Posted this topic in General Forum before finding this Music Forum. Perhaps this is irrelevant—it received no responses in its first iteration.
What are your philosophical takes on playlist creation? An artform that says something about the creator? Nothing more than a convenience tool to store favorites?
Many (most) may be analogue-centric, viewing digital as a gimmick or maybe a compromised convenience.
BACKGROUND: I used to create quite well received mixes of ripped tracks on open source software, complete with segued transitions, eqalization and volume leveling and track dissection to create a new sums from chopped tracks. Some of these mixes would be Christmas choral and be burned onto CDs and sent out as Christmas Cards.
I was able to open up folks to classical and choir music (John Rutter, Moriconi, John Dabney, Handel, Bach, Ralph Vaughn Williams, etc …) by literally blending them with more mainstream sensibilities (Celtic Woman, Annie Lennox, Phil Keaggy, Michael W. Smith, etc …) into a seamless whole. People loved the mixes.
That was over nearly two decades ago. Now we have Streaming Software that has largely replaced physical music media. And the closest—that I know of, at least, that streaming gets to mixing tracks is the Playlist.
This is my view on Playlists. ART. Sure, streaming Playlists only allow you to order one track after another, with no equalization nor segue control (overlap or editing). But Playlist Creation can still be so much more than “bookmarking” tracks into a repository. The lack of mixing capability may be seen as forcing true genius to the surface all the more—much like Twitter forces you to convey complex ideas in 144 characters (used to be 40). The constraints may separate the children from the adults.
Anyway … who else finds playlists a part of their audiophile nomenclature?
My case for playlists: Playlists are STORY--our Personal Soundtrack. Playlists--PROPER Playlists--are not just random songs thrown together into a bucket upon which you hit the "random play" button. Those are NOT Playlists. Those are buckets of random songs upon which you hit the "random play" button.
A PROPER Playlist is guided by story, an inferred narrative, premise, “First Act”, “Inciting Incident“ triggering drama and conflict which propels the Story into the “Second Act“, where you flesh out themes with mountains and valleys—just as a composer does.
And “landing the plane“ is almsot as difficult as working through the body of your “Second Act”: What the final tracks are is just as critical—perhaps more—than the first few.
This may all sound really stupid, like when we pretend we are piloting a supersonic jet while driving our Toyotas down the freeway (hopefully when no one else is in the car with you). But I vociferously disagree. Playlists, properly regarded, are a part of our cultural psyche—as expressive as a producer sequencing tracks on an album.
Not sure what I am expecting with this post. Perhaps discussion on the validity of the playlist tool as art?
What are your philosophical takes on playlist creation? An artform that says something about the creator? Nothing more than a convenience tool to store favorites?
Many (most) may be analogue-centric, viewing digital as a gimmick or maybe a compromised convenience.
BACKGROUND: I used to create quite well received mixes of ripped tracks on open source software, complete with segued transitions, eqalization and volume leveling and track dissection to create a new sums from chopped tracks. Some of these mixes would be Christmas choral and be burned onto CDs and sent out as Christmas Cards.
I was able to open up folks to classical and choir music (John Rutter, Moriconi, John Dabney, Handel, Bach, Ralph Vaughn Williams, etc …) by literally blending them with more mainstream sensibilities (Celtic Woman, Annie Lennox, Phil Keaggy, Michael W. Smith, etc …) into a seamless whole. People loved the mixes.
That was over nearly two decades ago. Now we have Streaming Software that has largely replaced physical music media. And the closest—that I know of, at least, that streaming gets to mixing tracks is the Playlist.
This is my view on Playlists. ART. Sure, streaming Playlists only allow you to order one track after another, with no equalization nor segue control (overlap or editing). But Playlist Creation can still be so much more than “bookmarking” tracks into a repository. The lack of mixing capability may be seen as forcing true genius to the surface all the more—much like Twitter forces you to convey complex ideas in 144 characters (used to be 40). The constraints may separate the children from the adults.
Anyway … who else finds playlists a part of their audiophile nomenclature?
My case for playlists: Playlists are STORY--our Personal Soundtrack. Playlists--PROPER Playlists--are not just random songs thrown together into a bucket upon which you hit the "random play" button. Those are NOT Playlists. Those are buckets of random songs upon which you hit the "random play" button.
A PROPER Playlist is guided by story, an inferred narrative, premise, “First Act”, “Inciting Incident“ triggering drama and conflict which propels the Story into the “Second Act“, where you flesh out themes with mountains and valleys—just as a composer does.
And “landing the plane“ is almsot as difficult as working through the body of your “Second Act”: What the final tracks are is just as critical—perhaps more—than the first few.
This may all sound really stupid, like when we pretend we are piloting a supersonic jet while driving our Toyotas down the freeway (hopefully when no one else is in the car with you). But I vociferously disagree. Playlists, properly regarded, are a part of our cultural psyche—as expressive as a producer sequencing tracks on an album.
Not sure what I am expecting with this post. Perhaps discussion on the validity of the playlist tool as art?
Last edited:
