When filing away your precious sounds how do you approach the task; do you file by:
A – Z by artist or group, and what does that say about you?
Do you collate by genre – Jazz, Electronica,Country – Is it filed in chronological sequence or by classics vs other?
Do you organise your sounds by mood – songs to play after a hell of a day – relaxing, aggressive, passive or escape to an Inner World?
Do you create musical journeys by theme – Joni Mitchell through Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius to Weather Report. Or Velvet Underground through Lou reed, Anthony and the Johnsons to Blind Boys of Alabama. Or Brian Eno Through David Bowie, Robert Fripp, David Sylvian to Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club?
Do you organise by year – the summer of ’77… yeh, summer fun in the summer sun…(MX80 Sound)
Do you collate by label – ECM, ACT,Capitol, etc – then how; by A-Z, year,etc? See my point! And do you group label releases by number?
Could you organise by format – 78’s, LP’s, CD’s, HDCD’s, SACD’s, DVD-A’s, Lossless…ETC.
Do you group by list – recomended listens by others – 1001 Albums to hear before you die! Do you have 10 Albums ready to rescue from the house due to fire,earthquake, flood, etc.
How about grouping sounds by country or culture – Japan, Americana, English Folk Music…
By cost – the cheapest purchases giving the most musical satisfaction.
Do you group live albums by venue – Fillmore East, Fillmore West, Carnegie Hall, Albert Hall – to appreciate the ambience and what row you are sitting in?
By lifestyle choices – a musical diary of episodic events of ones past – my first record, my favorite record at school, my first CD, the song we chose for our wedding.. (Wild is the Wind – David Bowie – how apt!) moving on…
Collating weekly listening by state of mind – grouping what you listen to during a week or month and reflecting on why these sounds and what it may tell others?
Or finally do you not care – by default – songs the iPod taught us! Or by random choice – pushing the shuffle button or just grabbing the first thing that comes to hand which was probably the last thing you played anyway unless the item has been misfiled then you will need to start all over again to get some order or chaos back into your life!
Anyway; enjoy!
PS. Here are two more:
By Producer/Conductor – The works of Daniel Lanois for example – from Eno to Emmylou Harris!
By Time – Classical works especially suffer from differing times – Carmina Burana – is a classic example! I have at least 5 versions of differing length and I suppose one is meant to accept the Carl Orff approved version on Deutsche Gramaphone Label?
