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Then I waited for the feedback from my adoring public, which proved to be unsatisfying since it seemed to all be group focused rather than song focused. Why? My guess was that the respondents may have never heard the songs or simply couldn't remember the songs.
Luckily, realization of this occurred at a time when I needed to trim down my audio cassette collection. So I wired my little boom box into my PC's sound card. Then I used a program called Cakewalk Pyro 2003 to copy my favorite songs to .wav files. Then the fun began. I studied the song files to determine which part of the song most represented what I liked about either (1) the song, (2) the group, and sometimes even (3) the genre. More times than not, the chosen sample proved to be the more free formed bridge (examples #1, #2, #3, #4, & #5) of the song. I then ripped this sample to an mp3 file which could be uploaded and played by the web surfer for his or her enjoyment and enlightenment.
Instantly the e-mails changed from "Why don't you have any of The Kinks or Pink Floyd in your list?" to "Gee, I haven't heard that song in 20 years." Talk about a change for the better!
Next, I sorted my favorite tunes into different categories. First by the different instruments:
Female vocal leads Male vocal leads
Keyboard work Guitar work Bass work Drum work
Woodwind or brass or orchestral work
Then I sorted the music roughly by style & type:
Jazz Rock 'n Roll Progressive rock Religious & Christian Love Songs
Instrumentals Blues Folk or bluegrass or country & western By Black Artists
Then I sorted the songs by the decade in which they were recorded:
This Millennium (24) 1990's (56) 1980's (84) 1970's (90) 1960's (13)
Then I tried to give recognition to the incredible lyricists and producers:
Exceptional lyrics Exceptional production
My tendency to choose the sample from the more instrumentally oriented bridge of a song proved to be a bit problematic in that it too often omitted the lyrics and vocals altogether. So in a few cases I had to go back and either expand the original passage or select a different passage containing a more representative sample of the primary instruments. For a song with interesting and talented performances at various instruments, this was very challenging, but it was all fun.
The quality of the samples varies, as some are derived from CD's, while other samples are from original cassettes, while others are from low quality 15 to 20 plus year old blank cassettes containing copies of music from well worn vinyl albums, such as this sample of John Miles' "Pull The Damn Thing Down." On almost every sample I experimented with bit rates of 160k and 128k and would sometimes even test for 96k, and found that 96k mono seems to focus the lead vocal performance (sample), granted that it's at the expense of the highs and lows.
Finally, please be aware that the songs in all the lists are sorted in pretty much the same sequence that the songs appear in the "My Favorite Tunes" list. So if you go to the "male vocal leads" page, please don't think that I'm rating Johnny Horton's vocal performance in "North to Alaska" higher than M.C. Hammer's performance in "Too Legit To Quit." It's just that - on the day that I put that page together - I liked "North to Alaska" better than I liked "Too Legit To Quit." I see no need to constantly second guess the placement of each song on the list, as being included should be sufficient glorification.
Enjoy!
Mike
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