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Blogsky Turning the Tide Chomsky has a blogsky. ... More Spring Inspired Beauty Clicking on the pic... thud I'm sure that at some point in time I've pim... Six Steps from God to Jesus Chaotic Not Random K... Lets go over the rules again... If and when you c... I Give You Music... Now Let Me Sleep! Chroma Key ... Its Official! camedwards.com: Here It Is Its off... Educate them and they will come There are several... Another Okie on the Web? Ladies Love Cool James ... Out? Sometimes I think the answer to the Iraqi pr... Justin Oldham - Politics and Patriotism
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4.16.2004
Musical Moods Wired News: Music Magic Found in the Shuffle: "'As it's on shuffle I don't know what's coming up next, and it often surprises me how the same street can look lively and busy and colorful one moment and then when a different song starts, it can change to a mysterious and unnerving place,' Bull reports the interviewee as saying. 'I like the sensation though.'" Reading this as I listen to a random selection of CD's that I have converted to mp3 for computer listening. As I convert more and more albums over I will get even more interesting varieties of music chex mix. Its fun to have a driving metal song like Dream Theater "As I Am" played right next to Ben Harper's "Homeless Child". But what I was really wanting was something like this which looks promising thought I haven't tried it yet. I will, and I'll give you my opinions. I want to be able to assign a mood tag to each of my songs to indicate just where it should fit in during a musical shuffle. Some nights, late when I just feel like lying in bed with the lights low and enjoying being in bed with nowhere to go I like slow soft music. That little bit of reverential nirvana then inevitably gets interrupted by some heavy metal tune, that had I been up and busy, would have been appropriate, but considering my prone state.. not so much. What I want is a playlist editor with maybe four or five definable tabs that I can use to assign to each tune in my collection. I can choose songs that I feel are sad and slow and songs that I feel are upbeat and driving. The random shuffler can then know to avoid the slow sappy tunes when I'm active and running around as well as avoid those heavy metal driving tunes while I lay in bed contemplating my "role in the universe". I've always secretly resented the convention that artists abide by that says that they should present a mix of styles over the course of their album. This, of course renders it useless as a soundtrack to any particular moment. With the exception of a few artists that consistently put out one dimensional records (the Cowboy Junkies come to mind) most feel obligated to include at least one poppy tune in the collection. Damn them! But now we can fight back. With the playlist on many Mp3 players you can cherrypick your music collection and put together custom collections of songs for various listening situations. This works fine but I was thinking of something a little more organic, a system where songs have attributes and you can specify which attributes to stress in your listening. We'll see if Moodplayer can deliver. Update: After downloading Moodlogic and installing it you have to activate your song collection. Which means that the program lokos up your songs in a database and saves that information to use to create "mixes". The database itself is user created and I went through the process, which involved picking a genre, instrumentation and moods for the tempo and lyrics. This information submitted by users into the database is used to creat mixes according to categories. I found the most useful tool to be mixes by genre, where, for instance, you can pick "Alternative" and hit mix. The program creates a list of songs to play in a Mp3 player. On the mix screen there is a wheel marked " Hang, Punch, Get Up, Easy, Relax, Blue and Suprise", of course clicking one of these buttons will generate a mix according to that description. Does it work? Well.... yeah. Clicking on Electronica and then Relax gave me this mix of available songs: Afterlife - Blue Bar Zero 7 - In the Waiting Line Air - PLayground Love (Vibrophone Version) Zero 7 - Distractions mum - Green Grass Tunnel Royskopp - A Higher Place Dntel - Life is Full of Possibilities mum - We Have a Map of the Piano Afterlife - Makes Me Feel mum - There is a Number of Small Things Zero 7 - I Have Seen Zero 7 - Give it Away Not bad, I even have the option of picking a more or less diverse selection of songs. The downside, well, it costs money for one. You pay $39.99 for a full version that operates beyond the five day trail period. That's too step for me, but it might be right for you. | |
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