#20tracks

I was introduced to this tweet via ONTD, and I was too late to play there, but I'm playing now!

Also it turns out I did not read the tweet very carefully, and focused simply on choosing the first twenty songs that spark instant joy. So although some of these were picked based on positive associated memories, very little should be read into this in terms of what stirs my soul or even whether I consider these tracks my favorites, on account of I love very many sad songs, and songs with beautiful lyrics that spark Feelings, but not joy specifically. Nevertheless!

#JOYSPAM

Fast Car - Tracy Chapman

A Thousand Miles - Vanessa Carlton

You Are Loved - Josh Groban

Shut Up and Dance - Walk the Moon

Wonderland - Taylor Swift

We Like It - Computer Games (a.k.a. Chuck & Darren Criss)

Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers

You Part 2 - Olivia Lane

All You Wanted - Michelle Branch

Open Toes - Katharine McPhee

When You Were Young - The Killers

Send My Love - Jacob Fox (not the Adele song)

Hips Don't Lie - Shakira

Pendulum Swinger - Indigo Girls

Life Less Ordinary - Carbon Leaf

Wildflowers - Maddie Pope

Cleveland - Jewel

N'oubliez Jamais - Isabelle Boulay (Joe Cocker cover)

Trying to Find Atlantis - Jamie O'Neal

Snagged this great prompt from a tweet (by Nick Worrall, via Oh No They Didn't)!

"Make a 20-track comp of your all-time fav tracks, each artist can only feature once. Not the 'best' songs, the ones that bring instant joy the second you hear the first note, the ones that give other people the best insight into what stirs your soul. Share when ready. #20tracks"

I didn't stick to compiling my all-time favorites, though! I filtered out any of my more moody-feels faves and zeroed in on the "instant joy" part of the prompt. So I created a playlist of the first songs to come to mind that immediately pep me up, make me grin like a fool, and/or put a little boogie in my step. You know, instant joy! :)

Today marks the 20th track posted to 71tracks!

One of the hardest parts of this series is deciding what to post, what not to post, and in what order to put the selected tracks up. There is no grand design here, it is more or less a daily question of "What will I post today". The order of the posts has evolved naturally.

It makes sense to start at a particular point in time and move forward. In order to make sure that things don't get boring I am moving around in time for the posts, backwards and forwards. If I did things strictly chronologically the concern would be that it would take forever to get to the newer material. Also, I don't have 71 tracks already lined up, and I keep hoping that I don't run out of post-able material before the end of the series.

As it stands there are different phases of production which end up being self defined by the technologies used to make them. Factors include mixer, sequencer, sound source(s), available hardware, location of studio, and recording medium.

As you may or may not have noticed, there aren't a lot of techno post so far, more 808 breaks and edgy industrial inspired tracks posted. That makes sense, as I didn't try to make techno in ernest until I moved into Brooklyn. I had tried to make 'techno' before then but it was my idea of techno, not techno proper. It wasn't dj friendly, nor was it part of the larger techno conversation. It was 'techno industrial' which is what I called it then, which would be far too edgy for a traditional techno crowd.

However, while making this hard edged stuff I did manage to make some tracks back then that fall into the 'hard techno' camp, clocking BPMs in the high 130s and low 140s. I'll see if I can convince myself that it is OK to post 'The Saucer Scare' or even 'Hard Rave Techno 1' or 'Hard Rave Techno 2'. I question of they stand the test of time music wise, but they are a great representation of where I was at back then. Perhaps after a few more respectable tracks I'll feel OK with these dated sounding jams.

Next up are some of the Sunrise era outtakes and b-sides, along with some glitch and September era b-sides. Production values take an abrupt turn later on (in the early aughts) as I move to mixing completely 'in the box' and eshew all of the hardware effects, more or less, all at once. I didn't necessarily want or try to make glitch around this time, it was just something that seemed a logical step from the hip-hop inspired emotive IDM I was making at the time.

Also, the idea of mixing with a crazy non existant noise floor, all the headroom, all the effects and channel strip that your CPU could foster was truly revolutionary to the everyman. That is an interesting thing to note too - as time went by the focus went from buying hardware machines and synths to buying new computers to run the new software. Hardware was always utilized though, just to differing degrees.