Most of my free time lately that would otherwise go to blogging has been committed to converting a mass of my music to CD.
As mentioned previously, I eliminated about 100 songs (because they were collaborations, fragments, "early experiments," or just weren't wearing well), which left me with about 125.
I have been learning to use the "Audio Montage" feature of Steinberg's Wavelab to make discs where the volume levels are more or less uniform and the tracks have some sort of flow. These are not mixes or montages, though; one track just follows another. After doing a "greatest hits" volume I threw in the towel on trying to pick "the best" and started grouping them alphabetically.
Here's what I have so far:
CD1. 19 tracks, random alphabetical.
CD2. 21 tracks, A-C
CD3. 20 tracks, C-H
CD4. 20 tracks, H-R (in progress)
CD5. 19 tracks, S-Y
CD6. 13 tracks, Electribe (the ones I did mostly on a "groovebox" last year fit together better as a group)
CD7. 12-15 tracks, Sidstation (in progress)
CD8. ____tracks, "classical" and miscellaneous experiments (projected)
I've been listening to a CD of Dutch electronic music from the Philips laboratories from 1958-1963, and reading about all the restorative efforts with regard to the analog tapes in the company vaults. Every scrap of tape is lovingly fussed over, and one CD of the four CD set consists of alternate takes and audio "raw material."
Back then electronic music wasn't even polyphonic--you had to run several tape recorders simultaneously and record that to get a master tape. Everything that took an eternity and was precious then can be done easily and quickly on a laptop now. So what happens to the resulting mega-hours of music of the tens of thousands of home computer musicians? Instead of a few scraps lovingly fetishized, you wind up with a mass of organized sound that's actually a burden for your friends to listen to once. Nevertheless, my vague plan is to send CDs around to a few folks who were foolish enough to say they liked my tunes, to be listened to if and when they have the time. These sets are mainly for me. I wish I could say they were helping me to be self-critical but with 125 tunes obviously I like everything I do. A lot.