I would also add Nass Marrakech. They are a North African band who play in the Gnawa tradition but also draw on Japanese influences and Afro-Cuban percussion and stuff. It is really awesome.

Just listen to harry partch.

I dunno why. Just do it.

sgt pepper's?



you know dick dale was from a diddle eastern family, right? in fact his first surf rock "hit" or whatever was simply an arrangement of a famous middle eastern song...

a look into wikipedia sez greek with turkish influences (greek refugees)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misirlou



every unusual thing you could want and more is here. i'll save the enumeration & post you this link:
http://www.sublimefrequencies.com/

maybe van dyke parks would be up your alley

sounds to me like youre ready to reinvent prog rock. i don't feel like writing an essay this morning ( sat morning for fucks sakes) so i'll let wikipedia do the talking (this is a good article and will point you to some bands that did i think what you want)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_rock

THIS.

I particularly recommend Golden rain (on Nonesuch) and Gamelan Ensemble of the STSI Denpasar - Music of the gamelan gong kebyar, vol.1

Yeah sgt. peppers is great, when it comes to Baroque in the pop sense tho I am more prone to Pet Sounds I think.

Yeah Misirlou is an old Greek song I believe, that's what I meant. Like how I realized that surf rock was basically a guitar infused version of greek/turkish music. Then I found out Dick was Greek or from somewhere over there haha.

Oh shit I would love to work with Van Dyke Parks, he needs to break away from Daniel Johns and stop making that overproduced shit tho....

Ah no no no no haha. The opposite way.

I like simpler music that focuses on the melody. I just wanted to broaden my horizens when it comes to world music and classical, to bring it in subtley, but not to re-work the song structures really. I try not to mess with odd time signatures really, they've never spoken to me like combining a solid melody and odd chord progression have.

King Crimson is rad and Pink Floyd duh but besides that I'm not in to any other prog bands really, especially the newer ones.

No this helps. What I'm getting is that no matter ambition if you try to mix too much of classical with rock you will fail. I pretty much write pop songs, and I'm not really looking for something to throw in a bridge like gogo bordello when all of a sudden we go into a "kick yr legs in the air and dance around fiddle solo". I'm just looking more for melodies I haven't heard before or ways to ascend from certain chords and etc. into other things. Basically just trying to hear new shit. for example I got into buddy holly alot when I was younger, experimenting with the songs that would start with the chorus and repeat that throughout the song and there would be a few verses thrown in between. The first song I tried to write with that structure became my bands first big crowd fav/hit.

I'm really not trying to do prog but more like what the beatles and brian wilson did and etc. but I don't want to do it exactly like them. so instead of studying their music, I'd rather study the music that inspired THEM. and other music that have inspired people on other sides of the world and not just the west.


EDIT: there's also been alot of other recommendations since I last checked so give me a bit to look thru those, but thanks for keeping them coming and not making fun of me too much :-)

"Song Cycle" is one of my all time favorite albums. Good call.