Pandora's Box

Three pieces of (vaguely) music-related news.

First, I've been taking some photos this morning for the monthly competition on myfuji.com, which I try to enter as regularly as I can. The competitions are useful for the very large number of comments one typically receives. The theme is 'straight lines' and my chosen subject was my acoustic guitar (a Takamine TD-32 for anyone who might care). Two of the batch, done in black and white came out quite nicely, so I've stuck them on my Flickr page. Comments/suggestions are gratefully received.

Second, I've discovered this great new web-radio thing called Pandora, an offshoot of the 'music genome project'. The project is a massive database of music organised and interrelated based on its musical characteristics, i.e. things like its tonality, rhythmic pattern, style of arrangement, use of vocal harmony and so on. Pandora is a web-radio station that you can customise by entering bands or artists you like: Pandora will then use the genome database to select other music with the same musical 'genes'. This means it's a great way to discover new music, though not by any means an infallible one, since there is plenty of very bad music out there with the same musical characteristics as what we consider to be good music. Still, Pandora 'learns' as you listen - you give each tune that plays a thumbs up or a thumbs down, and Pandora will change its future selections accordingly. You can also add multiple artists to one radio station to skew its choice in a certain direction. Its dead easy to use and you can find it here.

Finally, I've recently created a MySpace page for one of my many music side projects 'Best Boy Electric'. It's electronic music, made on my Mac when I need a creative outlet but can't be bothered with guitars and microphones, so it's probably not something most of you would enjoy, but if any of you are curious about what keeps me sane while writing this thesis (besides Laura) please visit and (if possible) enjoy.