musical thinking

music has been on my mind, especially lullabies--not traditional lullabies per se, although those are nice, too, but more the tunes that have lullaby qualities. i keep thinking that maybe i'll find some soothing gamelan tunes, but so far the stuff becomes a little too dissonant at times, and the image of cooing and soothing a sweet littl'un disappears. i'm not interested in covers of current songs being turned into lullabies, but gems that calm and relax both adults and whippersnappers. any ideas?

open the box.

i used to be a big fan of pandora. i've talked about it before, and haven't used it much lately, as some peeps turned me on to lastfm a couple years back.

tonight i went to an online community meetup at work where pandora's community manager shared her tips, tricks, and challenges managing their enormous community of music lovers and listeners. i was reminded of the pure joy i experienced the first time i was introduced to the music genome project. i had never spent time considering the attributes that comprise my musical taste, and was surprised and intrigued by pandora's selections for me, as opposed to annoyed by other music sites that based their tune choices on radio play or a malformed "if you like this.. algorithm.

for i like...

minor key tonality
a subtle use of vocal harmonies
mild rhythmic syncopation

it's true. i think i'll listen some more.

and yes, the comm manager is a librarian. love it.

x-mas eve, lil' sister style

this is our first christmas together, and our first chance at crafting traditions to last a lifetime. about one minute and 32 seconds ago, i think we cemented our fate: duran duran.

yes.
remember how addicted to last fm i am? i decided to listen to tunes like tears for fears, and this is the 4th song spun: save a prayer.

i'm all teary now :)
and my sister is the only one who understands.

reports from the field, and other stories

learning moment: if you have a toaster, you'll eat more bread.

pondering moment: a buddy of mine admitted the other day that because of an ex, he can't listen to cat power anymore. he was bummed. i was reminded that there's people who hold on to music for sentimental reasons, and there's people who have no use for songs they loved in earlier times. (spoiler alert: i don't understand people who fall into the latter category)

related moment: i made the plunge and finally joined lastfm. i love it more than expected.

fur pants moment: nene was locked out of our apartment, on the deck, for 1 hour and 17 minutes last night. she's stronger now.

tunes: on

after rooting around in an email account where i sequester subscriptions and other junk since circa 1998, i found an email from pandora, a subscription music service that hasn't seen much action from me in a spell.

pandora told me it had some music recommendations for me, so i plugged in my speakers, and away we went into a funky mix by artists i'd never heard. last i traveled pandora-way, if you let the music play without any interaction, you'd find yourself listening to a pop diva with platinum blond hair and junk in her trunk.

begin the experiment.

i do what?

not so long ago, d and i were listening to tunes on my mp3 player, and he smirked, "all you listen to is male angst."

it was true... ben gibbard, sam prekop, pinback, american analog set, iron and wine/calexico... what happened to the ladies? since when do i focus on the dudes?

sf is a sad sad radio town. i used to relegate my buddies to music snobdom when they'd complain of of the music drought in the city. when i arrived, i blazed my own trail and discovered the empty chasm they railed against did indeed exist.

unable to rely on the radio (ahhh kexp how i miss finding you on my dial!), i depend on reviews, connections users make, and downloads on emusic.com.

today i made friends with ivy and palomar. oh, and bertrand burgalat... can't say no to a frenchman!

(amy: listen to whatever happened to all our pioneers--> delicious like tahiti 80!)