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May 28, 2008
Import Pandora to your Facebook Mini-Feed
The fine engineers over at Facebook have done something pretty neat. You can now "import" all your Pandora activity (station creation, bookmarked songs and artists) into your Facebook news feed.
Setting it up couldn't be simpler -- just visit your Facebook profile page and click the "import" link at the top of the Mini-Feed section, select Pandora, enter the email address you used when you registered with Pandora and Facebook will fetch your most recent station creations as well as your recent bookmarks and add them to your mini-feed. Better still, from that point on, any time you create a station or bookmark something on Pandora those events will automatically be added to your mini-feed also. It's a great way to keep your Facebook friends up to date on your latest musical discoveries.
We feel pretty lucky to be included in the very short list of sites that Facebook is choosing to integrate directly into the mini-feed. Thanks Facebook!
Posted by Tom Conrad at 4:57 PM | Comments (54)
May 27, 2008
New audio episode: all about METAL
Much like spring flowers, Metal pops up in many varieties: Grindcore, Metalcore, Death Metal, Black Metal, and legions more. If you've ever had difficulty distinguishing between these many styles and subgenres (as I certainly have), then this show is for you. Three metal mavens -- Ava, Kurt and Weasel -- enter the recording studio to perform original songs in each of these styles, and to explain how these genres are musically distinct. They don't shy away from Progressive Metal or Hair Metal, either. Get out your black leather, your chrome studs, and your best steel-toed boots and check out the show.
Please remove sharp objects before banging your head,
Kevin
p.s.: What's your favorite metal?
p.p.s.: Any glaring omissions in that list of examples? What do you think we overlooked?
Posted by Kevin Seal at 12:19 AM | Comments (20)
May 21, 2008
San Francisco Event Recap
We had the pleasure of meeting many of our San Francisco listeners on May 13. Thank you to the hundreds of people who came out for the event. It was great to talk with you, not just about your Pandora stations, but about all things musical.
The occasion for the party was the premiere of our latest Studio Stories video. After screening the piece, we hosted a Q&A session with the leaders of the Plant Studios, Arne Frager and Mari Tamburo. It was enlightening to hear Arne and Mari's insights about the music industry, and their opinions on what studios need to do to thrive in today's climate of home digital recording and shrinking production budgets.
The night also afforded me the opportunity to do a live walkthrough of the music analysis process that serves to build the Music Genome Project. We took a song by Michael Zapruder's Rain of Frogs, "Shepherd's Purse," and pulled it apart to hear the arrangement, the instrumentation, the rhythmic and harmonic construction, and the vocal and lyrical story therein. To close out the night, the trio formation of Michael Zapruder's Rain of Frogs performed live.
Below are some photos from the event. Again, thanks to all who turned out to make it such a fun experience for all of us. We hope to see you all again soon.
Posted by Kevin Seal at 11:44 AM | Comments (15)
May 15, 2008
Studio Stories: The Plant Studios
In the latest episode of the Pandora Video Series, our guests are Arne Frager and Mari Tamburo, the leaders of the Plant Studios in Sausalito, CA. The river of great albums made there is stunning, with notable records by Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Fleetwood Mac, and Rick James just skimming the surface. In the video, "Studio Stories: The Plant Studios," we talk about the ways that the lavish studios of yore can adapt to survive in a changing music industry. We also look at one creative way that a recording studio can involve itself in music education, as the Plant has done.
If you want to download the full-sized video rather than stream it from the page, subscribe to the feed in iTunes or any other feedreader.
Enjoy!
Kevin
Posted by Kevin Seal at 9:35 AM
May 7, 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 Seal at 4:03 PM | Comments (26)
May 6, 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.
Melody is not the only element in music, though, and those who would say that rap isn't music should remember that. Technically speaking, there are at least four main elements to music, and they are pitch, dynamics, timbre, and duration aka rhythm. I mention this because, while music is literally impossible without rhythm (at least in the sense of rhythm as divisions within the general passage of time) it's quite possible to have music without melody.
Moving on to the main dish in rap, the lyrics, I want to observe the way rap allows for what seems like a 360-degree freedom of language and concept that is quite hard to achieve within traditional song form. Raps can go anywhere, and they do, from references to the most ephemeral cultural wisps like Perez Hilton or Michael Jordan's baseball career directly into a deep commentary on the systemic injustices of our economy, connecting them and playing off of them.
Also, good rap lyrics are full of the kind of ultra-rich sense information that songwriters cultivate and that animates all the best writing. The good stuff is very, very good writing.
As for the embodiment of aggression, which is often present in raps and is a focus of much criticism, I think there's something we could all learn from there as well. Yes, there are expressions of anger in some rap music which are reprehensible and probably carry little or no real cultural value, but the presence of anger in the genre has other things to offer. Those feelings are a part of our human nature, and one of the great attractions of rap music is that it allows for a healthy, constructive and artistic expression of anger. A healthy relationship to anger can lead to positive things both in terms of society and also in one's personal makeup; and the creative, uninhibited expression of personal pride and inner confidence is a great gift to lots of listeners who need to be reminded of their worth.
I will agree that rap hasn't done itself any favors by also bringing out some of the most crass, violent, nihilistic, vapid, and just simply dull productions one can possibly imagine. In its defense (without defending bad rap), I'd just observe that rap music has been by far the most popular music in the world for let's say the last ten or fifteen years, maybe longer. It's been the main global popular music force, and there's been a lot of it, for better and for worse.
And because of that very fact, I think all music lovers should see rap's global popularity as a signal of its fundamental importance and worth; and therefore as an opportunity to learn something, to expand their tastes, and to connect with others out there in the larger world.
Essays and books have been written by better writers and thinkers that me on the subject, so here's where I bail, but as I said before, let's please keep this civil, and let's post some examples of great rap that might help new listeners come to hear the power, vitality, and the beauty in the music.
it takes a nation of millions...
Posted by Michael Zapruder at 10:25 AM | Comments (48)
May 5, 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 (6)
May 2, 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 2:30 PM | Comments (9)
