Friday, July 17, 2015

Series Listing: Music Mixes


This a list of posts in my series about my music mixes.  You should probably start with the introduction.  The mixes themselves are listed in a spectrum order from most upbeat to most downbeat, although of course these are generalizations and indidivual tracks may buck the trend.  As explained in the introduction, each mix is divided into several volumes, and each post covers one volume.  So the volume subtitles are the links.  Where a mix has no volumes listed, that means I haven’t gotten around to doing a post on it yet, so the inclusion of it here is just a teaser.  I’m cruel like that.

Here are some phrases I use in these posts, their definitions, and links to the posts where I talk more about them (if any):


mix: A collection of songs, arranged in a particular order, that share a common theme.  Can be infinitely long.  Has a name which I invented.

volume: A subdivision of a mix, usually 60 to 80 minutes long.  Has a title, generally drawn from one track in the volume.

mix starter: The song that inspired a particular mix.

transition: The flow from the end of one song to the beginning of the next.  Very important to a mix’s integrity.  The reason why you must never touch the “Shuffle” button on your player.

bridge: A short song, almost always under two minutes, interposed between two other songs that don’t have a very good transition.

hardening: The process by which the transitions of a mix, while perhaps not perfect at first, grow ingrained over time through repeated listening, until I can’t imagine breaking them.  Contrasted with transitions that are perfect out of the gate.

No Reuse Rule: The rule that says that any given song can only ever appear on one mix.  Well, not a rule so much as a guideline, really.  There are, naturally, exceptions:
  • If I make mixes for other people, they are not subject to the No Reuse Rule.  For instance, my Mother’s Day mix may very well contain songs on one of the mixes here; likewise for any of the mixes I made for my eldest child when they were younger.
  • Also, if I were to make two different mixes for The Mother or any of my kids, I might be willing to use the same track as a previous mix for that person.  Which is subtly different from the above exception (and probably worse, so then again I might not).
  • Every once in a while I just screw up and accidentally break the No Reuse Rule.  Generally I try to rerrange things in order to fix the mistake once I find it.  Sometimes this can be difficult if the song has “hardened” (see above) in both mixes.
  • Certain mixes are just different, and they’re not considered part of the main series, so they’re allowed to use the same track as one of the main mixes (but not to repeat a track on that mix, no matter how many volumes it goes).  The prime example of this is the 80s My Way mix.  I also have 3 “mood” mixes (which is a dumb name for them, as all of my mixes are really mood mixes) called Dreamtime, Darktime, and Pasttime which used to fall under this exception.  Lately, however, I’ve been re-examining that decision, and starting to move some things around so that those mixes will also follow the No Reuse Rule.  I also have a “gaming” mix which originally I didn’t consider part of the main mix series, but it has also since come into line.
  • “Bonin’ in the Boneyard” by Fishbone is exempt from the No Reuse Rule.  It can be on as many mixes as it wants.  It’s just that good.

modern mix: A mix that was developed as a digital playlist.

pre-modern mix: A mix that was developed as a mix tape.  Any pre-modern mix in this series is actually a recreation of the original.

proto-mix: A collection of songs that was sort of randomly jumbled together on a mix tape; proto-mixes were what preceded pre-modern mixes.  There are no proto-mixes in this list because they were all crap.

transitional mix: The mixes that came between the pre-modern mixes and the modern mixes.  They were developed as digital playlists, but not with the full rigor of modern mixes.  There are 3 of these in total, and at least 2 of them are being updated to follow the moden mix guidelines.

moderately obscure band: An artist with an entry on AllMusic but no bio, and either no page or a stub page on Wikipedia.

really obscure band: An artist that can’t be found on either AllMusic or Wikipedia.

cover image: A faux CD cover generated for a mix volume out of my fevered imagination using the Gimp.  Only a few volumes have this.



In addition to the mixes themselves, I also have a few personal stories of music discovery that I’ve written:


The mixes are arranged from most upbeat to most downbeat.  I’ve tried to provide a super-short summation of what each mix conveys; these are necessarily oversimplifications and may not capture the full range of emotion the mix provides.  Mixes with no descriptions or volumes listed are still under construction.

Most Upbeat

⇓      Thrashomatic Danger Mix

loud and hardcore, to work out your aggression

⇓      Cumulonimbus Eleven

powerful songs that should be cranked all the way up

⇓      Funkadelic Bonethumper

⇓      Creeping Rageaholic

songs that start out mellow, then break into aggression

⇓      Totally Different Head

punk meets new wave

⇓      FasterHarderDarker

⇓      Distaff Attitude

female vocals with attitude

⇓      HipHop Bottlerocket

party mix

⇓      Tsunwave Tsunami

⇓      Salsatic Vibrato

brassy and upbeat

⇓      Solar Superposition

⇓      Apparently World

upbeat worldmusic

⇓      Snaptone Glimmerbeam

happy-making mostly instrumentals

⇓      Yuletidal Pools

Happy Christmahannukwanzaakah!

⇓      Tripping Flibbertigibbet

⇓      Honeysuckle Bubblegum

⇓      Stumbling Locomotive

⇓      Sirenexiv Cola

female-fronted alterna-pop

⇓      80s My Way

my tribute to 80s music

⇓      Fulminant Cadenza

rock and alternative with an operatic bent

⇓      Cantosphere Eversion

inside-out songs

⇓      Paradoxically Sized World

inspired by LittleBigPlanet

⇓      Midnight Synthesis

⇓      Bleeding Salvador

mid-tempo featuring surreal lyrics

⇓      Penumbral Phosphorescence

mid-to-high-energy goth music

⇓      Eldritch Ætherium

music to inspire gaming creativity

⇓      Candy Apple Shimmer

shimmery, ethereal, but still upbeat, dreampop

⇓      Gramophonic Skullduggery

mischievous songs with an old-timey vibe

⇓      Moonside by Riverlight

jazzy lounge

⇓      Loungeomatic Dangly Mix

⇓      Pasttime

⇓      Slithy Toves

slinky, sinuous tunes ranging from mellow to mildly upbeat

⇓      Primeval Rainlands

⇓      Zephyrous Aquamarine

desert island inspired chill-out

⇓      Smokelit Flashback

druggy trip-hop and dreampop with a noir feel

⇓      Classical Plasma

an orchestral melange of classical, neoclassical, and soundtrack music

⇓      Incanto Liturgica

celebrating chant, both religious and ethnic

⇓      Mars de la Morte

⇓      Irie Vibrations

⇓      Porchwell Firetime

folksy songs which tell a story

⇓      Tumbledown Flatland

western-tinged songs with the feel of a lonesome prairie

⇓      Dreamtime

surreal and psychedelic music that suggests a dreamlike state

⇓      Dreamscape Perturbation

surreal dreampop with a mildly disturbing vibe

⇓      Smooth as Whispercats

alterna-pop with a smooth jazz feel

⇓      Dreamsea Lucidity

lofi and trip-hop with a pschedelic bent

⇓      Mystical Memoriam

pretty instrumentals that suggest magic and memory

⇓      Plutonian Velvet

creepy alternative with unsettling lyrics

⇓      Phantasma Chorale

creepy, childlike music inspired by the soundtrack to Coraline

⇓      Darktime

dark ambient tunes that suggest nyctophobia

⇓      Rose-Coloured Brainpan

downbeat with a nostalgic feel

⇓      Darkling Embrace

love songs with dark overtones

⇓      Shadowfall Equinox

contemplative and autumnal

⇓      Numeric Driftwood

to drift off to sleep by

⇓      Wisty Mysteria

wistful, with a touch of mysterious

⇓      Tenderhearted Nightshade

poignant and contemplative

Most Downbeat


Special Mixes for Other People

Mother’s Day

for The Mother

In the P!nk

the Church of P!nk

Numeric Princess

Disney music for my little princess









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