May 07, 2008
Fresh audio for download - "Drum Feels"
Drumming wizard Jeff Anthony has returned! When Jeff isn't analyzing music for Pandora or playing recording sessions, he is frequently thinking about rhythmic patterns. The man is dedicated. In this newest episode, "Drum Feels (For Toms and Kick)," Jeff shows a range of drumset variations that infuse arrangements with spice and zazz. Anticipations, tribal-sounding tom patterns, surf sounds, fills to cover BPM changes, and more. He is around to field questions, too, so fire away on the show page.
Shave and a haircut... two bits,
Kevin
p.s.: We now have separate subscriptions for our Audio and Video programs... This one for the Audio Series, and this RSS feed for the Pandora Video Series. As always, they're all free. Enjoy!
Posted by Kevin at 04:03 PM | Comments (5)
May 06, 2008
Play Listen Repeat Vol. 37
chuck d
Wow. My previous post somehow managed to elicit a few fairly incendiary comments regarding rap music: so I think we'd better have this discussion now. Let's keep it civil, and aim to have as our ultimate goal the promotion of a greater awareness of all the amazingly great rap and hip hop music that's out there.
Ok. One listener wrote "I can't figure out for the life of me why rap is considered music"; another made the rather extraordinary claim that "...rap music is non-music and it is forced on the media to reach kids to pull them into the gansta, dope dealing, guns and prostitution junk while as they depict their lifstyle as the high life."
OUCH!
This idea that rap somehow "isn't music," is pretty prevalent, so let's check it out. Setting aside the minefields of class and culture and race and just keeping it to the music, I'll just say that musically speaking the idea that rap is "not music" probably comes from the fairly obvious observation that (en masse and in very general terms) rap songs don't have melodies in the same way that popular songs do. There are plenty of melodies in rap, and there is lots of great music as well; but the salient point here is to compare what there is in rap songs to what there is in the basic popular song.
Pop songs, folk songs, art songs, and even instrumental music are almost always built around a melody. In most rap, that focal role of the melody is replaced by the voice of the rapper, and by the words. Now it turns out that the vocal cadences of rapping do in fact have a whole music of their own (as do our own speaking voices), and it's a music that is quite subtle and absolutely bursting with the kinds of deep human information that animate the strongest art. But, to the new listener, or to the listener who is accustomed to singing along with melodies, or who carries with them a certain idea of what music is and is not, it's worth observing that the fundamental composition of most rap pieces is in fact a radical musical challenge.
As such, if someone were to say that they didn't like rap in general because they listen to music primarily for melodies, then that would be at least a concrete musical argument.
Continue reading "Play Listen Repeat Vol. 37"
Posted by Michael Zapruder at 10:25 AM | Comments (17)
May 05, 2008
Cinco de Mayo on Pandora
I made a Cinco de Mayo radio station for you... Enjoy the day!
Saludos,
Lucia
Posted by Lucia at 12:46 PM | Comments (4)
May 02, 2008
Santa Monica Get-together Monday, May 12th, 2008!
We are having a Pandora meet-up at the Santa Monica Main Library Auditorium in Santa Monica. Hope to see you there--excited to meet our Santa Monica listeners!
If you would like to attend, please RSVP by sending an email to Angie at tour@pandora.com with SANTA MONICA in the subject line.
When: Monday, May 12th, 2008 @ 7 PM
Where: The Santa Monica Main Library Auditorium, 601 Santa Monica Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90401 (map)
Cheers,
Tim
Posted by Tim Westergren at 02:30 PM | Comments (4)
April 29, 2008
College Campus Visits
We've had a great time in the past year visiting college campuses all across the country. I've given lectures to music classes, business school classes, entrepreneur clubs, engineering groups... you name it. We've held discussions on everything from starting and financing your own company, to music theory to product design, to digital rights management to RIAA lawsuits... and everything in between. Always a great experience to speak directly with the generation on the cutting edge of digital media.
We're looking forward to more this year... already plans for Northwestern, USC, UCLA, Columbia, Tennessee, Georgia and more. If you're faculty or staff, or an enterprising student or alumnus interested in getting involved, drop us a note. We'll be traveling throughout the year and are always looking for help.
Cheers. Tim (Founder)
Posted by Tim Westergren at 07:32 PM | Comments (13)
April 24, 2008
You listen to Pandora, we listen to You
It's true: while you're listening to music on Pandora, we're listening to what you have to say about Pandora.
Pictured above are most of the people who answer your email when you write to Pandora. No robots in sight!
We like to keep in touch with our listeners. It's been a pleasure for us to meet so many thousands of you, virtually and in person.
We want to know what works well for you on Pandora, and what doesn't work for you. We answer your questions the best we can and your suggestions directly affect our priorities in terms of what features to add and what music to collect. Indeed, many of our added features and songs over the years have come from your feedback.
We've always responded personally to every email we receive and we read every comment you leave on our blog. Thank you for all of your insightful commentary. We especially love the personal stories you tell us about music and your use of Pandora, and I'll share a few stories next time I post here. (If you're one of the many people who has asked Pandora to marry you or "run away" with you, don't worry, I won't out you.)
It's really easy to get support from us: you just write us an email, and we write back. No automatic reply from "no-reply," no 'thank you for your email, here's your tracking number.' Just one human communicating with another.
As always, you can suggest music at suggest-music [at] pandora.com.
You can suggest features, get tech support and ask questions at pandora-support [at] pandora.com.
You can email me personally at Lucia [at] Pandora.com.
Whether your feedback is about the music, your "playlist," the advertisements or the web site itself, you can rest assured that we're sharing your feedback with the people who can do something about it. Pandora's music analysts, music buyers, engineering team and ad team are only a few steps away from our desks.
Besides email and this blog, here's a few more places you can find us:
We're on Twitter: we answer your questions, note your feedback, and post tips and announcements.
We post photos on Flickr.
We have profile pages at MySpace and Facebook. (The Pandora Facebook application is here.)
And of course, we continue to tour the country meeting with you in person.
We love music and our mission is to guide you to music you love. And while you're listening, we're behind the scenes making Pandora the best it can be.
We thank you for your generous feedback over the last 2 1/2 years.
Sincerely,
Lucia, and the whole communication team
Posted by Lucia at 12:20 PM | Comments (47)
April 23, 2008
A new audio episode, all about rhythm and meter
Our guest this week is Chris Horgan, the captain of Pandora's Dance Music Genome. He's a rhythmatist, and the subject this week is time changes -- specifically, abrupt changes in BPM that use a beat subdivision to pivot to the new tempo. That's called "Metric Modulation," and it can be a startlingly effective way for a full band to jump immediately into a new feel, without the potentially awkward process of speeding up or slowing down.
One-and-two-and-three-ee-and-a-four,
Kevin
p.s.: To subscribe to all of these free audio shows: Pandora.com/podcast.
Posted by Kevin at 10:07 AM | Comments (7)
April 22, 2008
Play Listen Repeat Vol. 36
As usual, your comments astonish me. And even though I admit that it's a bit odd to be asking music listeners the kinds of questions that music makers ask themselves, I stand by the effort, since who knows, some of you might discover a whole new band or even a world of music that had previously been difficult for you to get into. Mainly though, it's just profoundly surprising and fascinating for me to learn more about how you all experience music. So thank you all for that!
In any case, Glenn Gould made an analogy that pertains here. Paraphrasing Gould: it's not necessary for me to know exactly how my car works in order for me to feel that it's either tuned up fairly well or that it needs some work. Similarly, music listeners don't need expert knowledge (of the architecture of music or the critical perspectives of the kind that musicians use) in order to determine whether they like something or not.
The fact that musicians need that expertise (and mechanics do, too) doesn't mean that such expertise is at all relevant to listeners.
Ok, so I'm wondering what y'all think about that. Specifically, though, I'm interested in the exceptions to the rule: what expertise do you have about music that benefits you as a listener? And in a tangential request, what music do you think the rest of us really ought to be exposed to, that you think we might not have been?
And lastly, if you have those kinds of expert suggestions, doesn't that imply that you, too, have your own critical radar?
Play on, playas.
Posted by Michael Zapruder at 11:24 AM | Comments (15)
April 17, 2008
SAVE THE DATE! Los Angeles Get-Together May 12th, 2008
Details to be announced soon!
When: Tuesday, May 12th, 2008
Where: TBD
Cheers,
Tim
Posted by Tim Westergren at 04:16 PM | Comments (7)
Pandora on Twitter
If you use Twitter, follow Pandora's twitter stream for quick tips, answers, and fun!
It's just one more way to have a dialog with us and keep up with all things Pandora.
Cheerio, Lucia
And if you don't know what Twitter is, see here.
Posted by Lucia at 12:06 PM | Comments (15)
