Weaving

As I embark on this phase of my research, I must begin to look toward what I want my final product to be. I have to know this in order to know how I will begin to weave my information. I have considered three options for my final product:

1. A list of my favorite ten songs I discovered through my research. I like this option because it gets right to the heart of what this project was all about - music! Ideally I would create a CD, but for the purpose of this assignment, it would simply be a list of links to the songs.
2. A list with biographical information about my favorite ten artists I discovered during my research. This final product could be a little denser, including artist information, a sample song and a list of CD's they have produced.
3. A list of online resources that would assist consumers in finding new music and artists in a timely fashion. This is the most straightforward of my choices and would most directly answer my research question.

Upon reviewing my choices, I think I will combine options 1 and 2. I will make a list of my top ten favorite songs with brief information about the artist and where their CD can be published (if they have recorded one). Although option 3 is a more direct way of answering my research question, I think combining options 1 and 2 will be the best way to synthesize the information I have gathered. I also think it will be a more exciting product as opposed to simply an annotated list of links. Okay, so let's begin weaving the information I have gathered into this final project...

First, I need to organize which resources I will utilize in compiling my final project. Glancing back at my wiggling post, I think the following resources will be the most effective:

• iTUnes
• MySpace
• VH1
• Better Propaganda
• Salon

Since I want my final project to be a list of ten songs and I have five resources, I think I will try to find two songs from each resource. Below is a brief explanation of how I used these tools to weave together my information:

iTunes - I clicked on the Music Store, then browse, selected Folk as my genre and new acoustic as my sub genre. Then, I began clicking and listening! I discovered two negatives to this resource that I had not considered before - first, there is no blurb about the type of music the artist plays. The only information given is the sub-genre they are listed under which is often times very subjective. Secondly, iTunes only allows its users to listen to 30 seconds of a song before they purchase it. Sometimes, this is not enought time to judge whether you like an artist or not. However, after much browsing and listening, my favorite two songs I found from this resource were: "Something Less Than Something More" by Caitlin Cary and "Red Moon" by David Gray. Although David Gray is not a new artist to me, I had never heard this particular song or this particular album. Since no biographical information is provided on the iTunes site, I will need to do some separate research for this information.

MySpace - Through their search engine I selected the 'sounds like' option and entered the key term Jack Johnson. 2Me was a group I had discovered on a previous visit to this site and I REALLY like them. I think they have a great sound. So I chose their song "Get Some." The other song I selected was "Sepia Toned" by a group called 3am Drift. The lead singer has a touchingly emotional voice - love the song. As I said earlier, this is the site where I found the most music I liked and the most raw music - not overly produced (some not produced at all) and just genuinely original music.

VH1 - On their You Oughta Know section I selected KT Tunstall's "Suddenly I See." She has a great voice and sounds great with just her and her guitar. I also chose James Blunt's "High." I had heard his song "Beautiful" before but was not aware of his name and had never heard any of his other music. He has a nice British sound to his music...very relaxing and soft.

Better Propaganda - On this site I used their search tool and typed in the keyword 'acoustic.' From this site I chose Tommy Guerrero's "Getting It Together" and Joel Plaskett's "Written All Over Me." In my original wiggling post, I commented that this site was difficult to navigate. I found this to still be true and would say it is the least effective of the five resources I chose to use.

Salon - After visiting Better Propaganda, I appreciated the simplicity of this site. I chose the current days pick from my last visit to the site which was Slow Runner's "Break Your Mama's Back" and the pick from February 16, Belle and Sebastian's "Funny Little Frog."

As Annette suggests in her weaving section, I decided to compare my resources. VH1 was by far my favorite because it was the most concise and had the most information. There were seven artists listed with enough information given on the initial page to decide if it was worth further pursuit. MySpace had the most music that I liked and they had a decent search engine. I enjoyed being able to search by other music that I enjoyed. I mentioned in an earlier post wanting to find a resource that would help me find artist x, if I also liked artists y and z. This resource came the closest to fitting that bill. iTunes largest drawback was the limited amount of time consumers are allowed to listen to a song. I enjoyed the speed and organization of this resource, but feel that it is very limited by its lack of detailed information and lenght of songs. Salon and Better Propaganda are both somewhat cumbersome tools, but in different ways. Better Propaganda is just poorly organized for the purposes of this project. However, if a consumer knows that they like either hip-hop, rock or electronic, then it is fairly easy to browse new music. Unfortunately, acoustic folk does not fall neatly into one of those categories, so I had some difficulty readily finding artists that I like. As I said earlier, Salon is a great resource to use daily. It is quick and succinct. One song each day with a short paragraph talking about the artist. However browsing the archives is a little tedious. You must be a registered member of the site to read previous articles and I found that the songs took some time to download. It was also a blind gamble selecting songs since I chose not to register for the site and was therefore unable to view the articles.

During this process I was able to pull out the individual strands needed to begin weaving this project together. I am eager to begin the Wrapping phase...