meditations on the "shuffle songs" function of an ipod.
again i find myself at my desk downstairs at the hilltop office. and again, i’m wasting time, only this time, i’m listening to my ipod on shuffle. i have been doing so for the past half hour or so, part of which was during my lunch break. while on the later portion of this lunch break, it occurred to me how typically 21st-Century the concept of a “shuffle” button really is.
i mean, yeah, there were jukeboxes fairly early on in the 20th Century, and that’s a similar idea, but that’s not really the type of shuffling that i’m talking about, because that’s usually a pretty general, Top 40 type of song selection. the type of shuffling i’m talking about has only been possible for the past few years, now that we’re in music’s Digital Age.
there are three reasons this type of shuffling is different from radio stations, mixtapes, “random” buttons on cd players, and jukeboxes. the first is that the song selection is completely in your hands, because it’s all coming from your own collection. [ok, when you’re listening to a cd on “random,” it’s all your shit, and the same sometimes goes for mixtapes. that was kind of a bad reason, but i’ve got two more!] the second is that the range is much larger, being that your entire library [or at least a good chunk of it] is at hand. even on a 25-disc cd player that shuffles cd’s as well as tracks, it’s never anyone’s entire collection-just what they have in there at the time. but with my 60gig ipod, i pretty much have everything from my library that i listen to regularly, just on tap in my pocket all the time. the third reason is that songs are selected completely at random, which is literally an IMPOSSIBLE thing for humans to emulate. you kind of hint at it with a jukebox, since the choice is never really in any one person’s hands, but it’s still not really the same, because again the range is probably narrower than the scope of what one person is apt to have in his or her digital music library. when you leave your song selection up to random selection, and take into account all the things like multi-track pieces intended to be heard sequentially, or random silly interludes on hip hop records, or live recordings, or just the fact that i listen to everything from lil wayne to lil wolfgang amadeus mozart, you’re going to be hearing some pretty off-the-wall shit. seriously. check out what this shuffle i’m on has consisted of so far:
1. hollertronix: that wierd girl
2. e-40: ghetto celebrity
3. john cage: sonata VII for prepared piano
4. portishead: half day closing
5. snoop doggy dogg: interlude: my name is snoop
6. air: alone in kyoto
7. the grouch: clean nikes
8. the faint: posed to death [the calculators remix]
9. stravinsky: the rite of spring, mvmt 10: glorification of the chosen victim
10. a melodic dictation from music 30B
11. chopin: polonaise in c-sharp minor
12. clipse: gangsta lean
13. the zombies: studio chat - the way i feel inside
14. robert + karen: in lieu of x-mas blues
15. the beach boys: fun fun fun
16. billie holiday: the man i love
17. herbie hancock: cantaloupe island
18. mates of state: beautiful dreamer
19. the birthday party: the guilt parade
20. gang of four: 5.45
21. bob dylan: freight train blues
22. stereolab: monstre sacre
23. yeah yeah yeahs: y control
24. television: satisfaction [stones cover] live
25. duran duran: planet earth
26. the blood brothers: cecilia
27. tapes n tapes: cowbell
28. ghislain poirier: copier copier
29. jeff buckley: i woke up in a strange place
30. nick drake: pink moon
seriously. it’s strange, because some stuff [billie holiday leading into herbie hancock, the birthday party leading into gang of four, jeff buckley leading into nick drake....] actually flows rather nicely. but then sometimes you have some RANDOM-ASS juxtapositions, like a remixed faint song leading into one of the noisier portions of the rite of spring, or frederic chopin leading into a pharrell-featuring clipse track, or a noisy-ass live cover of the stones’ "satisfaction" into one of the poppiest duran duran songs ever [and that’s saying something], into the fucking blood brothers.
to me, this is one of the most typical examples of Digital Age-ness because the disparate musical choices can be so disjunct. no human could have ever come up with a playlist like this before the digital music library. even if they could, i doubt most seriously that they would, because human beings generally like things to be somewhat continuous. if we’re hearing two different rock songs on the radio back-to-back, they better both be rockin or both be acoustic or both be live tracks or something, because otherwise there’s no time for us to establish a mood based on the music. and if they’re hip hop tracks, they damn well better literally conjoin them by overlapping them and using turntables to mix the shit.
the introduction of the turntable into music was pretty huge, because it was the first time the concept of sampling arose. i feel like we’ve come upon an even bigger revolution than that, and i’m not sure it’s for the best. like, are our attention spans really that short? do we really need to the instant gratification of a new song, artist, genre, century, every five minutes? can we no longer sit still through a 45-minute symphony by beethoven? can we no longer sit still through a 45-minute record by the beatles? i mean, fuck, i was pretty much born unable to sit through most 3-hour operas, but people loved the shit in the 19th Century in germany-is that a unique circumstance, or are most people uninterested in 3-hour operas?
but perhaps i’m attributing too much credit to the digitalization of music? perhaps this is a larger socio-cultural thing. i’d buy that...and it’s probably been happening since the television. or maybe it’s much smaller thing. maybe it’s a result of the fact that most music these days sucks ass. i mean, we have done an inordinate amount with rock music. think about all the subgenres in rock: there’s old rock n’ roll, psychedelic, alternative, new wave, disco, folk, metal, indie, emo, pop, lite rock, and don’t even get me started on the hyphenated genres like noise-punk and post-rock and all the fucking something-core’s you can think of. and hip-hop has grown kind of stagnant, too...what’s with that? but then...
the reason that hyphy isn’t blowing up the way crunk did is because crunk is the dumbed-down, drunk, sloppy, leaned-out and lazy version of hyphy that you can play in a club for a bunch of dumb, drunk, sloppy, leaned-out quasi-thugs. the reason that the arcade fire wasn’t owning the charts in 2004 is because the killers did a cleaned-up, glossier, less yelpy, more hook-driven version of 80’s-tastic pop. the reason smooth jazz exists is that if jazz was left to evolve on its own, the result would be too noisy to be played in a starbuck’s.
and when you think about it that way, it becomes a chicken-or-the-egg thing. is the music industry churning out a bunch of dreary shit that’s mediocre at best because the american public won’t challenge itself to listen to something new? or is the american public unwilling to challenge itself because the music industry is churning out a bunch of dreary shit that’s mediocre at best? i dunno...
but back to shuffles. i think it’s sort of unnatural. since humans are incapable of having truly random thoughts, isn’t this a sort of inhuman way to listen to music? or are we becoming our computers?
do you think that--do you think there’s some people that aren’t really--that are actually robots living among us? but we can’t tell?
no. no, we don’t have the technology yet.
patrick’s recommended download of the day: beethoven: symphony #9. counteract this shortening of your attention span by listening to one of the greatest long-form pieces anyone has ever written, ever. in the history of music. ever.
accomplishment of the day: spending a full day at work doing literally NOTHING. i emailed a letter to my boss’s assistant to have her proof-read it, and she sent it back saying it was fine. right now i’m locating banks in the area for a project i’m about to start, which is kinda productive...
accomplishment of the day: literally, just this entry.
heart
patrick
i mean, yeah, there were jukeboxes fairly early on in the 20th Century, and that’s a similar idea, but that’s not really the type of shuffling that i’m talking about, because that’s usually a pretty general, Top 40 type of song selection. the type of shuffling i’m talking about has only been possible for the past few years, now that we’re in music’s Digital Age.
there are three reasons this type of shuffling is different from radio stations, mixtapes, “random” buttons on cd players, and jukeboxes. the first is that the song selection is completely in your hands, because it’s all coming from your own collection. [ok, when you’re listening to a cd on “random,” it’s all your shit, and the same sometimes goes for mixtapes. that was kind of a bad reason, but i’ve got two more!] the second is that the range is much larger, being that your entire library [or at least a good chunk of it] is at hand. even on a 25-disc cd player that shuffles cd’s as well as tracks, it’s never anyone’s entire collection-just what they have in there at the time. but with my 60gig ipod, i pretty much have everything from my library that i listen to regularly, just on tap in my pocket all the time. the third reason is that songs are selected completely at random, which is literally an IMPOSSIBLE thing for humans to emulate. you kind of hint at it with a jukebox, since the choice is never really in any one person’s hands, but it’s still not really the same, because again the range is probably narrower than the scope of what one person is apt to have in his or her digital music library. when you leave your song selection up to random selection, and take into account all the things like multi-track pieces intended to be heard sequentially, or random silly interludes on hip hop records, or live recordings, or just the fact that i listen to everything from lil wayne to lil wolfgang amadeus mozart, you’re going to be hearing some pretty off-the-wall shit. seriously. check out what this shuffle i’m on has consisted of so far:
1. hollertronix: that wierd girl
2. e-40: ghetto celebrity
3. john cage: sonata VII for prepared piano
4. portishead: half day closing
5. snoop doggy dogg: interlude: my name is snoop
6. air: alone in kyoto
7. the grouch: clean nikes
8. the faint: posed to death [the calculators remix]
9. stravinsky: the rite of spring, mvmt 10: glorification of the chosen victim
10. a melodic dictation from music 30B
11. chopin: polonaise in c-sharp minor
12. clipse: gangsta lean
13. the zombies: studio chat - the way i feel inside
14. robert + karen: in lieu of x-mas blues
15. the beach boys: fun fun fun
16. billie holiday: the man i love
17. herbie hancock: cantaloupe island
18. mates of state: beautiful dreamer
19. the birthday party: the guilt parade
20. gang of four: 5.45
21. bob dylan: freight train blues
22. stereolab: monstre sacre
23. yeah yeah yeahs: y control
24. television: satisfaction [stones cover] live
25. duran duran: planet earth
26. the blood brothers: cecilia
27. tapes n tapes: cowbell
28. ghislain poirier: copier copier
29. jeff buckley: i woke up in a strange place
30. nick drake: pink moon
seriously. it’s strange, because some stuff [billie holiday leading into herbie hancock, the birthday party leading into gang of four, jeff buckley leading into nick drake....] actually flows rather nicely. but then sometimes you have some RANDOM-ASS juxtapositions, like a remixed faint song leading into one of the noisier portions of the rite of spring, or frederic chopin leading into a pharrell-featuring clipse track, or a noisy-ass live cover of the stones’ "satisfaction" into one of the poppiest duran duran songs ever [and that’s saying something], into the fucking blood brothers.
to me, this is one of the most typical examples of Digital Age-ness because the disparate musical choices can be so disjunct. no human could have ever come up with a playlist like this before the digital music library. even if they could, i doubt most seriously that they would, because human beings generally like things to be somewhat continuous. if we’re hearing two different rock songs on the radio back-to-back, they better both be rockin or both be acoustic or both be live tracks or something, because otherwise there’s no time for us to establish a mood based on the music. and if they’re hip hop tracks, they damn well better literally conjoin them by overlapping them and using turntables to mix the shit.
the introduction of the turntable into music was pretty huge, because it was the first time the concept of sampling arose. i feel like we’ve come upon an even bigger revolution than that, and i’m not sure it’s for the best. like, are our attention spans really that short? do we really need to the instant gratification of a new song, artist, genre, century, every five minutes? can we no longer sit still through a 45-minute symphony by beethoven? can we no longer sit still through a 45-minute record by the beatles? i mean, fuck, i was pretty much born unable to sit through most 3-hour operas, but people loved the shit in the 19th Century in germany-is that a unique circumstance, or are most people uninterested in 3-hour operas?
but perhaps i’m attributing too much credit to the digitalization of music? perhaps this is a larger socio-cultural thing. i’d buy that...and it’s probably been happening since the television. or maybe it’s much smaller thing. maybe it’s a result of the fact that most music these days sucks ass. i mean, we have done an inordinate amount with rock music. think about all the subgenres in rock: there’s old rock n’ roll, psychedelic, alternative, new wave, disco, folk, metal, indie, emo, pop, lite rock, and don’t even get me started on the hyphenated genres like noise-punk and post-rock and all the fucking something-core’s you can think of. and hip-hop has grown kind of stagnant, too...what’s with that? but then...
the reason that hyphy isn’t blowing up the way crunk did is because crunk is the dumbed-down, drunk, sloppy, leaned-out and lazy version of hyphy that you can play in a club for a bunch of dumb, drunk, sloppy, leaned-out quasi-thugs. the reason that the arcade fire wasn’t owning the charts in 2004 is because the killers did a cleaned-up, glossier, less yelpy, more hook-driven version of 80’s-tastic pop. the reason smooth jazz exists is that if jazz was left to evolve on its own, the result would be too noisy to be played in a starbuck’s.
and when you think about it that way, it becomes a chicken-or-the-egg thing. is the music industry churning out a bunch of dreary shit that’s mediocre at best because the american public won’t challenge itself to listen to something new? or is the american public unwilling to challenge itself because the music industry is churning out a bunch of dreary shit that’s mediocre at best? i dunno...
but back to shuffles. i think it’s sort of unnatural. since humans are incapable of having truly random thoughts, isn’t this a sort of inhuman way to listen to music? or are we becoming our computers?
do you think that--do you think there’s some people that aren’t really--that are actually robots living among us? but we can’t tell?
no. no, we don’t have the technology yet.
patrick’s recommended download of the day: beethoven: symphony #9. counteract this shortening of your attention span by listening to one of the greatest long-form pieces anyone has ever written, ever. in the history of music. ever.
accomplishment of the day: spending a full day at work doing literally NOTHING. i emailed a letter to my boss’s assistant to have her proof-read it, and she sent it back saying it was fine. right now i’m locating banks in the area for a project i’m about to start, which is kinda productive...
accomplishment of the day: literally, just this entry.
heart
patrick