Soundtracks

Thursday, January 8, 2009 ~ 5 comments so far

Prompted by the little fluffy kitten (as she is currently known), I’ve been pondering my musical habits of late and realised that, unlike the aforementioned little fluffy kitten, I currently lack a soundtrack for my life.

I bought a few albums over the past couple of weeks, some that I missed through 2008 (Kanye West, Q-Tip, Emiliana Torrini) but none have stuck yet. In fact I think there were only two albums that really ‘stuck’ last year. The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow, and Like Drawing Blood by Gotye.

That’s partly down to the fact that most of my listening time is at work, and I recently wiped out my iTunes library to start over, losing the date the tracks were added and, thus, the ability to wheedle out only the last X weeks of new stuff. This leaves newer albums lost in the mahoosive library of music that I have accumulated over the past ten years or so and, frankly, it’s something I need to tackle.

I have plenty of hard drive space so I think I’ll be ‘archiving’ some music to a separate folder, where it can sit until such times as I remember that it’s there and at that point it’ll be a decision on PLAY or DELETE.

Anyway, I have no soundtrack at the moment as I’ve been dipping into old favourites as it’s easier to remember those than recall the last 10 albums I bought.

According to Last.fm, the artists I listened to most in the past 3 months were:

1. Aimee Mann
2. Queen
3. Pearl Jam
4. Kings of Leon
5. Sigur Rós
6. Puddle of Mudd
7. Radiohead
8. AC/DC
9. Elbow
10. Foo Fighters

Which, given that only half of these artists released an album in 2008, and none of them are ‘new’ acts, might explain why I have no soundtrack other than the same half dozen songs that auto-repeat when I can’t think of any others.

Ohh well.

Just by Radiohead it is then…

Eclectic Less

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 ~ 8 comments so far

You are what they eat, they say, in which case I’m mostly caffeine and potatoes.

As for what you listen to, that too has an influence on who you are and, naturally, vice versa. With this in mind it is with some disdain that I find myself plumped among the masses when it comes to my music taste. Yes, I’m a snob. No, it’s YOUR problem.

Whilst I have a fairly wide taste of music, and I continue to try and steer myself away from the mainstream (something that is easier to do these days), I only have to look back at the statistics gathered for me by Last.fm which, based on the 83,000 odd tracks I’ve listened to in the past 4 years or so, suggests that my top 20 most frequently played artists are:

1. Foo Fighters
2. Radiohead
3. Kings of Leon
4. R.E.M.
5. The White Stripes
6. Massive Attack
7. Muse
8. Pearl Jam
9. Elbow
10. PJ Harvey
11. Eagles of Death Metal
12. U2
13. Faithless
14. Bjork
15. Kanye West
16. Aimee Mann
17. Goldfrapp
18. Portishead
19. Leftfield
20. Neil Finn

Hardly stepping off the beaten track, am I?

But this doesn’t tell the whole story, if you only take my listening habits from the last 3 months then Fleet Foxes, Lemon Jelly and Sigur Ros all make it into the top 10 which certainly feels, to me, a bit more representative of my listening habits.

The real reason I’m listing this here, now, is that (if I remember) I’ll revisit this topic in 6 months or so and see if the Genius button in iTunes has had much of an impact. We’ll see.

iTunes 8

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 ~ 9 comments so far

I know a lot of you bemoan the fact it grabs huge chunks of memory, and that it has the audacity to organise your music into folders for you. I know this but, as I run on a nice chunky PC with plenty of memory and I don’t really care WHERE my music is stored as long as I can get to it all, then suffice to say I’m a happy bunny when it comes to iTunes. Even more so with the latest version.

And, in particular, that little Genius button.

I have a stupid amount of music in my library, a lot of which I rarely listen to as well as several Christmas albums which I don’t WANT to listen to other than for the entire month of December (I don’t actually get a choice in that matter). Because I have a large library of music I find that, quite frequently, I “lose” an album or two.

Most usually it’ll be a newer album which will sit in my “Recently Added” Smart Playlist for 4 weeks before then disappearing into the depths of my library, wherein it will remain until a random encounter reminds me that it was actually pretty good and why aren’t I listening to it more often??

And this is where the Genius button comes into play.

The premise is simple, select a track, click the button and iTunes will present you with a playlist based on that track culled from your entire library.

What I’m guessing it’s doing is quite complex. Firstly it collates the details of your library (artist, track title, maybe genre?) and uploads that to the iTunes Store library. It then runs an algorithm that comparies the track with similar tracks that other users have bought, matches them based on some magical criteria and then sends that information back to your iTunes library, where it sits and waits until you click the Genius button.

After that, weekly updates are sent to and from your library and the iTunes Store library to make sure the Genius button has up-to-date information from which to make it’s best guess when compiling your Genius playlist for you.

The information sent to the iTunes Store is anonymous, and I’ll admit that I have a few albums that were… ahem.. appropriated through non-legal routes, but there has been no knock on the door and I can use those tracks to generate a Genius playlist.

The idea isn’t without some glitches. The information stored against the MP3 needs to match what the iTunes Store has and it would be nice if it was a little smarter, possibly using a best match kinda thing rather than (it seems) an exact match only.

But after using it for a week or so, I am already a fan. No more faffing about creating playlists by hand or by crafting some weird and wonderful Smart Playlist, instead find a track you like, click the Genius button and away you go!!

Genius.

Landfill Indie

Tuesday, July 22, 2008 ~ 8 comments so far

Great article about the current state of the UK music scene.

Now, whilst I disagree that the Fratellis fall into this camp and feel it is a tad harsh to blame all of this on the Arctic Monkeys, the article mirrors my current thoughts, largely fuelled by listening to X-FM in the morning commute to work (Not a fan of Radio 2 in the mornings, nor the inane chat on Radio Scotland and Radio Clyde). There seems to be a lack of anything new and original, with band after bland band churning out the same punk-lite, faux gritty, rat-a-tat-tat style tunes.

It’s no wonder I’m reaching for some old favourites every time I fire up iTunes.

You don’t need to read the article to get a basic understanding of what is being said, and I’m sure most people who are aware of the current music scene have already moved on from all those definite article bands (The … ) and are currently enjoying bands such as Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend, but there is one quote that sticks out and I think is worth repeating:

“Scouting for Girls are like the sound of Satan’s scrotum emptying. They’re abysmal.”

Which captures what I’m trying to say perfectly.

Random notes of no importance

Friday, May 23, 2008 ~ 4 comments so far

Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Is it wrong that I’d really rather Ollie killed the mice rather than bring them into the house to play? It’s one thing picking up a dead mouse, quite another to spend 20 minutes chasing a live one round the living room at 3 am.

Melody Gardot & R.E.M.
After catching her appearance on Jools Holland (and as a side pondering, does anyone refer to it as “Later… with Jools Holland”? No, it’s just “Jools Holland” innit) I listened to some samples from her album and promptly purchased it.

Listening to it I can picture her onstage persona, sultry jazz singer, and I wonder if that impacts how I engage with her music?

It was the same after I saw R.E.M. a couple of years ago, their last couple of albums had largely escaped my notice (to the point that, for example, I’m still not entirely sure on which album the track “Lotus” can be found), and I was a bit non-plussed… until I heard the tracks live.

Yet after the gig, re-listening to those same tracks now is a different experience.

Yeah I know, nothing startling but it’s been on my mind.

That and the fact that R.E.M.’s new album, Accelerate is rather stonkingly good.

Power out
All of a sudden the screen went blank, the music fell silent, and the power LEDs faded. We’d had a powercut.

“Bugger” he exclaimed in annoyance.

Actually he said “ohh fucksticks” because he was rather cheesed off having spent 30 minutes carefully crafting a newsletter entry. Then hope made an appearance for he had used Google Docs and Google Docs autosaves every now and then and maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t just lost all of his work.

And then the glimmer of hope widened, the websites he’d been using for research were opened in Firefox tabs, perhaps it will have saved them as well.

Lo and behold it was true. Google Docs HAD saved all of his changes, Firefox DID remember which tabs he had open.

Ahh the joy of the righteous, I KNEW I used web apps for a reason.

Mind you, it still amazes me that GOOGLE Docs don’t allow you to send the documents by email… I’m sure they have an email client as well… right?

Financial Ponderingmentness
Between oil prices rising, and the credit crunch … er… crunching, I’ve been taking stock of our financial situation. It’s not that bad, although the looming remortgage will impact it in one way or another.

I’m tempted to go through the remortgage process myself, following the Moneysavingexpert’s guide of course, but wondered if anyone else had done the same?

Psychological Music

Thursday, May 1, 2008 ~ 5 comments so far

I have a LOT of music. I buy a lot, borrow some, obtain others (hey, would you pass up a 4GB download of every “Now” album.. yeah I know, I should’ve too). The one thing I’ve always had a problem with is tracking my short-term listening habits.

I tend to buy music in spurts. I’ll purchase several albums at one time and listen to them when I get a chance, which is where my problem begins. Because I don’t ever sit down to listen to music, it’s always on in the background) then it can take a while for an album to wheedle it’s way into my affections.

I guess I should learn my lesson and cut back on my musical purchases but there is still that part of me that wonders if I’m about to miss the next big thing (when, in reality, I ALWAYS miss it.. ).

Anyway, what usually happens is that one or two albums instantly take root in my brain and remain there for some time. I generally have 5 or 6 albums on rotation but even then some albums slip through the cracks and fall into the depths of my music library (I AM trying to cut back though, I know that 106GB of music isn’t really practical to manage… ahem).

However, having recently purchased a 250GB external hard drive (a Western Digital passport) and backing up all my music there I decided to take it into work as I had a quiet couple of days ahead. Rather than copy the music to my PC, I left it on there and decided to create a new iTunes library. It took about 20 mins to scan it all and then I had a pristine library to browse.

And you know what? All of a sudden I’m actually browsing it rather than relying on various smart lists to filter the new from the old. Without any metadata bogging me down I’m suddenly free to go and find whatever music I stumble across. Yes, I know I could’ve done that before but I guess not having any way to manipulate the tracks, or at least not having my usual methods available to me (smartlists for recently added and recently played) I’ve ended up just randomly scrolling through the library and picking whatever takes my fancy.

It’s been hugely liberating. So much so I’m almost considering doing the same at home.

Almost.

Music I’ve forgotten

Thursday, February 7, 2008 ~ 4 comments so far

There is one major downside to owning a lot of music. It’s not the worry of storage space, nor the concern of quality, instead it’s rather more trivial than that.

I can’t remember what I’ve got.

In any given month I’ll buy at least 2 or 3 albums (not CDs), and they’ll go into rotation at home and at work. Of course I don’t always pick up new albums, sometimes older ones grab my fancy, for example I went through a spate of purchasing old Rolling Stones albums a couple of years ago. Those months are pretty easy to handle, as the new stuff slots into rotation easily. The problems arise when I purchase multiple CDs, which I do tend to do, leaving newer albums to be bulk purchased at the one time.

With several new albums arriving in my playlist, I naturally gravitate to the ones that instantly appeal and stick to those for until I get bored, at which point I revert back to the tried and trusted (my last.fm account gives an accurate depiction of what those are). And there in lies the problem.

I don’t make a conscious effort to revisit music that falls in-between, the music that I last listened to a few months back lies dormant until I stumble across it randomly. I’ve been deliberately using iTunes Party Shuffle to try and revisit the depths of my music collection but I think I need to be smarter than that. Possibly knock up a Smart List that only lists tracks that either haven’t been played at all, or haven’t been played in the past six months. Yes, that might do it.. (the reverse of this, kinda..)

This post is brought to you by Aimee Mann (Bachelor No.2), The Divine Comedy (Fin de Siecle), Joanna Newsom (The Milk-Eyed Mender), and Chungking.

So, go on, delve deep into your music collection and drag out an old friend. And, if you feel like it, do let me know what you found.