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Has digital media changed the way you organize and listen to music?
Absolutely it has, but only in terms of how much easier it has made it for me to "play DJ" so to speak. I've always been a creative type with very specific tastes, and going back to my earliest days of recording music off my TV's speakers or making customized cassettes, I don't think there has ever been a time I wasn't building my own "playlists." The advent of iTunes and the new ease with which tracks could be moved around and albums customized revolutionized my whole music-listening experience. I take it so for granted these days I often don't recall how difficult it was to create an ideal listening experience back in the day. I still remember the very first film score I loaded into iTunes: John Frizzell's Alien: Resurrection. Absolutely rocked my world.
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I tend to make playlists by composer, director, or franchise more than mood.
Then, of course, there's my Random Shit playlist, which currently runs two weeks long. Anything goes in that bad boy.
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Posted: |
Aug 2, 2014 - 5:10 AM
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By: |
Francis
(Member)
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When I do listen to an album, I find that I will often skip over tracks that break the mood.
Have digital media changed the way you organize and listen to music?
Most definitely. Before I started using Itunes I always used winamp for creating playlists and not just with soundtracks but all kind of genres. It wasn't uncommon for me to re-arrange the playing order or leave out songs of rock albums I like. With scores I re-arrange less because I like them as close as possible in movie chronological order, but when there are songs or cues that break the mood as you say, I will definitely uncheck them in Itunes. I'd sometimes program the tracklist on my CD player but I haven't done that in years.
I remember when I started listening and buying music in the 90s, you'd either be someone who would listen to complete albums or you'd be someone who bought singles and compilation albums with the latest hits. Nowadays I know a lot of people who just browse songs on youtube or have such extensive mp3 libraries they don't even know or have heard the majority of tracks on them yet they want to have them at their fingertips whenever they want to listen by an artist. I think this is where online availability is so successful as people just want the one song anyway.
As for customizing, I used to make mixes and sampled a lot of stuff I liked, I had vinyl records and would take an instrumental there, an ac cappella there, these kinds of mashups are still popular today, soundcloud is filled with them. If I think back on all the gear needed to setup a mix session with record players, CD players, ... you can do it so much easier with a decent app nowadays.
It takes a devotion to sit through an album and I guess in our niche genre aside from listening to film music which seems a challenge for a lot of people, it takes an additional devotion to sit through a 2, 3 disc set of a complete score. Though for me to clarify it's mostly pleasure!
So for me it's playlist over album, though there are times I'm content with just putting on the album.
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I grew up listening to albums, & have an album mentality. I think of music in terms of albums, I do delete the odd track that I don't like when ripping onto the ipod. I'm too old to change now, & I don't want to. It looks to me like music has changed for younger people, they enjoy music, but it's just one of the many things around. In the sixties & seventies, music was EVERYTHING, many people I knew had vast collections of albums. Every week there was Melody Maker, NME, Sounds published (& a few more publications I can't think of right now). Oh well, nothing stays the same.
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Track playlists might make sense with a lot of unrelated tracks.
However, when tracks are some ordered part of a greater whole (such as a film score or a symphony), it makes less sense.
Of course, compilation albums such as "The Big Screen Hits Of John Barry" are nothing more than a playlist and I think it works for themes.
But not for film scores or symphonies.
Cheers
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Posted: |
Aug 2, 2014 - 5:54 AM
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By: |
johnbijl
(Member)
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I grew up listening to albums, & have an album mentality.
This.
Although I *have* to make the point that age has nothing to do with it. Mentality is fine word for it.
So to answer the question, for filmscores: it hasn't. I still prefer to listen to albums. It is to time-consuming to do it often, but I even tend to prepare playlists from complete scores, omitting the tracks that I feel effect the flow - and thus listening pleasure - negatively.
I think of filmscores as tone poems, symphonies or concept albums -- to me, cues (or pieces) are depending on one another. I never listen to individual tracks from film score albums; it's like listening to only one movement of a symphony.
For pop music, the availability of one big library has changed my habits. I love putting iTunes on genius and just let it go  or have prepared playlists. Still, when I'm in the mood, I like to choose my songs by hand 'live', as I used to when I was still doing radio (although half of the time, I prepared those beforehand as well).
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I find playlists useful for my old 8GB iPod Nano, where I have to limit album selections to groups of tracks or individual tracks.
Just drag and drop tracks into playlists (in iTunes 11, at least) to get bits and pieces from all your albums onto one space-limited player, then you'll get extended play from multiple albums when you need it.
Plus, assembling moderately large playlists for a small capacity player allows you to mix and match content for the best memory utilization.
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For film scores, I would say digital listening has changed the way I organize music, but it hasn't necessarily been a drawback. I simply create a custom playlist if I choose, and then follow it with a playlist for the full album so I have both. I don't usually create film score playlists culled from different albums.
What I do find most different, however, is my tendency to skip full albums when I'm listening on the computer or MP3 player. Since such listening invariably involves multitasking or traveling, I find I don't usually have the attention span for a full album. And it isn't limited to film music. This is why I listen to CDs when I want to give music my full attention and appreciate a complete album.
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