Terrible iPod Days

Ever have one of those days where your ipod plays random garbage all day and you have to keep hitting skip. I usually play all my stuff on a shuffle, today is just a garbage day. I might get like two in a row that are nice enough to listen but then its 20 minutes of shit.

Haven't touched shuffle button since like 1999.

i like shuffle...there are days when i prefer albums, most days i like a random mix.

I guess it could work for playlists. But I've only got an 8gig player so I like to get as much variety on there as I can so that I can have whatever such for whatever mood. Going from Joanna Newsom to The Fall is absolutely brutal.

I do have an easy listening Slumberland playlist... kinda surprised I haven't hit shuffle there. I really don't think I've just ever been tempted. Ever.

if i hear one more fucking strokes song today.

your ipod plays random garbage all day and you have to keep hitting skip

this is when i start taking mental notes on "time to sell this CD/purge from iTunes" or whatever, esp. if an album/band/song annoys me like 5-10 times straight for weeks/months. works pretty well imo

yeah i do the same thing, toss out old shit replace with new stuff that will be shit in a month.

I haven't got this problem since the headphones jack on my nano is fucked. That's worse.
Now I just bring cd's to work and listen to them on my machine.
Ipods are garbage.

One of these will fix that: http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/16164087/FiiO-E1-Headphone-Amplifier-For-iPod-And-iPhone/Product.html?_%24ja=tsid:11518|cat:16164087|prd:16164087

Hm, never seen one of those. Interesting.

Me neither. Does it go beyond anything what a good pair of headphones can provide? Aside from additonal loudness?

thats it i've had enough. its album time.

i had this, a couple of days ago, and then suddenly it threw up some gold, all the more luminous in contrast to the succession of shit that had preceded it. the second i remember what it was i'm going to post here.

the worst is when it happens when im driving. is there a remote i can get?

if you got "garbage" in your ipod, then why do you have garbage i your ipod..
I only really listen to mine at work or when I'm driving, so I know not to put anything in there I think I might skip to insure I get through the day with out throughing any co-workers of of a ladder...

well its not garbage so to speak, its just stuff that i haven't removed and im sick of.

if you got "garbage" in your ipod, then why do you have garbage i your ipod..

otmfm

if i hear one more fucking strokes song today.

well its not garbage so to speak

yes... yes it is garbage, sad to say.

here we go.

Yeah, a buddy of mine got all inot the Strokes really bad, trying to sell me on how great song writers they were and I was like, dude, this shit is wack, yo...
6 years later he's skipping them on his ipod now.

SeanWayne on my side! yessss

anyway, dont mean to start beef, i would have plenty on my ipod that is "terrible" to other ppl no doubt

a buddy of mine got all into the Strokes really bad, trying to sell me on how great song writers they were and I was like, dude, this shit is wack, yo...

new ILM board description?? PLEASE

its one of those things that i haven't deleted, but its been coming up all the fucking time lately. its off there tonight.

I've got a classic which is nearly full having splurged a ton of music on it, what's quite nice is listening on shuffle and thinking 'what *is* this??'

...and then it's invariably Popol Vuh for some reason.

Haven't really used my mp3 player for a long time, but when I do it's always on shuffle. Usually when I get this it's more having a bad me day where I just can't get into anything rather than having a genuinely bad iPod day (because everything in my mp3 player is awesome, ha).

this is why Genius playlists are, well... genius

you get to emulate shuffle but you also get a bunch of songs that are at least interconnected by genre/mood/cultural cachet, so your playlist doesn't have the jackknife dissonance of going from say, Pantera to Lady Gaga to Abe Vigoda (as what happened to me the other day in what may be my most legendary "wtf, shuffle mode" experience)

the downside is that if you use it a lot, you notice musical clusters that the algorithm can't break out of, so every vaguely dancy playlist with rock sympathies will pull invariably pull in "Someone Great" or "Get Innocuous", for example

ah, i've never used genius; i have occasionally thought there should be some sort of inbuilt filter that just entirely precludes the swans from sitting amidst everything else that might come on, though, so maybe it's the way to go.

basically a combination of Genius and "only include songs I have checked" = as close a solution to world peace as we will see in this lifetime

your playlist doesn't have the jackknife dissonance of going from say, Pantera to Lady Gaga to Abe Vigoda

But I *like* that aspect of shuffle. Often some of the craziest matches actually sound great segueing into each other, too.

sure, it's great sometimes, but sometimes you are thinking "I want to build a mood around this particular song" and Genius is perfect for that

(Genius has done more to make me act fanboyish about Apple than anything else they've done, lol)

Yeah, I'm a fan.

Haven't touched shuffle button since like 1999.

― Crouching Seward, Hidden Raggett (kelpolaris), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 1:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

This is mind blowing to me. I can't remember the last time I listened to one album start to finish. I shuffle all the time on my I-pod and in the car. Sometimes I do it mid-song just cause I get bored.

but sometimes you are thinking "I want to build a mood around this particular song"

Fucking hippie... lol!

ive never used genius. hmmm

I used Genius tons this week for making playlists to put on my new phone because I didn't want to actually sit there and make the mixes myself. lol lazy.

I've discovered that 25-song Genius playlists + Nook application = commuting is suddenly awesome

i have a feeling that all my genius playlist would make me want to kill myself.

Genius can still give you curveballs; I recently made one based on The Shamen's "Pro-Gen"* that ends with:

Emma - Sisters of Mercy
This Corrosion - Sisters of Mercy
Spellbound - Siouxsie & the Banshees
Ebeneezer Goode (Ritchie Hawtin mix) - The Shamen
Switch - Siouxsie & the Banshees
Ice Machine - Depeche Mode
I Wanna Be Adored (Rabbit in the Moon remix) - The Stone Roses

* this is very deliberately NOT the "Move Any Mountain" remix that appeared on the US version of their album, because fuck that version

yeah i can see mine being all great until it randomly throws in Seals and Crofts.

I guess I can see the upside of Genius, but dammit if my shuffle yesterday didn't go from a track off Jay Dee's 3 Beat Tapes into Roxy Music's "Grey Lagoons." Top THAT, "Genius"!

tbf that's why both Genius and Shuffle exist; different modes for different moods

* this is very deliberately NOT the "Move Any Mountain" remix that appeared on the US version of their album, because fuck that version

Pssh whatever. That version is <3

not if you heard the superior original version first

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhA3Dlg83XI

^^^ always and forever ^^^

I rate my songs in I-Tunes, so when I use the shuffle feature I use it off my 'Favorites' playlist (i.e., 4 and 5 star songs). So I can still get caught with a weird Fennesz-to-Beatles transitional moment, I rarely feel the urge to skip through songs.

Saying that, 90% of my listening is albums-only.

Yeah, I'm a fan.

Haven't touched shuffle button since like 1999.

― Crouching Seward, Hidden Raggett (kelpolaris), Wednesday, March 9, 2011 1:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

This is mind blowing to me. I can't remember the last time I listened to one album start to finish. I shuffle all the time on my I-pod and in the car. Sometimes I do it mid-song just cause I get bored.

― ENBB

I'm actually really curious if you have a last.fm or such now..?

I mean... of course I hit the Next button on occasion. I'll pick and choose songs I really like when on the bus/with an ipod. But if I'm at home, it's p much mandate that if I'm going to listen to something, I listen to it in the context of the entire album. In a way it kinda takes care of the whole "hands-free" aspect of shuffling for me.

+ while I realize the notion of "forcing yourself" to listen to entire albums just for the accomplishment of, er, being able to is a bit ridiculous... those albums which I choose to listen to as wholes I really do think benefit from the way in which the artist chose to progress the tracks. I mean stock examples are albums like Kid A/Loveless, but even on records that feel more like compilations of EPs I still think the feeling of having had to "wait" for your favorite song to come next in line makes it 4x as enjoyable to listen to. I guess I'm a masochist?

No, your line of thinking makes sense. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, and sometimes the uniqueness of a track stands out even greater in the context of the source album. However, I echo Maresnest's comment about shuffling sometimes produces a "I have no idea what this is" response, which is fun.

For me, if I only listened to the few songs off each album that grabbed me right away I'd be missing out on tons of stuff that took repeated listenings to worm into my brain. Also, listening to full albums by an artist consecutively gives me a greater appreciation for their approach and helps me draw connections that I might have missed otherwise.

Horses for courses and whatnot.

My formula, for about 10 GB of music, which I'm pretty happy with:

- Playlist with the last 5GB of music added
- Playlists to shuffle on the last 30, 60 and 100 days of music added, depending on how much newness I feel like imbibing

then to fill in the other 5GB
- five playlists on my five key listening genres- each about 100 tracks that have not been played in the last 60 days. I try to make sure these genres get tagged right when I import them.
- a large dynamic playlist of highly rated older songs, with tracks that should drop if played in the last 60 days.
- a playlist of songs with very few plays or unrated
- a playlist of a few desert island albums, tho' this I find I have to rotate regularly, lest they wear out

A shuffle on the whole thing is a good mix of genres I like, with a lot of ways to narrow in on specific moods. Don't use Genius much, 'cause as noted above, that thing just brings up LCD Soundsystem all the time.

kelpol - I do but my actual I-pod broke a long time ago and I use my phone now which I don't think connects to last FM? Don't listen to much on my computer so so it's really out of date: http://www.last.fm/user/enbb

everytime you spell iPod that way I think this:
http://robertdall.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/firstgeneration-ipod.jpg

You weren't exaggerating on never using the comp for music tho. Don't think I've ever seen a last.fm profile that didn't even have the option of "Last 12 months". Interesting tho! I was really more curious if any one artist took dominance upon others, considering you kinda listen to whatever you got all at once.

Unless you live in the UK w/ spotify (which scrobbles) I don't think there's anything phone-wise. 'course you could resort to doing something like the universal scrobbler, which takes manual scrobbles and.... prolly isn't worth the effort.

Your musical compatibility with enbb is Super

Music you have in common includes Fugazi, The Get Up Kids, Joy Division, The Smiths and R.E.M..

:)

Kelpol the other thing I realized when I looked at that is that the last few times I did use my computer to listen to music I used Genius playlists which can explain why the stuff that is on there most recently is all so - samey and not really indicative of my FFing through shuffled songs.

i've never used shuffle - way too jarring, way too much risk of landing on something i'm not in the mood for, on a practical level the volume levels differ from track to track too much for it to be a particularly smooth experience. it's not too much hassle to manually switch to whatever song takes my fancy - if i know i'll be in a position where i can't use my hands i'll just put an album on.

never had the problem of shit music coming up either, for the simple reason that i don't keep shit music on my ipod and certainly not the strokes

I use an Atrac walkman where intelligent shuffle does seem to be pretty intelligent. Almost like a reason to be lieve in strong AI. seems to segue almost like its mixing.

Dunno what I'm going to do when this walkman gives up the ghost. It was refurbished when I got it.
Seems that sequencing like to like in ATRAC is easier than in MP3 or Flac. Assume it's to do with the way the code is written?
Plus ATRAC files are 1/2 the size of MP3s and sound better.

Shame that Sony were so proprietary about the technology really.

Anyway I tend to be continually surprised by what the player turns up & don't remember having to skip tracks. It has about 70 hours of music on, and I have deleted and replaced whatever tracks I've found inessential. Could have something to do with things, though I wouldn't think what I kept on would neccessarily match my moods a week or whatever down the line.

Since it has been pretty much on random, or at least where I haven't known what's on the playlist it's created I've been surprised by how often I've predicted the next track. 70 odd hours of music being selected from.

The most predictable thing it does seem to do is pick an lp that it keeps returning to play tracks from during a session. That is interspersed with other random stuff that somehow relates tonally or beatwise or whatever. & the lp it returns to changes each session.
Not sure if session is denoted by recharge therefore reset to start. It always starts from the same track after one of these though.

I really like the jarring aspects of shuffle. It's my favourite way to listen to my ipod. Keeps it fresh. And I've mp3gained the whole library so volume levels aren't that much of an issue.

STROKEIST.

got a genius playlist going now...pretty damn good.

Putting everything into shuffle generally ends with one of the following scenarios:

a. incredibly abrasive headache-inducing blackest-of-black metal that's louder than any of the other tracks in your MP3s.
b. some weird thing that's encoded at 8kbps and sounds like a deaf goat trying to bleat "la isla bonita" over the occasional rattle of a cheesegrater against a train carriage door.
c. a spongebob squarepants video
d. XTC - Life Begins At The Hop
e. something you thought you'd check out one day in 2005 and never went back to.

the volume thing is easily fixed with the soundcheck option... excluding the Stooges record that seems to be the loudest thing ever recorded ever...

xpost or you end up with Cyndi Lauper "girls just wanna have fun" followed by King Diamond "Melissa" followed by Whitney Houston "Do You Hear What I Hear" because I forget to uncheck all of my Christmas music

omg yeah stuff from that remastered Raw Power has scared the SHIT out of me on multiple occasions

xxpost i use winamp - is there a thing for that?