Gawd I Love Pandora

I was listening to my Alan Hovhaness station this morning, when they played an absolutely glorious piece by a composer I'd never heard of, Michael Gandolfi. I created a new station devoted to Gandolfi which soon played equally-fabulous works by Jennifer Higdon, Christopher Theofanidis and others. Many of these recordings are by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, most are premier recordings. Apparently conductor Robert Spano has made quite a career out of discovering and presenting these "Atlanta sound" composers.

My account with Amazon is blowing up.

Heysus Kristo this channel is yielding a ton of great new classical music I'd never heard of. Much of it is brand new, much of it is informed by Jazz & Rock, all of it is tonal, all of it is full of fabulous colors.

*Michael Gandolfi
*Jennifer Higdon
*Christopher Theofanidis
*Michael Torke
*Michael Daughtery
*Colin McPhee
*Jerod Impchchaachaaha Tate
*Colin Matthews

Just ran across a fascinating screen on Pandora on my big computer (which I stream to my stereo). It gives the total usage of the stations I've created. Wow, big numbers.

• Acoustic Fingerpickin', 86 hours listened
  
• Africa, 18 hours listened
  
• Avant-Progressive, 37 hours listened
  
• Blues - Female, 220 hours listened
  
• Blues - Male, 28 hours listened
  
• Bob James Radio, 110 hours listened
  
• Brit Folk-Rock, 31 hours listened
  
• CAI, 48 hours listened (contemporary adult instrumental)
  
• Classic Rock radio, 64 hours listened (mostly by Missus NoCo)
  
• Classical - Baroque, 164 hours listened
  
• Classical - Contemporary, 45 hours listened
  
• Classical - Guitar, now playing
  
• Classical - New, 37 hours listened
  
• Classical - Piano, 12 hours listened
  
• Classical - Pipe Organ, 176 hours listened (every Sunday morning)
  
• Classical - Renaissance, 146 hours listened
  
• Classical - Romantic, 100 hours listened
  
• Classical - Winds, 130 hours listened
  
• Comedy - Stand-Up, 7 hours listened
  
• Contemporary Guitar, 128 hours listened
  
• Drum Machines and String Pads, 31 hours listened
  
• ECM, 88 hours listened
  
• Eno, 8 hours listened
  
• Exotica - Modern, 234 hours listened
  
• Exotica - Vintage, 30 hours listened
  
• Fats Waller Radio, 27 hours listened
  
• Frisell, Bill, 307 hours listened
  
• George Shearing Radio, 8 hours listened
  
• German Doom Metal, 10 hours listened
  
• Hecq Radio, 18 hours listened
  
• Horst Jankowski, 18 hours listened
  
• India, 11 hours listened
  
• Instrumental Rock, 26 hours listened
  
• Intelligent New Age, 84 hours listened
  
• Jazz Radio, 160 hours listened
  
• Jazz - Big Band, 10 hours listened
  
• Jazz - Bossa Nova, 11 hours listened
  
• Jazz - Cool, 34 hours listened
  
• Jazz - Dixieland, 1 hour listened
  
• Jazz - Electric '70s, 60 hours listened
  
• Jazz - Le Hot Club, 23 minutes listened
  
• Jazz - Modern Fusion, 51 hours listened
  
• Jazz - Philly, 86 hours listened
  
• Jazz - Piano, 40 hours listened
  
• Jazz - Ragtime, 5 hours listened
  
• Jazz - Swing, 90 hours listened
  
• Johann Johannson Radio, 22 hours listened
  
• John Denver Radio, 58 hours listened (again, Mrs)
  
• Jon Hassell, 52 hours listened
  
• Latino Rock, 33 hours listened
  
• Lustmord, 77 hours listened
  
• Manzanera, Phil, 49 hours listened
  
• Moody Soundtracks, 33 hours listened
  
• Motwon Sounds Radio, 85 hours listened
  
• Neil Diamond Radio, 54 hours listened (Mrs)
  
• Page, Gregory, 41 hours listened
  
• Paris in the '20s, 38 hours listened
  
• Penguin Cafe Orchestra, 147 hours listened
  
• Peter, Paul & Mary Radio, 23 hours listened
  
• Radio Tarifa Radio, 63 hours listened
  
• Ralph Vaughan Williams Radio, 74 hours listened
  
• Reggae, 8 hours listened
  
• RIO & Avant-Progressive, 56 hours listened
  
• Rusby, Kate, 43 hours listened
  
• Scandihoovian Nu-Jazz, 48 hours listened
  
• Seventies Singer-Songwriters, 26 hours listened
  
• Shadowfax, 69 hours listened
  
• Synthesizer Bliss, 49 hours listened
  
• The Beatles Radio, 21 hours listened
  
• The Crusaders Radio, 86 hours listened
  
• The Monkees Radio, 75 hours listened
  
• The Moody Blues, 238 hours listened
  
• Zorn, John, 90 hours listened

176 hours of Pipe Organ ... yet NO CHUCK BERRY!
What is wrong with you?

I noticed a big old 23 minutes of the Hot Club Five, as compared to 238 hours (!) of the Moody Blues. The mind boggles.

Ever since we moved I've been unable to use Pandora on the big TV (which has a nice sound system attached).  It tells me I need to link Pandora to my Comcast account, but when I try to do that the Comcast website says it's having trouble accessing my account, and to try back later.

I have other ways* of accessing Pandora so I've let this slide since June 17.  But this morning I decided it was time to finally resolve it.

After nearly 40 minutes chatting online with "Amandeep" we finally figured it out & got it working, but oh my god what a process.  First of all, I had to use Safari rather than Firefox.  Second, I had to create a new user ID, and that was complicated because it would not accept my e-mail or cell phone number (which are required) because they were already associated with my old account.  I had to get a new "apps PIN" which was not defined anywhere except page four of the fine print in the setup instructions (turns out it's the first four characters of my Comcast password converted to digits via the phone buttons conversion), and you can turn off the requirement for a PIN but not before you enter it the first time.  The activation code for the password reset had to be sent to an e-mail address OTHER THAN my Comcast ID or the e-mail address on the account, so I had to set up a new email.  But then of course this email wasn't set up to receive emails so I had to set that up in my mail program.

The whole thing seemed to be designed to discourage customers.

And when I asked Amandeep why my Pandora link wasn't carried across when I changed addresses -- Comcast advertises how easy it is to move their service when you move -- he (or she?) had no answer.



* - iphone direct
* - ipad direct
* - iphone to TV via Apple TV
* - ipad to TV via Apple TV
* - iphone to little stereo via Bluetooth
* - ipad to little stereo via Bluetooth
* - imac to little stereo via Bluetooth
* - iphone to big stereo via Bluetooth
* - ipad to big stereo via Bluetooth
* - imac to big stereo via Bluetooth
* - iphone to portable speaker via Bluetooth
* - ipad to portable speaker via Bluetooth
* - imac to portable speaker via Bluetooth
* - Blu-ray player app to TV
* - Apple TV app to TV
* - imac to speakers attached

and now finally:
* - Samsung SmarTV app

In the "News of the Weird" department...

Last night I went to bed with Pandora playing over my stereo, as I often do.  The music room is at the opposite end of the house from the bedroom and it has a thick soundproof door.  Rather than shutting Pandora down when I go to bed I usually just shut the door.

But this morning I noticed something exceedingly odd: Pandora was still playing, and still playing the channel that was playing last night, but THE MUSIC PLAYING WASNT WHAT THE DISPLAY SAID WAS PLAYING.  A Univers Zero track was playing over a cover of Soft Machine 4.  A jazz fusion track was playing over the cover of Michael Brook's "Hybrid."

This is totally unprecedented.

I'll see how long it continues....

Huh, okay just pausing Pandora to write he above, and then returning and restarting it seems to have synced it up again. Weirdness over.

What was WEIRD was that it wasn't just one track shifted, like showing a track or two after it played. No, the whole association between cover and song was totally random.

I have on occasion used Pandora to delve into unfamiliar music, music of other countries, where I know there is a rich tradition I'm barely aware of.  I have a station of classical Indian music for instance that goes way beyond Ravi Shankar.

Pandora's international reach is a boon to Western listeners who are not exposed to much music outside our own traditions.

One time, a couple years ago, I was trying to set up an African station.  I had run across several crossover artists, who sing in a combination of English and Swahili (Geoffrey Oryema, Johnny Clegg, Busi Mhlongo, Angelique Kidjo) and wanted more, more authentic, more African.  Whilst setting up the station Pandora alerted me to another station, one of their own design, called "Acoustic Africa."  I listened to a couple hours of it, and filed it away for future reference.

The future is now.  A couple weeks ago I opened up Acoustic Africa again and have been listening to it almost non-stop ever since.  It required an adjustment to my expectations.  This is not crossover music, this is not Western music on African instruments.

This is pure Africa.

The biggest change I suppose is in the sense of time.  Like Indonesian music, native African music has an unhurried, undirected pace.  There are long (8-20 minute) acoustic guitar pieces or kalimba pieces or African marimba pieces or kora pieces that explore different textures without really venturing into tunes or songs.  It's almost like listening to the wind or the rain.  Interspersed with these are more conventional songs, some with vocals some without, all in that peculiarly African rhythm of emphasis on the 1 and 3 (offbeats) rather than 2 & 4 as in Western music.  It's an entirely different tradition, an entirely different feel.  Once you're immersed in it, the landscape is very beautiful and very peaceful.  I have heard HUNDREDS of artists I've never heard of, and loved them all.

21st Century technology.  Wow.

Sometimes though, Pandora whiffs completely.

I pulled out a CD by Don Harriss this morning (as I was filing away George Harrison) and enjoyed it all over again.  Hadn't played it in years.  Harris's isn't well known, and has only 4 or 5 solo albums to his credit.  He was the staff keyboardist for the Pat Travers Band for years.

So I asked Pandora to create a Don Harriss station.  

Their recommendations for other artists to play on this station?

• The Carpenters (in what universe?)
  
• Enya (maybe but ick)
  
• Burt Bacharach (iwu)
  
• David Arkenstone
  
• Anouar Brahem (not really)
  
• Marvin Gaye (iwu)
  
• Stevie Wonder (iwu)
  
• Loreena McKennitt (mbi)
  
• Eric Friedlander
  
• The Beatles (iwu)
  
• Jimmy Buffett (iwu)
  
• Creedence Clearwater (iwu)
  

I think I must have befuddled their paradigms.

So as mentioned Pandora has certain pre-existing stations, like classical and folk and the one I've been listening to for six days, cool jazz. Incredibly well programmed. In that entire time I've had to reject only one track, Bob James, as inappropriate to the timeframe.

But that got me to thinking.

As a "shared station" I imagine the playlist is played to anybody tuned into it.  Do you suppose my rejection of Bob James affects EVERYONE listening to it?

Pandora does not "simulcast" by which I mean the stream I'm listening to is mine alone.  When I skip a track, nobody else hears my skip. It's not a radio station.  It's a 1:1 service. 

Which is hugely resource-intensive if you think about it.  Some server somewhere is keeping track of what I listen to, and feeding me new songs from my playlist or songs that their paradigm deems compatible with my playlist.  Me, myself alone.  Along with all 55.9 million other listeners.

And keeping track of every custom playlist I've created (see above), every track that's in it and what I've heard recently on the station.  Going back to forever.

The mind boggles.

It's one of those proposals that a logical person would declare unworkable on the face it it.

Huh that's weird.  I'm playing a Pandora station of '70s electric jazz, and the last track was John Klemmer's "Touch."

Dubbed from vinyl.  Surface noise evident.

Klemmer's "Touch" HAS been released on CD (I have it) and I cannot recall another Pandora track obviously dubbed from vinyl unless you go all the back to some of the 78s I've played on my "Jazz of the 1920s" station or "Blues Roots" station.

Weird.

I know the kids these days worship vinyl as some sort of retro magical substance, but hopefully ticks and pops are not part of that?