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"cycling" through your music collection


LJazz

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As the topic suggests, do you have some process to make sure you go through your collection completely every so often or do you just listen to what ever you happen to feel like at the moment -- perhaps never having listened to some of the music you purchased at all :ph34r: ?

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I've considered doing it alphabetically, but every time I start, I usually get distracted before I'm done with 'A'. Got to Louis Armstrong once, but that sent me off on a Jelly Roll Morton kick for awhile, and then I skipped back to early some early Ellington.

It just occurred to me that I should consider organizing the music chronologically -- that might give me a fighting chance! :blink::)

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I've considered doing it alphabetically, but every time I start, I usually get distracted before I'm done with 'A'. Got to Louis Armstrong once, but that sent me off on a Jelly Roll Morton kick for awhile, and then I skipped back to early some early Ellington.

It just occurred to me that I should consider organizing the music chronologically -- that might give me a fighting chance! :blink::)

I did that once. A to Z. Collection was about 700 titles at the time, and it took about three months. It was part of a buying hiatus several years back.

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I always listen to new acquisitions 2 or 3 times before filing them on the shelf.

I try to do that myself, but lately I find my purchases have been more box sets and buying several titles at once during a sale and things don't always get the attention I would like. Maybe time to take a buying break ...

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I tend to go through intense phases of listening to an artist or an era, or a specific thread of commonality. I do sometimes browse through from start to finish to pick out some items that I haven't listened to in a while and sometimes that can spur one of those aforementioned phases.

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I've been on a buying break since the end of February. This is the first successful buying break I've ever taken, actually. I've been seriously buying music since 1992 or '93, and I've bought at least one CD a week (if not more) in the fifteen years or so that have elapsed (barring serious povery, but even then I always managed to find the money to buy *something*. At the very least I would do some trading). I've tried to break the cycle many times over the years, and I've always broken down before a week or two elapsed. This time, I picked a date (April 8th, the release date of the new Gnarls Barkley album) and actually wrote up a pledge, which I signed with my wife as a witness. Breaking a promise to myself is easy, but breaking a promise to my wife is something else entirely. I wish I'd thought of this years ago!

So, because I haven't bought a new CD in almost a month, I've been enjoying the opportunity to really delve into my 3,000+ CD collection. There's been no system. I just grab CDs as the spirit moves me. It's a great time to go back and relisten to box sets. I've been working my way through the three Elvis boxes (The King of Rock n' Roll, From Nashville to Memphis, and Walk A Mile in My Shoes, as well as the soundtrack and gospel two disc sets). I just finished listening to the fourth disc from the '60s set. I haven't been listening to them one after the other...I've been spacing it out between other discs (I started listening to the first disc of the 50s set back in January). I've also been working my way though all of the Steely Dan albums (just finished listening to "Aja." "Goucho" is on deck) and the Trojan Rocksteady box (finishing up disc three right now). In between those projects I've been listening to Chet Baker, a lot of 1920s and '30s country and blues collections, and Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick." It really has been a wonderful few weeks...

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Nothing terribly systematic, but I have one set of open shelves that hold about 500 CDs and I have put my faves there (BN and Prestige mostly with some Coltrane on Impulse). So I am trying to alternate one or two of the CDs from the "back shelves" with the open shelf stuff to get some variety. I also generally pull out the favorite CDs to play softly and help my son fall asleep (he's 3 but it's never too early to start).

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My only rule is that I give every new purchase a bit of attention before I file it away. This is a minimum of one listen.

My collection has reached the point where I don't even think about re-listening to everything in a systematic way. I look at it as a luxury of a vast reference library. I have a huge choice in what I want to hear, can create interesting comparisons and contrasts, can trace entire careers of musicans I like.

There are too many discs in my collection that have only been heard once. Usually, that is because they didn't make a big impression the first time around. But not always. I sometimes forget about something good. Therefore, every now and again, I glace through my library in search of "forgotten gems."

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No system.

Something will randomly hit my brain or I'll read something in a book (Alyn Shipton's jazz history is steering me at present), magazine or on a forum like this and off I go. Something familiar in a TV programme can set me off.

The weather/seasons have a major influence. Folk music/English classical will get a big push in the next couple of months as the world returns to life.

I also have thematic binges ('Britain's binge-listening culture denounced by archbishop!') - either individual artists (Ellington most recently) or particular eras.

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My method is really not complicated-whatever moves me at the moment, especially a new purchase. For recycling, I pull at random until I hit something I haven't heard for at least a year or something mentioned on the BBF or Organissimo that falls in the same category. This week I'll be focussed on the BMG boxsets I picked up earlier this month-Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and the classical box sets-Bruckner & Mozart Symphonies, Schubert piano music, Jacqueline Du Pre; in other words, I'll get to the end of Spring break without having exhausted all of the "new" material. So maybe it's time to take a break from buying? I'll let you know how that works out...

Peace,

Blue Trane

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