Harmony is meant to correct any discord which may have arisen in the courses of the soul... rhythm too was given for the same reason... ---Plato

It is by the Odes that a man's mind is aroused, by the rules of ritual that his character is established, and by music that he is perfected. . . . ---Confucius

The Culinary Metaphor Pt. 1: Music and Nutrition

In my previous post I wrote about using food metaphors as a kind of oblique strategy for discussing music. Let's get more specific, to explore the method to this madness. Today's angle: nutrition.

Music: Nourishment and Poison

The American Heritage Dictionary defines nutrition as "the process of nourishing or being nourished, especially the process by which a living organism assimilates food and uses it for growth and for replacement of tissue."

Plato and Confucius would have liked that. For them, music existed to guide and improve human beings, and the right and wrong musics created good and bad people, respectively. Medieval musical thinkers and composers avoided the tritone (the augmented fourth interval) because many thought it to be of Satanic and therefore dangerous origin. And in the 1980's, Tipper Gore's PMRC based their campaign to place parental warning labels on recordings on the idea that it is necessary to "protect" listeners from certain kinds of music.

You Should Eat That

If music can be nourishment or poison, which music is which? How do we know? And who decides? And even if we can decide, does it follow that we should only listen to nourishing sounds?

These are all tough questions, to say the least, and I'm glad to say that I have no intention of answering any of them. I have my own views as to whether and how judgments of musical quality get made, but so do we all.

The questions I'm interested in are: can we tolerate the idea that some music is better for us than other music? And if not, why not? In other words, can we believe in musical nutrition?

You Can Lead a Horse to Broccoli, But You Can't Make Him Eat

OK. Let's do this, and let the culinary metaphors begin.

First off, let's observe the obvious: to say that all music is equally good for you is to say that there's no difference between what's in different pieces of music. I think we'd all agree that that rings the crazy bells with vigor.

But hang on, let's say to ourselves. No one would ever say that Help Me, Rhonda and Rock Around the Clock have exactly the same contents. Are you saying that one of those is better for someone than the other?

Good point, we congratulate ourselves. Suddenly it seems as though the whole idea is absurd (though at least Plato, Confucius and Tipper Gore disagree. That's a lot of brain power - and a respectable political head of hair - thrown in for good measure).

But wait, we reply to ourselves again, just because it's hard to see differences in musical nutrition (mutrition?) between similar music doesn't mean the differences aren't there.

It's probably difficult to observe different health properties of two jelly donuts, but if we were to compare a jelly donut to a chocolate cake (or a song to a sonata), we'd have plenty of differences to discuss (ding ding, metaphor).

On the one hand, we definitely like certain kinds of music and don't like others. Lollipops and licorice (ding ding). We are untroubled by this, even though these very preferences prove that the pieces of music we like and those we don't like are in fact different in some way. If they weren't, how would be be able to tell which was which?

If we say that all music is equally good for us, then we are saying that we only want those differences that serve our prejudices about music. We are saying that we want the music to have different flavors, but that we want taste to be the only nutritional value (ding ding).

Intangible Nutrients

I find it somehow sublime to think that perhaps it is the same faith we have in real nutrition (this milk has calcium - that's good for my bones) that allows us to dismiss Plato's beliefs about music. We say: music cannot be healthy or unhealthy, because it does not have nutrients. It has no nutrients because it is intangible.

Such a belief is so absurd as to be almost charming, because although music's lack of physicality prevents it from having actual nutrients, our vivid perceptions of the differences between pieces of music suggest clearly that music fashions real characteristics from the intangible, and therefore it is intangible nutrients that we should be looking for.

At the very least, we have to admit, until further investigation, that they might be there, and we have the culinary metaphor to thank for that.

---Michael

(Music Curator)

It is important to celebrate the springboard of the weekend... Friday! Not only do Fridays complete our work week, they are manifestations of our own unique mini-vacations. From partying to relaxing, we all have our own way of enjoying our much deserved days off from reality.

In this mix you will find a range of songs that all have a common ground of inspiration. Connecting us with friends, love, good vibes and freedom, Friday is the universal day that we long for each and every week.

The goal is to keep you out late. Meet that someone special. Let loose on the dance floor. Reconnect with old friends and reminisce in the midst of creating new memories. Roll down your car windows and turn up the volume. Turn off the tube, put your feet up, and do your thing. Just make sure your weekend is memorable!

--- Daniel J. Craig
(music operations, ripper)

Is There an Animal in your Band Name?

The emergence of the DJ experience was a paradigm shift in the music landscape -- a shift away from concert territory. At a dance club, the DJ is facilitating the dance floor experience rather than starring in it; at a concert, the band is starring in the experience. When I go to a dance club, I rarely look at the DJ; I could hardly take my eyes off of the Pixies when I saw them play the Fox in Oakland. The dance floor may be a telling evolutionary step for the "concert" as it moves, potentially, toward greater levels of self-involvement, both physically and emotionally. San Francisco, and subsequently the rest of the country (world?), is hunting for Burning Man-inspired, audience-embellished avenues of entertainment these days. What will a band have to do in the future to gain people's devotion and cash? How about having bands adopting mascots?


Our participation isn't the only thing shifting here: so is our attention. There is plenty of Fandom left to float a band in adoration, popularity, and in many cases, a living. But are the days of the Big Deal bands over? Pitchfork writer Eric Harvey contends that our "star system" is slowly going by the wayside, like the good old LP, cassette, and very shortly, the CD. He poses a question on a lot of people's minds: in the near future, will any bands be able to "command everyone's attention at once," as did the Beatles or Michael Jackson?

Everybody in the Pool

I'd say we're currently in a band "bubble." Thanks to the internet, we can and do expose ourselves to a gaZILLION more bands than anyone previous to 1992 ever could have. I'm not sure there are more bands per capita than, say, three decades ago, but there certainly are many, MANY more recorded bands nowadays due to the mass availability of economical and user-friendly recording technology. The masses of musicians no longer need a fancy recording studio to get modest public exposure on MySpace and to leak into the ears of at least one individual's social network. Has the ease of exposure splintered our devotion to these myriad bands? And will it continue to? Are we at 15 minutes each yet?


...5ally does four flips, then floats for a few moments to watch the effects of her movements in the water, as well as the movements of the hundreds of other swimmers. The motion of the water, in turn, manipulates the music, and the dancers below her respond accordingly...

---Michelle A.
(music analyst)

Enjoy!

--- Michael
(music curator)

The term baile funk was used originally to describe a type of dance party that started happening in the favelas (ghettos) of Rio in the 70's. Funk, r&b, and soul music being produced by American artists like George Clinton, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes had a strong voice with the people who populated the favelas. This music not only had relevant social messages, but grooves that were explicitly crafted for dancing.

Got to Give the people what they want

Being tuned into what people wanted to groove to at the time, DJs brought funk records from Miami, or sought them out from sources in Brazil. As the 80's turned into the 90's, the funk records had been replaced by hip hop records -- and Miami hip hop was all about bass. The funk label stuck, however, and became synonomous with anything that was american dance music, which for the most part, in South America, was hip hop/rap.

Bass and beyond

What came to be known as the "funk" sound at the bailes (or "dances") could be described as 808 beats with synthetic bass lines, and melodies combined with clave rhythms. Drum loops from Miami bass (also based on the clave rhythm) were certainly the most prominent pattern, but there were also patterns and sounds akin to early electro and techno. Samples from both native and imported pop music provided much of the texture and harmony in the music. As DJs created this music live at the bailes or in the studio, they would mash up local dance rhythms such as cumbia and merengue into the sound, which made it more accessible to larger audiences, and this cross-pollination made for a potent combination on the dance floor.



Now the fun part

Bucky Dun Gone by M.I.A. produced by Diplo is a signature baile funk club hit. Now check out Jiu Jitsu (Montagem) by Dj Isaac - sound familiar? Not sure which one came first but either way it's a good example of what happens when a successful mash-up comes together. The Formula gets used over and over. M.I.A. also has some great tracks on Piracy Funds Terrorism. Quite fond of the this Diplo production as well from his latest release, decent work for decent pay. Rio Baile Funk More Favela Booty Beats is a great collection of the classic baile funk sound.

For a more modern take on the sound, listen to these releases from Bersa Discos featuring a variety of producers like DJ Panik, DJ Negro, and Uproot Andy. Bomba Esthero, and Bonde Do Role are some other great artists exploring this sound. And finally, not too long ago, the baile funk sound broke onto the mainstream charts with Gwen Stefani's Wind it Up.

The basic recipe

Miami bass + latin dance + rap + pop samples = baile funk

Dig deeper

Here is a good article from few years back in NY times. City of God is also a great movie for learning more about the origins of baile funk. Some great scenes depict early favela funk parties.

Any of the examples I listed above should make enjoyable stations and will produce a nice variety of Latin-flavored dance music. We took the liberty of creating a genre station called bmore, bass & baile which combines the baile sound with its older sister 'bass' and her little cousin "bmore." Also, if you enjoy this baile funk sound, you may also have fun with reggaeton and dancehall... many parallels!

--- Addi
Dance Collection Manager

I think everyone should have a walk-up song (now batting...), even if it rarely gets used. I also like to think that if the right song is played at the right moment, it can actually influence the outcome of the game. While this is debatable, the significant role that music plays in the modern arena or coliseum is not... for better or worse.

This collection delivers all your standard coliseum anthems, along with a nice stack of other, relatively unknown gems. While the music represents a wide variety of musical styles -- including rap, rock, punk, metal, funk, film score, and electronic/dance -- they all have one thing in common: energy.

Recommended for play while: tailgating, applying paint to your face and/or body, getting pumped to deliver a presentation at work, entertaining during the holidays while sports are on TV, stuck in traffic trying to get to the game, in the locker room prior to a big matchup, performing a victory dance, clapping in unison, playing dunk hoops on a 6 foot rim, working off the calories from aforementioned tailgate, and any situation that requires an elevated state of personal or team mojo.

For best results, play at a high volume on big speakers.

--- Addi
(dance collection manager)

--- Kevin
(executive producer)

Our first video guest is Andy Z. His fanciful cartoons about multi-culturalism, language, animals and peace are a great start into our catalog of tunes that your kids will love. He performed these songs live in the former Pandora HQ on 22nd Street. From each video page, the right-hand paragraph includes a link to an Andy Z station based on that song.

"Sticky Bubble Gum"

"The Pirate Song"

"Scarecrow"

"I Went To A Party With Dinosaurs"

--- Kevin
(executive producer)

Competitive Eating?

It's hard to judge music, but I have to. It's a necessary part of things for me. As those of you who have read my previous posts (here, here or here, for example) know, to be consistent when doing so may be impossible.

When I'm writing my own songs or making records, it's at least possible to be definitive. I just have to do stuff that I believe in. Not easy, but possible. As Pandora's music curator, though, it's a whole different thing. I have to maintain a sense of aesthetics in general; a sense of musical quality that goes beyond my own opinions and tastes.

It's a narrow path to walk.

On one side there is a kind of musical moralism which says: "this is good and that is bad; and therefore you should listen to this and not that." On the other side is what you might call musical sociopathy, with its relativistic axiom: "there is no such thing as musical quality; everything is equally good."

I don't relate to either of those points of view at all, and I don't want to.

Top Chef

Happily, though, I've found a strategy that is just imprecise enough to filter out esoteric pitfalls while allowing for some ideas to get through: I talk about music as if it's food.

Food Groups and Pyramids

Some foods are high in sugar but probably won't get you through a day in the mines. Other kinds of foods are not too tasty, but your internal organs really like them. And any kind of food is probably bad for you if it's all you ever eat.

Is the same true for music?

Lots of the time, if people get mad and say that popular music is bad music, they are really upset by how much of that music people are listening to. I mean, everyone likes a piece of candy now and then, right? But there's candy and then there's candy. If you have some every so often, lovely. But if candy is all that's available, then some people might get sick of it (there'd be some happy kids though, at least while they still had teeth).

All Things in Moderation, Including Moderation

I bet we can all agree that, food-wise, a balanced diet is a good thing. This week's theory is that the same thing holds for music.

Like any balanced diet, the one I'm serving up contains meats, vegetables, tv dinners, cakes, chocolate-covered insects, wine, fast food, gourmet experiments, regional cuisine, ripple, crumpets, juice, astronaut food, water, vitamins, chemicals, delicacies, gross reality show eating-challenge food, and of course, candy.

I'll look forward to hearing how the station strikes you, and writing about it next time.

---Michael
(music curator)

The smell of the changing leaves, the first drops of rain, the crisp cool air, the sweaters, the dying leaves that were once such resplendent colors, and the anticipation of the coming snow, autumn represents a time of change, freshness, and a shift in the seasons. Also, some of the best, most ingrained memories of our lives come from the next few months: the memories of summer, the gathering in of families, and of harvest.

Whether it's the changing of foliage or whatever nostalgic association you may have with this time of year, this mixtape of songs (old and new) hopes to create the perfect channel for you to indulge all these feelings and to enjoy throughout the season. Celebrate the turning of the season with "Harvest Time". Enjoy!!

--- Michelle S.
(assistant music curator)

(photograph by David Paul Ohmer)

You're soaking in it!

Music is streaming around you right now in the air. Music is, after all, something that we can encode into small pieces and send out riding on any sort of wave (AM, FM, Wi-Fi, Photons, whatever... gravity?) to something that can reconstruct those bits into movement of the air pressure near your ears - your ears will perceive the music.


We've already come a long way: only a few hundred years ago somebody would have to physically play an instrument near you for you to hear it... People started a system of writing music on paper, the first encoding: a piece of music could be sent to another location and then played, albeit still by a person with an instrument. It wasn't until the late 19th century that someday got the bright idea to record the actual changes in air pressure that were being produced by the player. Then they could use their recording to change the air pressure in another location and the sound would be reproduced.

Where did the sound go to? Mostly speakers. They can move the air. Then we got small ones, right next to our ears. Oh wait, we could actually make them smaller and stick them right in our ears. Waves don't need to be very strong if they're right next to the ear drum.


But that earbud needs to be getting its signal from somewhere. Right now we're hooked into the relatively bulky digital-to-audio converters, like our computers or phones or iPods. These guys are taking the bits and converting them to voltages that are used to move the air near our ears by the earbuds. What if we get the earbuds themselves to be the D-to-A converters, picking up the radio streams in the air? I guess we'd have to program them to pick up certain stations we like... or be in charge of sending our own (potentially encrypted) music from our own hard-copy collection somewhere else in the world, or maybe pick up Pandora on that promised ubiquitous wi-fi cloud covering the entire earth.


What If...

The problem is, I hate earbuds. They get uncomfortable. How about just implanting the antenna into your earlobe, like an earring? Run the wire to a small flat speaker grid inside your ear canal. Permanent music, all you have to do is turn it on and you have your personal music right inside your ear.


Well, one thing that earbuds do that this won't is isolation. A little speaker grid in your ear canal is a nice energy efficient way of moving the air near your eardrum, but other sounds can come right in too... What if we bypass the whole airwave thing, everything we've based music on up till now---we're just recreating it with voltages anyway: let's run a wire straight to the cochlear nerve. You could control exactly how much of the outside world you hear, how much of the music stream.


...we should probably encode the controls on the back of your ear to accept only your own finger! Otherwise a nice lover's caress might end up being deafening.


...Of course, 5ally is already bored, looking into the next step, bypassing the hardware altogether: It involves music modulated directly onto her brainwaves.

--- jonathan
(listener advocate)

Enjoy!

--- Daniel J. Craig
(music operations, ripper)

First I clean it up and then pow! -- a week later I'm cleaning all over again. Yeah I'm a neat-freak, so what?!?

Luckily for the the Dust Brothers, their music was just as prevalent throughout the 1990s. They started with several hits for Tone Loc and Young MC that featured heavy sampled drums, gritty electric riffs, and simple to the point raps. However, they really made their name with the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique -- a meticulously through-composed work that ranks as one of the best produced albums of all time.

Moving past the history lesson, let's get to the music -- specifically the musical connections between the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique and Beck's Midnite Vultures. Sure, both clearly feature the Dust Brothers' signature bangin' acoustic beats, dramatic song structure and thoughtful sequencing, but what is so striking is how well they propelled these quirky underground stars into the limelight. Is it because their productions are so strong we don't notice the silly off-the-wall lyrics (check out Beck's lyrics to Mixed Business for a good example)? Are the grooves so deep we can't help but be pulled into the world of Beck and the Boys? A bit of both perhaps?

Without a doubt the Dust Brothers' production style set the stage for artists like the Chemical Brothers, Moby, and the whole world of big beat and funky breakbeat with their gritty sampled drums, funky bass/guitar lines, freakish analog synth stabs, and soulful hooks. But perhaps it's something a bit larger than the musical elements alone. Maybe it's how their productions married the disparate personalities of these artists into a cohesive whole.

Perhaps it's because both of these albums have a ridiculous amount of Soul; yes that's Soul with a capitol S. I think so. Similar to when a cook puts that extra bit of love in the gravy the Dust Brothers put a whole lot of Soul in these two albums, and it shows.

--- Chris
Senior Music Analyst

There's nothing like getting a raucous scare from music. Unless it's doubled with a good scare in a movie. For me it really hasn't gotten much creepier than The Shining's opening scene. And it all starts with the incredibly sinister music of the brilliant Wendy Carlos. An otherwise lovely scenic drive through the mountains is made ominous with Wendy's creeeeepy score, instantly foretelling the nightmare that will descend in the next few hours. This post is about scary music in drama, all of which can be heard on the jarring classical mixtape "Haunt Your House", created by Russell Johnson and me here at Pandora ...

From Weird to Creepy: Switched From Bach

Analog synth sounds are famous for being weird, so it's barely a skip over to 'creepy' for them. Wendy Carlos had already created a smorgasbord of curious Moog synth sounds on her landmark, genre-bending album Switched-on Bach. Apparently back in '68, classical had to be Mooged in order to really sell: An all-Moog Bach album, it was the first classical LP to go platinum. Bach's style is often dominated by counterpoint: the compositional technique of having 2 or more melodic lines going at once. If instruments were voices, a Bach fugue would sound like 2-5 people blabbering away at the same time. So hearing a gaggle of funky Moog sounds executing a contrapuntal Bach piece makes for some very entertaining, often silly musical conversations. She also Mooged Beethoven in A Clockwork Orange.

From there it was just a hop over to full-blown creepland:

Let The Weird Do The Work

I imagine Wendy Carlos toiled to find just the right synth sounds to achieve her desired creep factor. But disturbing music can seem effortless to create: witness the soundtrack to the classic 1976 psychotic thriller Carrie. The fire roasting the school is properly demonized with a few simple, very crunchy synth layers on "School in Flames", the first of 2 Carrie tracks on the mixtape. And on "At The Prom", the strings are trying to stay pretty (and normal) when, finally, they veer off the rails and snap into dissonance, obviously at the moment Carrie's switch is flipped into mass murder-mode.

Weird Old Music

In summary, and as usual, strange is defined by the unusual: weird sounds (synths), and weird harmony; i.e. dissonance. Before movies, when ballets and operas carried a lot of the dramatic programming of the day, disturbance was defined with dissonance. At the notorious premiere of the composer Igor Stravinsky's 1913 ballet The Rite Of Spring, the audience threw a full fit- and why? Coupled with the horrific plot of a young girl who dances herself to death for a sacrifice, it was probably the rather unprecedented magnitude of strangeness they witnessed in the music. In describing the work's harmony, Leonard Bernstein said that even by today's standards it's "...got the best dissonances anyone ever thought up". It also has, he continued, "the best asymmetries and polytonalities and polyrhythms": their cultural foreignness to the audience at the time probably fueled the agitation.

And then it's got the bassoon (hear it featured by Prokofiev here). Before 'weird' was defined by synthesizers & electronics, people relied on the unusual use of acoustic sounds. Albeit beautiful in other circumstances, the bassoon is an instrument with tremendous strange-potential- Stravinsky employed its funny-sounding low register prominently in Rite's score. So the combination of all-of-the-above in full glory inspired the initial audience to riot- not a bad beginning to a decent horror flick in itself.

To hear these pieces in full, amidst hours more of the dark and disturbing, listen to the curated station (mixtape) "Haunt Your House"

And to hear a Halloween mixtape that's loaded with tons of rock, kooky rock, punk, grit, witches, monsters, ghosts, angst and candy, listen to the mixtape "Halloween", jointly created by a bunch of staffers here at Pandora.

Enjoy!

--- Michelle
(music analyst)

With our new release we've added a sharing toolbar above the player so you're always just a click away from sharing a song or a station with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. The first time you share on one of these networks, you'll have to go through a series of pages that will connect your Pandora account with your Twitter or Facebook account. After that, it's a just a simple click to share. When you post songs to Facebook your friends will be able to listen to samples right in their news feed. On Twitter we'll post a shortened link to a page featuring just the song or station you shared.

This release also brings our station gifting feature to the foreground for the first time. Click the little present icon in the sharing toolbar and we'll take you to a page where you can create an entirely new station to "give" to a friend. We'll send it along to them in a fancy email, kind of like an electronic greeting card -- or maybe more precisely, like a modern version of the mixtape.

Have fun playing with these new sharing features. Can't wait to see what you discover...

--- Tom
(CTO)

PS: want to see what other people are finding and posting to Twitter? Try using this Twitter search link.