Hi everyone. I'm Josh. Good to meet you, this is my first post on this board.
So I love discovering the roots of Christian rock. I was super into Christian Rock in the 90s, but didn't discover all of the wonderful Christian music that preceded that until much later. Growing up in the 80s I had a couple of Petra tapes and a couple of Mylon Lefevre tapes, but that was the extent of what I was aware of at that time.
So, on to the conundrum. I am quite geekily? geekishly? trying to figure out the best way to showcase music from a wide range of genres and decades in a single playlist. So, here are a few of my thoughts after a bunch of attempts.
The way most people do playlists most of the time is to pick a sub-genre or theme and stick with it. When you have a playlist exploring a particular topic it works well to mix up the songs in a way that appears random at first glance. The selection and order might actually be very curated, but finding the right songs for each part of a playlist like that is something you just feel your way through.
When you are trying to do justice to a large number of topics in a single playlist, though, you need a plan. Shuffling everything gives you a playlist that feels too random in this case.
The obvious first strategy I thought about is chronological. I would start with the oldest material I wanted to cover and eventually work my way through all of the decades until I got to the present. But when you go to actually try to do this lots of questions come up. How to decide how fast to move through the different time periods? A playlist that picks 20 songs from the 50s then 20 songs from the 60s, etc feels quite different from a playlist that goes through 100 songs from the 50s before moving on to the 60s, for example. I found it hard to find a balance I liked - either I was moving too slowly through time such that I felt my audience would get bored of one thing, or I was moving too fast and felt like I wasn't doing justice to the material I wanted to cover.
The other concern was that of inequity - some of the songs I wanted to include are from the artist's only album of interest, or are perhaps an isolated song with Christian themes from an otherwise secular album, whereas other artists have prolific libraries of music calling out for representation. The result is sections of the playlist that are one song per artist, then sections with lots of songs by the same artist. Without organization the overall result doesn't flow well.
The solution to some of these problems that I've found is to create groups of songs of a consistent size to use in building the playlist. Sometimes I organize a number of these groups into what I've been calling a 'set'. The smaller the number of songs in each group the more nimble the playlist is -- able to cover lots of subgenres quickly, but the shallower it is, as when you have more songs per group it lets you explore more thoroughly the subgenre or artist being covered - including some deeper cuts. The other thing this does for you is that you can have some groups that are 1 song per artist, exploring a subgenre, and you can have some groups that are all from one artist or even one album and you can work them all into one playlist cohesively so long as you set up some kind of pattern for the groups in each set.
I've liked the results I've gotten from using groups of 4-6 songs, with 4-5 groups per set. For example I have a playlist with 5 songs per decade that goes down than up then down again like a wave through the decades. Post 90s, 90s, 80s, 70s, pre-70s, 70s, 80s, 90s, Post 90s, 90s, 80s, … I have another playlist that also uses 5 song groups, but jumps around a bit more. Every four groups of five songs forms a set in this playlist, where each set has an ABAB pattern of genres usually starting with something from an older decade, then going to something from a newer decade, then returning to each one more time before the next set covers two more old/new genres.
I’m really liking the 5 song groups I’ve been going with lately. 4 song groups would move the playlist through different genres faster, but 5 songs really gives me an opportunity to explore the subgenre, artist, or album I wanted to highlight. 6 songs feels like it would take too long to move on to the next thing.
Let me know what you guys think. What do you think would be the best pace of moving through different sounds? Would you prefer a steady progression or jumping around a bit more?
So I love discovering the roots of Christian rock. I was super into Christian Rock in the 90s, but didn't discover all of the wonderful Christian music that preceded that until much later. Growing up in the 80s I had a couple of Petra tapes and a couple of Mylon Lefevre tapes, but that was the extent of what I was aware of at that time.
So, on to the conundrum. I am quite geekily? geekishly? trying to figure out the best way to showcase music from a wide range of genres and decades in a single playlist. So, here are a few of my thoughts after a bunch of attempts.
The way most people do playlists most of the time is to pick a sub-genre or theme and stick with it. When you have a playlist exploring a particular topic it works well to mix up the songs in a way that appears random at first glance. The selection and order might actually be very curated, but finding the right songs for each part of a playlist like that is something you just feel your way through.
When you are trying to do justice to a large number of topics in a single playlist, though, you need a plan. Shuffling everything gives you a playlist that feels too random in this case.
The obvious first strategy I thought about is chronological. I would start with the oldest material I wanted to cover and eventually work my way through all of the decades until I got to the present. But when you go to actually try to do this lots of questions come up. How to decide how fast to move through the different time periods? A playlist that picks 20 songs from the 50s then 20 songs from the 60s, etc feels quite different from a playlist that goes through 100 songs from the 50s before moving on to the 60s, for example. I found it hard to find a balance I liked - either I was moving too slowly through time such that I felt my audience would get bored of one thing, or I was moving too fast and felt like I wasn't doing justice to the material I wanted to cover.
The other concern was that of inequity - some of the songs I wanted to include are from the artist's only album of interest, or are perhaps an isolated song with Christian themes from an otherwise secular album, whereas other artists have prolific libraries of music calling out for representation. The result is sections of the playlist that are one song per artist, then sections with lots of songs by the same artist. Without organization the overall result doesn't flow well.
The solution to some of these problems that I've found is to create groups of songs of a consistent size to use in building the playlist. Sometimes I organize a number of these groups into what I've been calling a 'set'. The smaller the number of songs in each group the more nimble the playlist is -- able to cover lots of subgenres quickly, but the shallower it is, as when you have more songs per group it lets you explore more thoroughly the subgenre or artist being covered - including some deeper cuts. The other thing this does for you is that you can have some groups that are 1 song per artist, exploring a subgenre, and you can have some groups that are all from one artist or even one album and you can work them all into one playlist cohesively so long as you set up some kind of pattern for the groups in each set.
I've liked the results I've gotten from using groups of 4-6 songs, with 4-5 groups per set. For example I have a playlist with 5 songs per decade that goes down than up then down again like a wave through the decades. Post 90s, 90s, 80s, 70s, pre-70s, 70s, 80s, 90s, Post 90s, 90s, 80s, … I have another playlist that also uses 5 song groups, but jumps around a bit more. Every four groups of five songs forms a set in this playlist, where each set has an ABAB pattern of genres usually starting with something from an older decade, then going to something from a newer decade, then returning to each one more time before the next set covers two more old/new genres.
I’m really liking the 5 song groups I’ve been going with lately. 4 song groups would move the playlist through different genres faster, but 5 songs really gives me an opportunity to explore the subgenre, artist, or album I wanted to highlight. 6 songs feels like it would take too long to move on to the next thing.
Let me know what you guys think. What do you think would be the best pace of moving through different sounds? Would you prefer a steady progression or jumping around a bit more?
