Sometimes visual stimulus can be very inspiring for musicians.

Here is a random picture from Flickr. When you look at it, try to let it create some sort of feeling or idea inside you, then use that to start making music.

Be sure to check out what else the photographer has to offer. You may end up finding yourself a new muse!

MUSIC: 200603-200803 Listening History Graph

Image by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL)
Made with www.last.fm/user/C26000/journal/2006/07/30/195693/

I can see where I changed my playlist algorithm,
and started using a whitelisted-subset (‘changerrecent’),
at which point playlist management really takes off.
This was around March, 2006.

Up to that point, it was a 9000 song shuffle (‘changer’), so the
graph is all thin slivers. The first large slivers emerge after we
started doing ChangerRecent, a smaller subset (1000 vs 9000).

Then, certain bands taper off and stop — because we started doing
ChangerRecentToLearnOnly. As songs were learned, they were
removed from the playlist. Catchier bands taper off sooner, thus
you can see, for example, King Missile tapering off by August of
2007 — way before completely un-catchy Ratos De Parao, which
took until November of 2007.

Our first completed CRTL (ChangerRecentToLearn) was 1000
songs, and took ~6 months (May->November) to complete.

Notice Ratos De Paroa at the bottom. This was the VERY LAST
BAND in our ToLearn playlist — the least catchy — possibly the worst
music in the playlist. Thus, at the very end, this was all that remained
for a good week until we learned the final songs. Makes it look more
important than it is. (August-October 2007.)

New music was put in once R.D.P. was learned — but we kept
the ToLearn playlist in the 0-150 song range — never going up
to 1000 like the first time. That is, we keep up with the new music
nowadays, and never get 1000 behind.

Thus, on the right of the graph, you now see larger, consolidated
blocks of fewer bands. This represents the transformation in how
we listen to music.

After that, there were about 10 concerts in 5 months, so the
decision of what new music to add was based on which bands
we were about to see in concert — Ozzy Osbourne, Chemlab,
Ween, Gwar, They Might Be Giants, Ministry, etc.

As you can see at the very right of the graph, Ministry is taking
over our playlists, as we prepare for the March Ministry concert.
Ministry now represents about 95% of music listened to in the
past 2 weeks.

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