I know, it's only rock and roll...
...but I like it.
Here's a statistical representation of my library, minus "special" genres like comedy, soundtracks (something I don't put much in, I'd rather categorize it under its "real" genre), Christmas music, etc.
[Click to enlarge, blah blah blah]
Here's my explanation of how I classify music. I claim no expertise, only what I think sounds good together.
- Ambient - ethereal stuff...You know...Enya.
- Americana - rootsy stuff that doesn't really fit under "country" or "rock".
- Bluegrass - mmmm, Ralph Stanley and Bill Monroe.
- Blues/Blues Rock - I like it more towards the rocking chair on the cabin porch, hound dog underneath the porch variety, not so much the Stevie Ray Vaughn $#!+.
- Christian Rock - not a lot here, mostly because of my wife and middlest daughter.
- Classical - I wish I could admit there was more here, but there's not. I came to classical music via Warner Brothers cartoons (yay, Rossini!)
- Classic Rock/Pop - British invasion 'til 1976 or so (told you I was arbitrary! Kids now days think the '80s are "classic rock"...Blasphemy!)
- Country/Country Rock - I like "alternatwang" and roots country. Modern, slick mainstream country makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
- Dance Hall - this is roughly categorized as "big band", with big band/swing revivalists and some zydeco thrown in.
- Dance/Rave - all that Ibiza/Euro-trash/remix stuff the kids nowdays (or at least 5-10 years ago) dance their nights away to.
- Easy Listening - pretty much what you'd think.
- Folk/Folk Rock - watch "A Mighty Wind".
- Gospel - I loves me some Gospel, especially bluegrass-tinged. I will sing along to that harmony. "Angel Band", anyone?
- Instrumental - think "Sleepwalk".
- Jazz - my earliest album memory is my parents listening to Dave Brubeck.
- Latin - I wish I had a lot more of this.
- Oldies - anything between "Dance Hall" and the Beatles, not counting "Easy Listening".
- Opera - Elmer Fudd washes Bugs Bunny's hair.
- Rage - 'nuff said. When the mood is right, this genre is the only thing that satisfies.
- Rap - Public Enemy, anyone?
- Reggae - I tire of this genre.
- RnB/Funk - James Brown's hot tub. But more like P-Funk ("Tear the roof off the sucker!")
- Rock/Pop - everything else from 1976 on. I long ago gave up subdividing it all. What does "alternative" even mean any more?
- World - I am totally into Afro-Pop, a lot more than is shown here. I need to get out and buy more.
6 comments:
Care to elaborate on just what you mean by "Stevie Ray Vaughn $#!+"?
I can't believe you have tagged all your tunes...sheesh. Make the rest of us look bad, whydoncha.
I have ALL my music classified like so:
A-C
D-I
J-L
M-P
Q-Z
Keep it simple. If I know who it's by, I can find it.
However, your pie chart is very interesting, thanks for sharing it. About as eclectic as I would have expected.
Random thoughts-
-Jeremy is the man to talk to about Latin and Salsa music.
-A genre not on your list is zydeco, which I enjoy from time to time. We used to have a canary that loved zydeco and would start singing away any time it was on.
-Along the same vein as your comment about Classic Rock: one night I was listening to Back Tracks USA and they played a song from 1995. I died a little on the inside.
My next tattoo may be of SRV because he symbolizes a lot to me...anyhow I want one of these pie charts! How do I get one.
I love your taste and classifications. I have tried to come up with a good definition of classic rock for years and still haven't done it.
Erin,
I just never thought SRV plowed much new ground that Hendrix hadn't already been over. I prefer "original source" blues. Although I DO like Roy Rogers (the blues musician, not the cowboy actor).
And yeah, I am rather OCD about my music labeling. I like to have the genres well-defined because then I can just shuffle play on genre and get a nice playlist.
Meghann,
We have some zydeco (Buckwheat Zydeco, Beausoleil, etc.), it goes under Dance Hall.
And IMHO classic rock ended with the ascendancy of the first wave of punk (which actually predated 1976, but that's the year it really started making an impact on mainstream consciousness, in my opinion).
Barbara,
The music player I use (Rhythmbox) has a way to view totals by genre, so I took those and entered them into a spreadsheet (OpenOffice in my case, you could use Excel or even Google Docs). I totaled the count column and used that total to come up with another column that had percentages (although really, since I ended up not showing the percentages I could've just done the pie chart using the raw counts). Then I simply inserted a chart using the percentage column and the genre column for labels and that was that.
It interests me that you classify zydeco as dance hall and not folk...I don't listen to a lot of it (mostly Beausoleil), but I guess I didn't do my homework.
Erin,
I classify zydeco that way because that's what it seems like to me, that's where it "fits". If I have my "Dance Hall" genre on shuffle it doesn't grate to bounce from some big band swing to a zydeco tune.
I like my genres to be accurate but not too small or I end up with a genre with only 10 songs in it, and that's not very useful.
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