How Do You Decide What to Listen To?

Tireguy
John Tesh brings pain to me too and I didn't even have any teeth removed. I'm just glad you were not listening to Greg Brown or Charles Lloyd or somebody else when you went to the dentist.
(This is just a joke)

Sincerely, I remain

Nice thread, Onhwy61. Except in the case where I've just bought something and want to hear it, I almost always choose by my mood, which is often influenced by a recent concert I've been to or a recording I heard on the radio coming home that night. I often will just listen to the tuner for hours, as Whatjd mentions, and let WQXR or NPR pick what I listen to. Every now and then, if the system doesn't seem right, I might bring out one of my reference recordings to see if everything is working right or if the stars are out of allignment, etc. And when I get nostalgic, I dig into those old 60's rock and folk albums. I am not nearly as organized as many of you in filing and categorizing my recordings (which is the opposite of my work habits, interestingly--what does that mean, Detlof?), so I really choose my listening by the piece or the composer I'm in the mood for, then try to find it in my records/CDs/SACDs.

Interesting replies. I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw a little of themselves in "High Fidelity".

In another thread I described how I transferred my CD collection to a computer based digital jukebox. Recently I've even started to transfer parts of my vinyl collection (at least a 2 year project). To date I have nearly 5,000 individual songs at my immediate disposal. The iTunes software classifies the songs and allows me to sort by name, artist, genre and comment. Instead of a verbal comment, I gave each song a numerical rating (10-best, 0-worst). Any song rated 4 or higher is worth listening to with songs rated 7 or higher being my favorites. I've set up the following playlist:

Brand New - recent acquisitions
4 to 6 - songs rated between 4 and 6
6 & 7
7 to 9 - 40% of the collection
Slow Blues
Blues Kings - Albert, B.B. & Freddie
Guitar - hot guitar playing
Billie, Ella & Sarah
Ellington - the man and his band plus his songs by others
Gershwin - written by, but done by others
Jazz Guitar - Wes, Grant G., ect.
Jazz Piano - primarily McCoy and Monk
Live Performances - anything with an audience clapping
Love Songs - for those special momentsNew Orleans Sound
Pop/Rock Female Vocalist
Pop/Rock Covers - famous songs done by other artists
Pop/Rock Instumentals
Stan Getz
Vinyl - transferred from my vinyl collection

A listening session typically involves selecting a playlist and pressing play (less than 30 seconds including computer awakening). The playlist are always set to random play. Over the last two weeks I have been primarily listening to the "Brand New" or "7-9" playlists. A typical hour long listening session could have everything from Sly & Robbie, Herbie Nichols, Heaven 17, Marvin Gaye, Otis Rush, Dwight Y. and MC5. Sometimes the transitions are jarring, but in a way it adds a level of excitement. While I love this way of listening, it might not be for everyone. A friend commented that they missed listening to an entire CD in sequence. Another friend could not deal with changes in musical style. The beauty of the playlist format is that if I wanted to, I could setup a playlist to work around these complaints.

I recognize that my solution to the problem of selecting what music to play is an example of massive technological overkill. It was also time consuming and fairly expensive ($5,000) to setup. However, I can honestly say that in the few months I've had this setup, I am truly listening to more music and I'm listening to good music that I normally would have passed over. It's surprising how much music I already own that I love, but rarely listened to.

One last thing, I noticed that when I listened to CDs that I would not learn the names of the songs. Instead of the names I remembered CDs by track numbers. iTunes displays the song title. It's funny to now learn the names of songs that I've been listening to for years.

'61; a thought provoking thread, and you have an incredible music organization/access system. I identify with those who select music by present mood or maybe desired mood, and BTW, it doesn't always work (for me), and it may take me some time to actually find music that fits my emotional state. And sometimes (not often) I can't find anything that "fits" and I have a lousy listening session.

I only have about 1,000 CDs (no LPs), but as I don't keep music that I don't like, I've listened to many more than this to accumulate 1,000. My modest collection is organized much like others above, ie alphabetical by category. I also keep 100 or so "favorite" CDs at hand and tend to play them a lot, but I make it a point to delve into archived CDs (or new ones) to have something new/different to hear.

I like Jond's approach to selecting music;>) A neat sense of humor!

One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is; as the stereo system is changed-- especially significant changes, I've found that the character of many CDs change, and a result of this, some I like even more, but some I can no longer tolerate. Latest example of this is: I recently got new, pretty damn revealing speakers (Vand. 5s), and I'm now in the process of re-evaluating my whole CD collection. Actually, this phenomenon could be the subject of another thread.

The largest category of music in my collection is Blues, and I especially like acoustic blues. Cheers. Craig

I'm old lazy and always tired. Yes years back I had everything set up great. Then I dig through;never putting them back where they belong.

Now I may have a title in mind ; but I just grab whatever strikes me ,as I'm looking for "it"-- Doesn't that remind you of the guy who marries a girl 'cause she is already pg??