Note: although I try to keep content as original as possible for my blog, I can’t take credit for today’s posting. The idea behind this posting was plagiarized from Metalinquisition – a hilarious metal blog I discovered yesterday. And while there isn’t as much Project Wyze or Farmclub discussion on Metalinquisition (or even Slaves on Dope – get with the times, guy) as I’d like, it’s a hilarious, informative metal-blog that, much to my surprise, has actually mentioned Crazy Town and Anal Cunt in tandem. Which, basically, makes Metalinquisition the perfect accompaniment to Mambo About Masonry. Anyhow, on with the show:A few years ago, I’d discovered a crappy little website named Pandora: The Music Genome Project. Now, like you, I’d initially assumed that Pandora the Music Genome Project was the name of a funk-jazz-experimental-IDM-deep house band (which is what occurs when shaggy-afroed, Zeppelin-fan-bassists grow up and discover Birkenstocks, and the Kama Sutra). But this isn’t so – it’s a site which, like last.fm, attempts to be predictive of your musical tastes.
So, what, exactly, is a music genome? Well, Wikipedia’s definition of a genome is as follows:
“In classical genetics, the genome of a diploid organism including eukarya refers to a full set of chromosomes or genes in a gamete; thereby, a regular somatic cell contains two full sets of genomes. In a haploid organism, including bacteria, archaea, virus, and mitochondria, a cell contains only a single set of genome, usually in a single circular or contiguous linear DNA (or RNA for some viruses). In modern molecular biology the genome of an organism is its hereditary information encoded in DNA (or, for some viruses, RNA).”Um… yeah. So, I’ll take a gander: Pandora’s base assumption is that there is some sort of hereditary-generic traits that can be deduced from particular songs. It appears that the Pandora project is attempting to specifically isolate these traits/genes in order to provide us with musical recommendations. Per the Pandora Wikipedia entry:
“A given song is represented by a vector containing approximately 150 'genes' (analagous to the characteristics of organisms in the field of genetics). Each gene corresponds to a characteristic of the music, for example, gender of lead vocalist, level of distortion on the electric guitar, type of background vocals, etc. Rock and pop songs have 150 genes, rap songs have 350, and jazz songs have approximately 400. Other genres of music, such as world and classical, have 300–500 genes.”
As this blog is mainly rock n’ roll / pop / Meghan McCain oriented, I find it interesting that pop n’ roll has the least amount of traits assigned to it. Which leads us to conclude that rock n’ roll fans are typically the missing-chromosome / thalidomide babies of music fans. Maybe they’re on to something.
Anyhow, Pandora's line of reasoning should be familiar to music fans and critics. To varying degrees, most music fans like to play associative games: they’ll classify their favourite musicians by genres, sub-genres, eras, geographic boundaries, and band lineage. These associative activities are actually quite useful in acquiring background information and forming tastes; as an example, Lifetime fans can usually appreciate Paint it Black, and Wilco fans can generally appreciate Son Volt. In fact, the activity of music-association is so common that torrent powerhouse what.cd has actually set up user-generated brainstorms such as the one below:
So, clearly, these associative games can work in determining, to some degree, musical tastes. For the average music listener, there are probably musical traits one appreciates above others.
Now, I do have a problem with the philosophy of applications like Pandora – they tend to be reductionist. There are way too many factors – some that, I’d argue, are so particular that they are nearly inobservable – that go into determining musical tastes. There are songs associated with personal experience – the Empire Records soundtrack gets a huge personal vote – that have little to do with musical tastes; and, one of the most entertaining, and gratifying, things about discovering new music is discovering things that sound nothing like (or are completely unrelated to) music you’ve previously enjoyed.
Truthfully, there’s nothing better than being wrong in your musical assessments. Being wrong help you to re-evaluate your tastes and assumptions about music; it enables you to research, discover, and eventually, enjoy different types of music.
And Pandora simply doesn’t allow room for your musical tastes to be wrong.
But I digress: perhaps Pandora is more about finding similarities in songs than finding differences. And, plus, I'm just curious to see how they'd analyze my taste in music. So, based on the four musical pillars of Mambo About Masonry – LFO, Anal Cunt, Crazy Town, and Ian MacKaye’s Teen Idles – we will be determining the genetic make-up of my musical tastes. So, let’s see how Pandora analyzed each band:
LFO – based on “Summer Girls”- rap influences
- pop rock influences
- a subtle use of vocal harmony
- mild rhythmic syncopation
- repetitive melodic phrasing
- extensive vamping
- a vocal-centric aesthetic
- major key tonality
- acoustic rhythm guitars
- subtle use of fender rhodes
Anal Cunt – based on “Living Colour is my Favourite Death Metal Band” - punk influences
- the use of experimental sounds
- extensive vamping
- thru composed melodic style
- a vocal-centric aesthetic
- minor key tonality
- gravelly male vocalist
- an aggressive male vocalist
Crazy Town – based on “Butterfly” - east coast rap influences
- rock influences
- sparse beats
- chill rhymin'
- lyrics with heavy erotic content
- a tight kick sound
- a slow moving bass line
- layered electric guitar riffs
- a dry recording sound
- radio friendly stylings
- thin orchestration
- dominant use of riffs
Teen Idles – based on “Sneakers” - repetitive melodic phrasing
- extensive vamping
- a vocal-centric aesthetic
- major key tonality
- electric rhythm guitars
... or should I just be listening to more Project Wyze?
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