|
My recommendation is to just listen to modern music. Lots of it. In fact, lock yourself out of anything before 1900s for a while and just listen to stuff until you find SOMETHING you like.
From personal experience, I had a "Bach" phase for around, oh, five years, to the point of memorizing practically his entire organ repertoire, until someone told me it could be a good idea to invest as much time in modern music as I did in Bach, so I did.
Sometimes, you have to force yourself to listen to things, hate them or not. You have to sit there and actually forget about what you liked before and see what is it about what you're listening that you like now.
(Though it does help that before Bach I listened to a lot of pop/rock/game music..and oddities here and there, so "tuning out" wasn't such a problem when I tried.) All of this is in essence still present in modern music, and probably it won't be going away any time soon. You just have to get comfortable with all the new sounds/textures and stuff, and then you'll probably start making connections automatically.
Counterpoint is one of the main integral bridges between modern composition techniques and the entire tonal-harmony period, and it's not by accident. When it comes down to it, you can say anything works in some way or another like counterpoint.
The interaction between sounds, and sounds against other sounds, is precisely what counterpoint is about. Paired, of course, with horizontal thinking rather than vertical (melodic vs chords.)
I'd say it's less about giving other music a chance, and more about giving yourself a chance to actually find more things that you may enjoy, and that endeavor is really worth the risk in my opinion.
|