I know what you're thinking!

Was that a crazy show last night (Dec 6, 2014) or what?

I was trying to get a show of the usual kind ready for 8:00, but late on Thursday I knew I just could not make it.  So when I went in to help Curt Musheno, our audio engineer, with getting our first radio play ready for broadcast (which will air, I think a week from tonight, at 8:00 p.m.) I prevailed upon him to make my show run automatically.

I described this process a couple of months ago.  Basically, it goes like this: I create folders at the Station, on their main computer, with hundreds of music tracks from many of the CDs I own.  Then Curt coded the program to play from a new playlist.  This playlist only had that crazy sign-on thing that sounds like a commercial: “If you, or someone you love, is interested in classical music, listen carefully...”  Then, when it runs out of music —which it will in just thirty seconds— it looks in that huge music folder for music to play at random.

The tunes are played totally at random.  A disproportionately large number of Beatles songs aired last night, before Tune-In Radio quit on us.  I think this is because I have  ripped almost all the Beatles CDs, whereas I have ripped just a few of my Beethoven CDs, for instance.  This is not the case with other CDs, unless I bought a CD digitally, in which case of course all I do have is the MP3s.

The program keeps track of the files it plays.  (Can you believe this?)  And if I do this again —which I will, because I'm going to be out of town for several weekends— it will not repeat a track until it has exhausted all the tracks it hasn't played yet.  So you're not going to hear Helter Skelter, which is a lot of work.  (That thing seemed to die several times, and get right back up and keep going!  Hoboy.)

Amazingly, there were some tunes that got played last night that I had never heard before.  One of them was just gorgeous —well, a little trite, so I couldn't stand to listen to it too many times, but still really lush and pretty— and it must have been among my MP3s, but as I said, it was completely new to me.  I have to find out what it is, and I'm hoping that the computer program that runs the station (called Sam) has the playlist somewhere I can see it.  Now that's really amazing.

Now, note: the program for Saturday, December 20th I have planned to make a special Christmas edition.  It will have a few cuts from Messiah, an equal number of cuts from The Christmas Oratorio by Bach, a couple of comedy tracks (Tom Lehrer and Weird Al) and Leroy Anderson, Engelbert Humperdick, and sundry other Christmas-related pieces.

This Blog had 9 visitors this morning, more than ever before.  Some of you had your minds blown by the program, obviously, but I cannot say whether in a good way, or bad.  Please let me know; if you would prefer not to have too much Beatles, I can arrange to remove the Beatles tracks from the database.

Regards,

Archie

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