Homemade jukebox and making my own versions of popular albums
A few years back I bought myself a pc which I dedicated to my cd and digital music collection. It's a Vortebox build running on a fairly old PC with a 1TB SSD hard disk. I've got to the stage now where I'm going to have to upgrade and get a bigger hard disk as I'm having to convert some of the FLAC files to MP3 as I'm rapidly running out of space.
One of the joys of this machine is that it allows me to create my own albums or at least versions of albums that have the tracks I want as opposed to those that come ready packaged from record labels. Blur's Parklife is so much better with 3 of the tracks stripped out! Recent examples of albums that I have "improved" include the greatest hit albums from Noel Gallagher - Back The Way We Came - which inexplicably missed out the singles Dream On and Love Is The Law. Using my own CDs, Photoshop and (a must-have bit of software for editing the tags) MP3tag I was able to create my own version of the album with those missing singles included.
Another example of this self-made LP approach is the Pulp LP Hits that was released in 2002. The band released another single after this so it made sense to me to add "After You" to the end of the compilation. But this got me thinking. Long before Pulp had mass commercial success they had several singles that toyed with the outer-reaches of the charts.
I thought it might be nice to collate these alongside the tracks on the greatest hits album ... and so Hits+ was born. A three album set spanning the three eras of Pulp.
And while this was something fun to do having their full single history in a compilation of my own making it doesn't provide the perfect listening experience, as alongside the tracks I want to hear are a number I can take or leave.
This is what brought me to my latest project, entitled Thirteen. The premise of which is simple. Select thirteen tracks by an artist and create a solid "album" that not only showcases their best work but provides a perfect listening experience.
One of the joys of this machine is that it allows me to create my own albums or at least versions of albums that have the tracks I want as opposed to those that come ready packaged from record labels. Blur's Parklife is so much better with 3 of the tracks stripped out! Recent examples of albums that I have "improved" include the greatest hit albums from Noel Gallagher - Back The Way We Came - which inexplicably missed out the singles Dream On and Love Is The Law. Using my own CDs, Photoshop and (a must-have bit of software for editing the tags) MP3tag I was able to create my own version of the album with those missing singles included.
I thought it might be nice to collate these alongside the tracks on the greatest hits album ... and so Hits+ was born. A three album set spanning the three eras of Pulp.
And while this was something fun to do having their full single history in a compilation of my own making it doesn't provide the perfect listening experience, as alongside the tracks I want to hear are a number I can take or leave.
This is what brought me to my latest project, entitled Thirteen. The premise of which is simple. Select thirteen tracks by an artist and create a solid "album" that not only showcases their best work but provides a perfect listening experience.
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