I’m a sucker for a good buildup and drop in EDM. As much as I complain about tracks whose sole purpose is the drop, if I’m feeling the song and there’s a good drop, you’ll likely see this 40yr old’s bass face.

In hip hop production, at the start of a new bar, silencing the drums and bass for the first quarter note - a technique J Dilla popularized. If your nodding your head along to beat, and the 1 is silenced like that it, it really just hits harder.

In jam/improv based music, the tension and release theory. Where the lead instrument solos in a certain key without ever hitting the root note of that key. It builds up a sense of tension since we expect to hear that note but aren’t. The solo continues and the tension increases. Eventually the lead instrument hits that note, and if the band is good, the rest of the their parts increase in intensity simultaneously. The result is a sense of release from the tension and even euphoria.

I love songs that completely change genre partway through. Can be slow acoustic songs that switch to fast techno; loud, bangy songs that turn calm and soft; rap songs with calm, piano-based choruses; whatever.

Examples would be:

• Still Loving You by Sonata Arctica
• Lost Winter Days by Alpine Universe
• Journey to the End by Windir
• Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance.

I love when the track goes completely silent for a single rest after some buildup and then punches back into the full chorus. If that “gap” in noise is part of the melody itself it’s even cooler. It makes the following sound so much more impactful, even if the actual volume hasn’t increased by much.

Siren noises and airhorns and generally post-ironic soundboard noises. Like remember DJs in the early 2000s? When the radio sounded like

(Tires screeching) Husky overly excited voice: you’re listening (Siren blaring) To the one and only (Red tailed hawk screech) (Machine gun noises) 97.4 (Dog barking) (mgm lion roar) KZRL “Krazy” FM (Choir sings hallelujah) Your one-stop-shop for hits from the 70s and 80s (Chorus from “don’t you forget about me” plays) (Guitar solo from Panama)

All those stupid noises are great when they get shoved into mid 2010s dubstep music, and when they are put into SoundCloud mashups.

I like it when the vocalist announces what’s coming next, like yelling “GUITAR!” right before a guitar solo or “bring back the horns” right before the brass section kicks in or “sing it, girls” right before the female backups echo the refrain.

Mixing metal with other genres or introducing instruments or elements that you otherwise wouldn’t expect in metal.

By now most of these are considered to be subgenres of metal but for me it blew my mind when I first encountered them.

Bands like Ayreon, Avantasia, Subscribe, Therion, Haggard, Nightwish, Ostura, just to name a few.

I love that train track or horse gallop chugging rhythm some songs have.
Gives me feelings of movement forward, travel or progression.
Great car songs!

Muse - Knights of Cydonia, Roy Orbison - I Drove All Night is probably a good examples of this.

I quite enjoy it when songs sneakily build up, starting out with a mellow rhythm and after a few minutes, you find yourself in the middle of an epic solo on top of this thick carpet of rhythm, and it’s all very much over the top, but it works, because of that slow build-up.

Not sure if this is a trope per se, but I love when sounds don’t sound “perfect” - the producer kept in a little vocal waver, or the snare isn’t hit with the exact same intensity every time. The little imperfections make it feel/sound like real humans are playing the music!

Key change!

Music that is REALLY stereo. I recently-ish got a pair of open back planar magnetic headphones, which sound bloody brilliant. So wide, so open, so crisp! It’s almost like VR for your ears with certain tracks and albums.

So ye! Songs that really lean hard on having fun with stereo, or just really well engineered music in general. I was FLOORED when I listened to Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral for the first time with those things, so much fine detail and incredible audio engineering in that album. I’d honestly consider it one of the best engineered albums I’ve ever listened to, and I’m saying this as a huge Steely Dan fan.

Another go to for me is Pond’s Man, It Really Feels Like Space Again. Psychedelic music just hits so incredibly well when I use those headphones, and this album in particular just really takes me through a friggen journey when listening to it.

Breakdowns. Chug chug chug chug chug Random growls and barks

Mmmmmmmmmm. Soothes my soul.

I like it when a song turns to sounding like a large group of people singing the song.

My favorite is when a high energy song does a soft version of the chorus towards the end of the song, and the singer sings more mellow, or sometimes even an octave down. Then the singer goes back into full energy and original octave for one line before all the instruments come back in at full volume.

I like it when a chorus gets built up more on each repetition, either with the addition of more instrumental parts, new harmonies or background vocals, or a beat change that brings up the intensity.

Similarly, I like when that same effect happens within 2 halves of a chorus. Example of one I heard recently is the chorus of the song “Breathing” by ELLEGARDEN. The 2nd half adds a higher vocal harmony + a picked lead guitar line that open up the sound a bit and just give it a nice little emotional boost.