Music Adjacent
I spent over an hour today making playlists for a bunch of my friends. Each one took me 10-15 minutes to compile, included 9-13 songs and the entire experience was one of the highlights of my day. I really do enjoy my design and product work as a career, but music curation is something that I adore. When you create a playlist for someone else, you’re having a conversation about what you know and like by applying it to what you think the other people know and like. My process involves checking out someone’s Spotify profile to get a sense for their taste as well as which genres they enjoy. From there, I comb through my different playlists and artists to find some songs that they would like. After that, I listen to the beginning and end of each of the songs I’ve added to figure out what the what the transitions between each song sound like to make sure the playlist flows together. At the end, I check to see how the energy of the different songs flows and if the entire playlist has a logical dramatic arc (energetic to lowkey, or an interesting climax). I make tweaks if necessary before sending it off.
Of course, none of these things are grounded in a music theory background or anything concrete. My musical skill is limited to the one semester of Glee Club, the three chords I know on ukulele and the day-to-day moments when I burst into song and get two notes right. My formal education in music was a month of piano lessons and 5 years of viola where I failed to make a single note sound good. Fortunately, my love for music hasn’t been affected by my failures at making it.
For the longest time, my musical taste was like everything else in my life, hand-me-downs from my brother. He gave me a strong foundation of Linkin Park, Vampire Weekend, System of a Down, Daft Punk and Jack Johnson, an eclectic roster that gave me the ability to vibe with any genre of music. In school, whenever we were in the computer labs for school, I’d figure out which streaming sites were blocked, or find a VPN in order to listen to something beyond what was on my iPod that never left my person.
Although I never learned how music works on a technical level, I’m constantly trying to learn what music means. I’m constantly trying to learn where every song comes from, digging into the influences of my favorite artists and their favorite artists. I seek out the stories behind the music, the origins of it all. With this knowledge, I try and create through curation. I may not be able to make a new beautiful piece of music, but I’m confident that I can curate a great playlist.
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Article
“Mountain View” by Stephen Song - it’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 2 years since Stephen published this after agonizing over it for a while, but I recently revisited my good friend’s fantastic piece about the changing nature of his hometown and what it meant to him. I’m glad that although I look back at my own work with disgust at its quality, he (one of my inspirations) manages to create work that has lasting power.
Book
Autobiography of Gucci Mane by Gucci Mane and Neil Martinez - really loved this incredible story of one of the most influential voices in modern hip hop and all popular music at this point. Gucci Mane has had an intense life that is worth hearing.
Playlist
kanye’s samples - part of my self-education. Kanye is one of the great musicians of our era and creates incredible songs by sampling a great variety of music. I’m using this playlist to organize as many of his samples as I can to figure out how his music comes together.
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:~)
Love,
Nikhil