the l istener, it should also include a factor of entertainment, in the sense of keepi ng the attention going, of being captivating. Lots of music, and especially duri ng long soloing, contains the risk of losing the listener somewhere along the wa y, even if the musicians themselves are very intensively busy with interesting t hings. There is of course lots of music which does not take the listener into ac count at all... That's my "quintuple A" internal rating system. The stars I usually give in my s coring system are not only not very accurate, they're also not sufficiently disc erning. Maybe I should give stars for each of the five criteria listed above. I think the five criteria also include what in Arabic is called "tarab" : appealin g to mind, body and soul alike, as far as I understood this from the liner notes from Rabih Abou-Khalil's album with the same name. I specifically did not inclu de the qualifier "beautiful" in the list, because that's even more subjective th an the ones already there, and furthermore, I did not find a good synonym for it which starts with an "a" ...