Root Down in the Shadow

*** Part of an ongoing series of TOOLS TO ENJOY MORE MUSIC ***** I will attempt to profile great avenues of finding, listening to, and downloading new music, to help you , the music fan, get more out of your listening experience. I really have no idea how other devices work for ratings.  iTunes on the other hand, I am very familiar with.  I highly recommend it as it is a tremendous music warehouse/software, which as long as you can get past their previous DRM sins and their mass corporate practices does wonders as you really learn to use it.  Earlier today, I posted about a Smart Playlist consisting of any Dave Matthews format, and ***** songs.  This only works though if you rate your music.  I really feel that if you don't rate your music, you are better off listening to discs or tapes. You might as well listen to some format that doesn't have sorting or browsing.  If you get into a larger collection, it's a must for many reasons.  First, why kee...

*** Part of an ongoing series of TOOLS TO ENJOY MORE MUSIC ***** I will attempt to profile great avenues of finding, listening to, and downloading new music, to help you , the music fan, get more out of your listening experience. This week's entry further explores the Smart Playlist.  I started into this topic back at the beginning of the blog: Check out  the smart playlist - tools to enjoy more music.   Today, however I will go deeper and give a specific example that many of you can take advantage of. Let's start off with a refresher.  Playlists in iTunes are just like making an old school mix tape.  A SMART PLAYLIST is based on variables that you set.  They can be live updating, to allow it to change as you are using your device, but they are meant to be updated as your music collection updates.  So, for example."My Top Rated" will be any number of ***** songs, rather than what you added into the playlist on day one! Today's playlist is a two ...

*** Part of an ongoing series of TOOLS TO ENJOY MORE MUSIC ***** I will attempt to profile great avenues of finding, listening to, and downloading new music, to help you , the music fan, get more out of your listening experience. The interface  was probably my first podcast.   Back in 2006 I spent many weekends working in my new house, and I needed some new music to get into while I was demolishing, rebuilding and painting.   I think I had been looking up bands for the upcoming Virgin Festival in Baltimore, MD ., but somehow I had stumbled onto four awesome new bands.   Pigeon John, the Raconteurs, KT Tunstall, and Lady Sovereign . During these early podcasts, the podcast was referred to as AOL Interface @ Spinner.com .  It was also mainly an interview with some performance added at the beinning or end.  Somehow they embedded chapters into the podcasts, so you could skip through and listen to the songs.  That was nice as, after the 10th time...

A few years ago, I stumbled across the Austin City Limits television show website. I was searching for some live music, and found the mother load. The site can be a bit cumbersome at times, but it exists as a tremendous treasure chest of some of the best music our country has to offer. The concerts were all supported by PBS, free music, paid for by our taxes potentially soon to go away. I have featured my three favorite episodes. There are so many excellent artists, I have barely made a dent. But I will do my best to go through and chronicle them for you to make it easier. PEARL JAM First is, an excellent intimate hour long Pearl Jam concert. The set list includes an excellent version of 'Porch', some awesome treatments of 'Just Breathe' with a strings section, and a fantastic version of 'Red Mosquito' with Ben Harper on steel guitar Chapter 3:Just Breathe Chapter 4:The End Chapter 5:The Fixer Chapter 6:Johnny Guitar Chapter 7:Amongst T...

On the blog, I have featured my top music of 2010 & 2011.  This isn't meant to be a billboard top 40 by any means.  But instead the best of music, that I'm listening to, and of course what you should check out.  Looking deeper, about fifty percent of it has roots in a track I first found via a free podcast.  In fact many of the songs themselves were free.  A few years back, after finding the AOL interface podcast (now just the interface) where I found recordings of the Raconteurs, Lady Soveriegn, Decemberist, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Ted Leo , and KT Tunstall , I branched out to find more song podcasts, rather than just performances.  KEXP & KCRW , two excellent NPR type radio stations each have a daily song with KCRW's 'Today's Top Tune" and KCRW's "song of the day". Today I'll feature the KEXP 'Song of the Day.' Some gems found include, a favorite of my brother in law with Passion Pit 'The Reeling' and radio mainstays, M...

I'm going to start this off by admitting that of my large music collection I have only listened to about 70%.  Admittedly, it's hard to purposely listen to the 30% you've never heard, when the portion you have listened to represents 16,000 songs.   I listen to music most of the day, most of the time to keep or change my mood.  However, I am a huge music fanatic, and sometimes it's as if it's my job to expand my musical horizon, and that of many others.   This technology age at times makes it more difficult, in some cases, as I can't just grab a disc and throw it in my player for a listen.  However, I'd be lost with out it.   Seriously, I added a large collection 2 years ago from a friend, I've completely forgotten what I added that day, but with the help of smart playlists, I can slowly get through the collection a little by little. I know very little these days of other music players, iTunes and the iPod have become my players of choice....