Just got a HUGE break in to classic rock and blues

2011-07-12T23:40:00.000-07:00

Purple Haze - Hendrix just started playing, lets see where this leads.

Update:
And it lead in to The Beatles, neat.

Branching out some more.

2011-07-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

Backdoor Slam just started playing, badass.

Update:
Buffalo Springfield - For what it's worth, hopefully this will help push the station in to more classic folk type songs.

Update 2:

This song was followed by Bill Withers - Ain't No Sunshine, the plan is coming together perfectly.

Starting an epic journey of sound.

2011-07-12T23:14:00.000-07:00

It was on a slow Friday at work, I already knew which seat to take and I didn't feel like getting down, so I was bored. I had Pandora playing and it was picking some odd songs for the station I had playing at the time. That was when it hit me, I needed to see just how far could I take a Pandora station from its original genre.

I decided I would have to pick two genres way far apart. I ended up choosing the Electronica station to start out, with the end goal of turning it in to a country station. Getting away from it being an all Electronica station actually happened a lot faster than I was expecting. The third or fourth song it played was Gorillaz, which was awesome, it gave me my out to get away from electronic music. That quickly progressed in an hour or so to a modern alternative rock type station, playing things like Franz Ferdinand, Cake, and Weezer.

This was the point I started putting together a strategy. What bands were there that were similar to what was playing, but could branch me out in to other genres? The only band I could come up with was The Black Keys. I have another station on Pandora that I started with The Black Keys. So I was familiar with the types of music that would branch off in to, most important of which was blues. This was about the time I figured out how to bypass the song skipping limit on Pandora with a simple page refresh.

Around this time the station had evolved in to a strange mix of alternative, punk, late 90's rock, and the occasional techno song. Which is another thing that's been kind of funny through all of this. Every once in a while Pandora will throw in a couple of techno songs as if to make sure I really want to do what I'm doing.

It took about 3 days, after thumbing up about 2 or 3 dozen songs/artists that were "similar" to The Black Keys, that it finally played them. I was stoked, it felt like the station was going to be stuck at the alternative, punk, late 90's rock strangeness and I was getting ready to give up.

Thumbing up that single Black Keys song completely transformed the station. It started playing a wide variety of blues/rock grunge type stuff, this was great! Slowly but surely I have been upping and downing songs trying to lean it more towards blues and classic rock. Then I will hopefully end up at early American folk music which I am confident I can then get to country from.

Currently as I type this the station is playing Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones, earlier it played The Band, Van Morrison, and Led Zeppelin. It seems it will be starting to head down the path of classic rock, perfect.

Evolution of Music

Just got a HUGE break in to classic rock and blues

Branching out some more.

Starting an epic journey of sound.