If I'm going to be standing there, I want to at least be holding a sparkler. I would also like to be outfitted with a suit of christmas lights, though I don't know if there's any room left in the budget for that. Maybe replace Scarlett Johanson with one of the Price is Right chicks from my youth, and use the cost savings on my outfit.
Here's a thought I've been mulling over. A genre of blog post that I would actually like to read, but it depends how many folk would be up for participating in creating it. Here's the thought. Take a single piece of music, modest length (could be a single song, max length would be an album, but probably better if shorter than that). Several of us commit to listen to it intensively for a period of time (say, at least every day for a week) and to talk about it afterwards. Then we have a moderated conversation about what we hear, what it connects with in our mind, what it sounds like, what we like/don't like about it. Then we post it as a blog entry. Somethign like "Mig Listening Circle: Title of Piece" (Part of the inspiration: colleagues at my college have been running "Do you hear what I hear" evenings, where a group gathers and listens to music from several genres and just talks about what they hear.)
The reason I personally would like to read this is because I like it when I read something that helps me hear something in the music that I might not have caught on my own, that actually gives me another avenue into the piece. I hesitate mainly because a couple of attempts to start threads sort of along these lines here and at the other board, by me and others, have failed; it's harder to talk about actual music than about where it can be bought, which is the best, etc. But I am wondering if a structured conversation format might generate some interesting thoughts...
I have no time for this imminently but I would be interested to hear whether this sounds like a good idea in any world outside my head, and if so any proposals for a piece of music. (It should be a piece not already famous enough to be over-familiar/analysed to death, but a piece of substance that could bear a conversation. Any genre. Or it could be a small cluster of short pieces that might link up or contrast in some way)
What about this: We set a consistent lineup for who will participate (say 5 or 6 folks) and then they rotate picking the item to listen to with whoever picks it acting as moderator. That way we can really see over time how a person's listening informs their opinions, and we will also hit a number of different genres.
With regard to GPs idea, why don't we try it here? I suggest GP choses something and starts a thread here, and we contribute to it, just to see how it works. If succesful, the thread can easily be transferred to MiG
Sure, we can do that. If I am starting it it will not be right away - too many other plates spinning right now. Anyone else should feel free to propose a piece if inspiration strikes in the meantime. And bear in mind it could fail because of the piece of music, so a failed conversation might still warrant another attempt or two with other pieces.
I'm not sure if there would be much interest in this piece, but it is the first one that comes to my mind that I think could be an excellent source to spark commentary on responses to the music heard by multiple listeners. (There is one part of this piece that gives me goose bumps.)
I'm pleased to report that I've applied a fix from the theme developer for the title-wrapping problem. The box will now expand vertically so you can use longer titles now.
I've been getting slammed by spam lately, too. I checked around on the internet, and supposedly wordpress and wordpress non-hosted theme sites have been getting nailed. Trackbacks and ping seem to be the biggest source of those, since the askimet security plugin isn't so sure what to do with those.
That's why I have trackbacks turned off. I never thought legitimate trackbacks added much value in the first place. It was a cool idea when there were a few thousand blogs in an echo chamber, but it's outlived its usefulness. Besides, Google will do a better job of telling you who's linking to you.
Feel free to just leave the spam comments unmoderated until someone feels like nuking them. It's not worth anyone's time to kill them as they arrive. -edit- It looks like Bad Behavior looks at the IPs that have comments marked as spam, so there's probably some benefit to marking them as spam sooner rather than later.
I'm not sure why someone's recently decided to solve the Recaptcha over and over to try to post nonsense. I guess the idea is to hope one gets approved so the spammer can fill our comments with junk.
I have some resources to deploy against this crap. I've turned on Bad Behavior. It's already blocked one IP address. Hopefully it's the one that posts some variation of "Hello. xaxanjasdijwewe And Bye." I wonder if that's someone so stupid they don't know how to set up the message the spambot is supposed to deliver.
I might turn trackbacks off, too, then (assuming I can figure out how). I do have two valid ones, both who historically aggregate the entirety of the internet's Best of the Year Jazz lists. I did some traffic from it, and I'm not getting inundated with so much spam that my quality of life is taking a hit, but I can tell my irritation level is growing with always being greeted with spam in my queue. I may, however, be more inured to the sight of it than most people, since I've been checking the spam queue on AAJ every day (sometimes more than once in a day) for a couple years now, so it's a pretty mindless task to separate the chaff from the wheat for me. But still...
Nice piece, Kez, thanks. I changed a couple of pieces of punctuation, and left queries about three phrases in the editorial comments beneath your piece. Listening to it now on Spotify - sounds like a nice album. Enjoying "Love Reclaims the Atmosphere".
Thanks, GP. I made the suggested text changes and responded to your queries on MiG. (Forgot to mention I added a phrase that gives the release date and record label for the new album at the beginning of the paragraph alongside the album cover picture.)
@brittleblood, there's no fixed in-group, just a group of people with more time and energy in the initial stages who have gotten things written - I think we would love it if more emusers wrote stuff. There's room for more than one more. It emerged from the sudden collective realization that despite us being individually amateurs, between us we knew an awful lot about music and had things to say about it.
Procedures are still emergent, but I think the procedure to get involved would be something like to first request access to the site dashboard (Dr. Mutex has been keeper of the keys) so that you can post drafts, draft something (and feel free to run it by one or more others using this thread or the editorial tools there), drafts are then generally reviewed by others before being published (i.e. there is a little bit of quality control) and Craig is the one who takes the final decision to hit "publish".
It's very open in terms of what the post can be about, within the general parameters of wanting to talk about good music, especially good music that folk might not know about, in any genre and from any time period under the sun. The length and tone of what's there already is probably a reasonable rough guide to the blog's trajectory in terms of genre and tone of writing, but nothing's set in stone.
In summary, its status is that it is an outburst of collective enthusiasm that is taking shape as it rolls.
Comments
Cheers.
We are not replacing Scarlett Johanson.
Craig
The reason I personally would like to read this is because I like it when I read something that helps me hear something in the music that I might not have caught on my own, that actually gives me another avenue into the piece. I hesitate mainly because a couple of attempts to start threads sort of along these lines here and at the other board, by me and others, have failed; it's harder to talk about actual music than about where it can be bought, which is the best, etc. But I am wondering if a structured conversation format might generate some interesting thoughts...
I have no time for this imminently but I would be interested to hear whether this sounds like a good idea in any world outside my head, and if so any proposals for a piece of music. (It should be a piece not already famous enough to be over-familiar/analysed to death, but a piece of substance that could bear a conversation. Any genre. Or it could be a small cluster of short pieces that might link up or contrast in some way)
Craig
Craig
Also, we need to pick something that we can embed on MiG, so that the reader can listen to the song as they read our reactions to it.
Craig
Contrail review is ready to go whenever.
I'll probably put Contrail up tomorrow.
Craig
Craig
Craig
Feel free to just leave the spam comments unmoderated until someone feels like nuking them. It's not worth anyone's time to kill them as they arrive. -edit- It looks like Bad Behavior looks at the IPs that have comments marked as spam, so there's probably some benefit to marking them as spam sooner rather than later.
I'm not sure why someone's recently decided to solve the Recaptcha over and over to try to post nonsense. I guess the idea is to hope one gets approved so the spammer can fill our comments with junk.
I have some resources to deploy against this crap. I've turned on Bad Behavior. It's already blocked one IP address. Hopefully it's the one that posts some variation of "Hello. xaxanjasdijwewe And Bye." I wonder if that's someone so stupid they don't know how to set up the message the spambot is supposed to deliver.
take the summer off and look what you folks have gone and done!
can someone provide a summary/status? is there room for one more?
Procedures are still emergent, but I think the procedure to get involved would be something like to first request access to the site dashboard (Dr. Mutex has been keeper of the keys) so that you can post drafts, draft something (and feel free to run it by one or more others using this thread or the editorial tools there), drafts are then generally reviewed by others before being published (i.e. there is a little bit of quality control) and Craig is the one who takes the final decision to hit "publish".
It's very open in terms of what the post can be about, within the general parameters of wanting to talk about good music, especially good music that folk might not know about, in any genre and from any time period under the sun. The length and tone of what's there already is probably a reasonable rough guide to the blog's trajectory in terms of genre and tone of writing, but nothing's set in stone.
In summary, its status is that it is an outburst of collective enthusiasm that is taking shape as it rolls.