Austin Shadduck

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been trying out the free version of Spotify, a downloadable application that allows you to search, stream, create playlists, and share music from a library of over 15 million tracks. You can also import your local audio files, although you can only share this music with others if it’s in the Spotify library. You can browse recent releases, popular tracks and albums, some artist bios and album reviews, related artists, and Artist Radio, a stream of music related to a specific artist. The caveat: banner ads and audio ads in between every three or so streamed songs (local music is not streamed). This isn’t such a bad tradeoff for a feature-packed piece of software that looks at first glance like an iTunes replacement and acts like a more “legitimate” Grooveshark, but the program isn’t without its problems.

Seriously, the interface is almost exactly like iTunes’, although there are no track numbers in playlists (which is annoying even if albums are typically arranged in track order), there is, to my delight, currently no MP3 store (the store simply bloats the app; if I want to buy music I’ll go to Amazon.com, thank you), and the search features are poorly implemented. There are two search bars: one searches through the Spotify library and the other “filter” bar searches your personal library. I feel like the two could be combined, but I’m over that. What I’m not over is that searching specifically by artist, album, year, or genre is not intuitive. Yes you can throw what you want into the search bar, but that will bring up a ton of results, many of which you probably won’t want to scroll through if you use a common search term. In order to search specifically for an artist and exclude titles that contain the same search term(s), you have to type something like artist:Madonna, or artist:”Michael Jackson” (with the quotes if there is a space). The syntax is similar for other searches, but you’d never know the syntax unless you browsed the Spotify website. This could be frustrating for your everyday, not-so-computer-savvy user.

Spotify Social is also frustrating. In order to add a friend to your buddy list and share music or playlists more directly, you have to type spotify:user:username. Why do you need spotify in front? Once on the friend’s Profile page you get the option to add. You have a Profile page, but the image is pulled from Facebook (if you allow for it, otherwise you can’t have a picture) and you can’t add any additional information. This is not ideal if you don’t want any third parties accessing your Facebook information. And the social features are not that great, except to keep track of the music of some Facebook friends (assuming they have Spotify and connect it to the social network) or to share to your Facebook wall, which you could simply do with a Spotify URI anyway. To find playlists beyond those that your friends create or subscribe to, you need to use third party websites. You would think that the company would design a way to search playlists independent of (but linked to) users within the program.

Now for the Grooveshark comparison… Unlike Grooveshark, Spotify has no user uploaded content. This means that the streaming audio files are all played at the same bit rate. Great! Except files are ultra-compressed in the free version. Crap! Also in Spotify, files are consistently labeled and you can even update your local files to match the Gracenote database. While it doesn’t have a web app like Grooveshark (unless you count a Firefox add-on or two), Spotify has a more streamlined interface. Besides, I prefer desktop apps over web ones when it comes to music. (Bear in mind that I don’t have a smartphone and don’t care as much as others how music apps work in browsers or on phones.)

In Europe, where an in-app MP3 store has been released, Spotify is iTunes on crack. However, free users are limited to five plays per streamed track and cannot exceed 10-20 hours of play time per month. There are currently no explicit play limits in the U.S., but that is bound to change, and when it does is it going to be worth it to shell out at least $5 a month for access to streaming music when you can use something like Grooveshark for free? I think not, unless Spotify can put competing services out of business through music licensing deals.

P.S. – Thank you, Spotify, for introducing me to Basement Jaxx Vs. Metropole Orkest. For that I can overlook your missing Beatles catalog, but your lack of “Rasputin” by Boney M. is unforgivable.

And in case you have Spotify too and want to check out my playlists, here’s my link: http://open.spotify.com/user/blackorpheus16.

Last semester I was supposed to have an orchestral reading, along with four other students, as part of a class taught by Bright Sheng. The readings turned into a bureaucratic nightmare and to make a long story short, I got the short end of the stick and had my reading pushed back to the spring semester. The reading was finally held yesterday, but it was extremely disappointing because clarinet 2, bassoon 2, and piano were all missing from the rehearsal! In contrast, every performer was around for the Bright Sheng readings (I’m pretty sure there would have been hell to pay if it was any other way). Additionally the Bright Sheng readings were recorded using the fantastic audio equipment in the rehearsal hall while my reading was scheduled last minute and not recorded in that way. Luckily  I brought a decent recorder with me so I have some documentation of the performance. Here is a very rough and instrumentally incomplete edition of a piece currently known as In Search of Melody:

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On top of the orchestra performance, I just had a piece for Pierrot ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano) plus percussion premiered on Tuesday by Lunatics at Large. The concert was an incredible multimedia experience that featured paintings, video, and dancers, and my piece involved narrative phrases that were projected onto a screen. I don’t have the video or a high-quality recording of the performance yet, but below you can find my personal recording for the piece called This Mortal Coil.

Program Notes

In October of 2010 I attended a concert of shakuhachi music at Pennsylvania State University. Prior to the concert I met with the performers, Michael Chikuzen Gould plus Chieko and Kodi Iwazaki, for an unexpected shakuhachi lesson. After the lesson, Mrs. Iwazaki graciously presented me with a gift – a small jar in the shape of a bell – and related the following Japanese folk tale:

One day, a woman met a traveling priest in her village and fell in love with him. She confessed her love, and though the priest found her enticing, he was resolute in overcoming his passions. The priest prepared to leave the village and the woman pleaded with him to remain; he appeased her by promising to return for her. As time passed, the woman realized the priest never planned to keep his promise. Fueled by rage, she pursued him. Eventually the two met at a river crossing, where the priest convinced a boatman to help him cross the river while giving no assistance to the woman. The woman turned into a serpent and swam across the river herself. When the priest reached the shore he ran into a nearby temple and shouted for help. Fellow priests hid him within a large temple bell. However, the serpent entered the temple, smelled the priest, and attacked the bell. The serpent coiled around the bell and burst into flames, killing the priest and itself in the process.

Traditionally the woman serpent, sometimes called Kiyohime, survives. In one Noh adaptation, Kanemaki (“Enwrapped in a Bell”), the woman kills the priest then achieves enlightenment and vanishes. In its successor, Dojoji, the serpent is driven from the temple and back to the river. These didactic tales, which are based on 11^th or 12^th century Buddhist setsuwa, undermine feminine power and cast women as obstacles to man’s spiritual growth. Dojoji even goes so far as to exclude women from Buddhist salvation. My version of the Kiyohime myth, in which both priest and woman perish in flames, ends with an act of self-immolation that may be interpreted as protest against such gender politics. From here I leave the politics to you and present a musical narrative based on an extremely evocative story of love, lust, treachery, and revenge. The title of the composition comes from Hamlet’s famous suicidal soliloquy.

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The end of the semester was wild, as usual, but I didn’t let that stop me from having some fun. Before winter break I went to Smalls to hear The Tim Ries Group featuring Chris Potter and John Patitucci. Beastly! All of the performers were incredible, but Potter and Patitucci stole the show, Potter with his flowing solos and Patitucci with his intense energy (I’ve never had so much fun watching a bassist, aside from when I saw Victor Wooten in concert).

Another Christmas has come and gone with many entertaining “and now you know” moments. For example, I now know that the cousin who travels cross-country via moped will also down a live frog in one gulp or taser his own testicles for the right price. I also know that libations bring out the best in some of my family members and lead to this:

Alcohol + Strap-on Bucket + Ping Pong Ball = Faceplant