Finished that assignment that the last post was about. For this class I have called CFI, we had write a 500 word essay on an archive, be it public, personal, virtual, whatever. I chose my music collection, which has shifted and expanded significantly over the years. I had alot of trouble squeezing in everything I wanted to talk about, there was so much more back story I wanted to give, but alas 500 was the limit. So I generally stick to pointing out that it is an archive and I talk about how I organize. it. Anyway, shutup, read it yourself.
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We understand libraries as a fairly common thing; a source of information, an archive of knowledge, something we utilize every day of our lives and often without realizing it. Any collection of old objects you have around your house can be described as an archive, a systematically organized series of back-ups that over time form a collection. For this assignment, I have chosen my music collection, an archive that is dearly loved by me and meticulously organized.
I decipher my record collection in many different ways. For starters, I have my collection spread across several platform types, including CD, MP3, Cassette and Vinyl. I started collecting music from around 13 (now 25), using multiple cassettes and recorded songs from Triple J, often getting two tape decks and dubbing tracks across to make mixtapes. I began filling them up with songs from CD’s I had bought or borrowed off friends, and my collection steadily grew. Over the following years I spent a fair bit my earned money on music. My collection swelled gradually, buying around 2-3 albums a week and taking a long time to actually digest them all in my brain. I got used to listening to so much music at once that in college a pair of headphones barely ever left my head. I had moved on to CD’s entirely by this point, making mix discs of mp3’s I had downloaded and burnt onto CD for use in my trusty discman. I would pull in full albums very slowly over a dial-up connection and listen to them gleefully, embracing the technology and finding new music constantly. On more than a few occasions I would rip my entire CD collection onto my harddrive, just to bolster the size of files that I had at the time, and to add more albums to the collection. In the year 2000 my mp3 count was around 3000, it now floats around 17,000 as I’ve run out of harddrive space to fit it all. I share my collection online now and then as well.
My file system for my MP3s is designed very simply, with a folder in the root directory for the artist, then a subsequent folder for each album. I have alot of songs that aren’t from any album like a b-side or live track, and these are put in the artist folder or in a Misc, Live or otherwise named folder. Each file has an ID3 tag, which is an info file encoded onto each MP3. Music software can read this and you can tag it with any information you like, such as artist, track name, number, etc. It is a constant struggle to maintain tags for such a large file system, with new albums coming in all the time, but I try to keep it tidy.
Since 2006 I have now held a top albums ranking, making a shortlist of my favourite 50 or 100 albums, then chiseling them down to a lower number, coming out with 10 in 2006 and 25 just recently. It is a tiring process but it is somehow satisfying knowing that you have a list of the albums that have meant the most to you in your lifetime. Find a copy of these on the overleaf.
Favourite Albums List 27-11-06:
1. Jeff Buckley – Grace (1994)
2. Pink Floyd – Dark Side Of The Moon (1973)
3. The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
4. The Doors – L.A. Woman (1971)
5. At The Drive-In – In/Casino/Out (1998)
6. Boards Of Canada – Music Has The Right To Children (1998)
7. Led Zeppelin – II (1969)
8. Coldplay – Parachutes (2000)
9. Metallica – …And Justice For All (1989)
10. Nine Inch Nails – Broken (1992)
11. Radiohead – Kid A (2000)
12. Marilyn Manson – Smells Like Children (1995)
13. Gomez – Liquid Skin (1999)
14. The Dandy Warhols – Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (2000)
15. Tool – Undertow (1993)
16. Faith No More – King For A Day Fool For A Lifetime (1995)
17. Kyuss – …And The Circus Leaves Town (1995)
18. The Tea Party – Splendor Solis (1993)
19. Fugazi – Repeater (1990)
20. Death From Above 1979 – Heads Up (2002)