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Does Jack White get into the bed?
Nov. 7th, 2006 12:05 amSomething is flawed about listening to all my music in a giant randomized pile (which is how I usually listen).
I have a poor sense of what I actually have, which may be (er... is) in part due to sheer volume, but definitely also is attributable to the acontextualized nature of any one song in the song-mass.
I don't remember what albums things are on, which isn't so bad on its own, but which feeds into the previous problem (it's easier to know you have an album, and know approximately what's on that album than to just know you have some array of songs by an artist, and that they must be divided into albums in some way).
I miss the subtleties and interconnectedness between one track by an artist and another, because I lack the frame of reference of the same-artist tracks surrounding the one I care about. Instead, it's usually surrounded by completely different things that have nothing (except in strange occasional cases) to contribute to it. I still know the order of songs I had on cassettes when I was younger, and even some cds from somewhat later. But I don't make that kind of memory anymore.
This makes me bad at making mixes. I mean, I'm not great at doing that anyway, but I do like doing it. But I'm not growing the individual associations that each song should present, properly; I'm not getting all of the song's content when it's just some song by I don't know whom in a long line of songs. My current mix strategy is to just put songs in a folder when I run across them and they strike me as having a particular purpose or potential place in a mix, but this is massively inefficient and doesn't work so well when I want to put a cd-length playlist together in less than, say, a month or two. And even then, it's not a matter of my subconscious finally furnishing me with the ideal song (usually), but of me happening to run across something that seems appropriate while I'm listening to it.
(It cuts down, though, on mix-behavior like I used to display where I'd forget that Awesome Song by the Lumpen Storkbats was nine minutes long and changed character twice and probably shouldn't go between those other, shorter, pithier songs... but it does favor choosing songs that seem neat in the moment, e.g. upbeat snappy songs that seem good right off the bat instead of maybe more sleepers or subtle songs.)
It's hard to get into the mood for a particular artist, and impossible to have that be satisfied without leaving the all-songs-on-random mode. It's like being stuck perpetually inside a remarkably incompetent mixtape. Or maybe a radio station which is generally good but utterly without a sense of flow.
Hmm. So, sort of relevantly, anyone have any musicky suggestions? What do you really love that I never listen to? Lemme know.
I have a poor sense of what I actually have, which may be (er... is) in part due to sheer volume, but definitely also is attributable to the acontextualized nature of any one song in the song-mass.
I don't remember what albums things are on, which isn't so bad on its own, but which feeds into the previous problem (it's easier to know you have an album, and know approximately what's on that album than to just know you have some array of songs by an artist, and that they must be divided into albums in some way).
I miss the subtleties and interconnectedness between one track by an artist and another, because I lack the frame of reference of the same-artist tracks surrounding the one I care about. Instead, it's usually surrounded by completely different things that have nothing (except in strange occasional cases) to contribute to it. I still know the order of songs I had on cassettes when I was younger, and even some cds from somewhat later. But I don't make that kind of memory anymore.
This makes me bad at making mixes. I mean, I'm not great at doing that anyway, but I do like doing it. But I'm not growing the individual associations that each song should present, properly; I'm not getting all of the song's content when it's just some song by I don't know whom in a long line of songs. My current mix strategy is to just put songs in a folder when I run across them and they strike me as having a particular purpose or potential place in a mix, but this is massively inefficient and doesn't work so well when I want to put a cd-length playlist together in less than, say, a month or two. And even then, it's not a matter of my subconscious finally furnishing me with the ideal song (usually), but of me happening to run across something that seems appropriate while I'm listening to it.
(It cuts down, though, on mix-behavior like I used to display where I'd forget that Awesome Song by the Lumpen Storkbats was nine minutes long and changed character twice and probably shouldn't go between those other, shorter, pithier songs... but it does favor choosing songs that seem neat in the moment, e.g. upbeat snappy songs that seem good right off the bat instead of maybe more sleepers or subtle songs.)
It's hard to get into the mood for a particular artist, and impossible to have that be satisfied without leaving the all-songs-on-random mode. It's like being stuck perpetually inside a remarkably incompetent mixtape. Or maybe a radio station which is generally good but utterly without a sense of flow.
Hmm. So, sort of relevantly, anyone have any musicky suggestions? What do you really love that I never listen to? Lemme know.
