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Looper's Delight
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Hello all, I just completed an absolutely arduous and emotional draining project to categorize 70 of my live and studio looping MP3s by 19 different fields or data points. I created a Microsoft Excel tool where potential listeners can search for my music by filtering with the following fields: Song Title, Duration, Size, CD, Buy CD Link, Download Link, Type of Recording, Genre/Style 1, Genre/Style 2, Genre/Style 3, Recording Date, Venue, Musicians / Instruments, Temp, Mood/Feel 1, Mood/Feel 2, Mood/Feel 3, Mood/Feel 4, Mood/Feel 5 The studio clips are from my last two CDs and from my two upcoming CDs, and the live clips are from various performances that I've recorded from the soundboard in the last year or so. These live clips are the raw deal and farily indicative of what you can hear at one of my gigs...the only instance where I did not make an MP3 available is if the song had a train wreck or just contained too many performances issues for me to personally tolerate publishing on my website. There were perhaps only 10 or so songs that fit into this "intolerable" bucket for me. Nonetheless, you'll find that the clips I did make available for download have plenty of glitches and imperfections, all the wonderful things you would expect to hear in spontaneously composed and improvised music! :) The Mood/Feel categories were the toughest part of this project. Basically, I started with the mood or feel that struck me the hardest, and then repeated this until there were five that could potentially help listeners frame the music before hearing it. However, I admit that this is a rather subjective and relativistic way of framing music (also granting that many digital music services do this and probably rely on a bell curve of listeners having similar connotations of certain mood descriptors). And second, it was really emotionally taxing to listen to 70 of my clips in a week's timeframe and try to stay focused on how my own music was making me feel. In this respect, this project was also a huge educational exercise for me and an exploration of my own personal feelings. In the end, I realized that my emotional vocabulary was either more limited than I had thought beforehand, or some of my music I just could not express emotionally in words. I would say that some songs or parts of my songs are just beyond language for me. In any event, for the most part I used the Mood categories published and used by the popular All Music Guide: http://www.allmusic.com (click on "Mood" under the navigation heading "Explore by..."). I used many mood descriptors of my own as well, especially where the feeling was strong for me. The three genre fields were not easy either. Again, I relied heavily on the All Music genres descriptions, which I think are very informative. But again, there is a lot of fuzziness in this exercise as well. The genre that I place my songs into may not be exactly what others select based on their personal listening history and background. In any event, I don't think I am far off, especially in the category of improvisational, which applies to at least 95% of my music. So, if you get a chance give the tool a try and tell me what you think. Try filtering on one of the Mood/Feel fields and then getting more granular with the four other Mood/Feel fields. See if the songs that results from your filter seem at all described by the Mood/Feel descriptors. And if a particular song brings up a mood for you that you think is more accurate than those I have listed, then by all means let me know. This part of the tool is "living" and will undergo many revisions as I gather more feedback and listen to my music again. And if you have some better ideas on the genres for some songs, I am entirely open to these suggestions as well. Finally, if you can think of any other fields that would be useful, I am open to adding those. In short, I am open to any suggestions for improvement. I will eventually start filling in the comments section of the tool as well. The tool is accessible in three formats: Interactive HTM File: http://www.boisemusicians.com/mp3_Sort.htm (be sure to widen the columns so that when you filter you can see all the text in one line, especially useful for the Musicians/Instruments field) XML File: http://www.boisemusicians.com/mp3.xml The Source Excel File (for Microsoft Users): http://www.boisemusicians.com/mp3.xls NOTE: When you click on a download link, the resulting page will allow you to download the song by clicking on the song title, or you can stream it from the server with the link below it. Cheers, Krispen Hartung http://www.krispenhartung.com info@krispenhartung.com