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Messing around in iTunes
I may yet get to that "start the year on the right foot housecleaning" thing, but in the meantime I've been playing in iTunes putting together some new exercise playlists. Just because other people might find this amusing (or even useful), here's a description of the sort of parameters I'm working with.
The core element of my workout is about 35 minutes on the elliptical (in theory, 30 minutes up-to-speed and 5 minutes cool-down, but this is a loose guideline). In order to hit my target of not less than 500 cal burned (at resistance level 11, although this gets adjusted sometimes for the music tempo) I pretty much have to average a tempo of 150 bpm. For the effect I want, there's not much point in going below 120 bpm, and for pragmatic reasons I can't sustain anything above 200 bpm -- and a more practical limit for anything more than isolated songs is 190 bpm. I do have a certain leeway in how I count the beats (e.g., single- or double-time) to make them fit better in my target, and in a pinch I can always exercise with complex counter-rhythms (e.g., 5 against 6) but I try not to set the playlists up with this in mind since I don't have a way of annotating my intentions. Within this target, I tend to do cycles of ramping up the tempo then dropping back, usually with 4 of these cycles (not counting the cool-down phase). In general, these cycles correspond to direction-changes on the machine. I also have a few sets at march tempo for working on the treadmill, but those don't get as much play.
(Note that I'll also do my elliptical workout with podcasts and audiobooks, but it's harder to push the tempo that way, so those tend to get saved for the weight training part or for bicycling.)
The practical constraints already narrow down the field a lot because, as one might expect, a given band or composer will tend to have a relatively consistent style. A good example of this is the Beatles. I currently have 54 songs from two compilations covering the 1962-1970 period. Of these, given the way in which I calculate tempo:
13 fall under my target range (at ca. 110-135 bpm)
10 are low-target (135-150 bpm)
10 are in my sweet spot (155-175 bpm)
8 are in the "pushing it" range (180-190 bpm)
6 are above my target (200-220 bpm)
and they clump like that with tempo gaps between the groups. I could put together several non-overlapping Beatles exercise sets easily.
Now an example of a band I love listening to that simply doesn't work well within my constraints is the Eagles. Out of the 17 songs on the "Very Best of the Eagles" album, 11 fall in that awkward range that's just too slow to use (<120 bpm -- and not slow enough that I could work them double-time), 2 are at the very bottom of my useable range, and the remaining 4 are on the low side of my target range (135-150 bpm). I can use the last four but I can't possible put together an Eagles-only set.
Similary, I'd love to put together a Queen set, but there's simply too much internal tempo-shifting. What makes the music work for exercise is if I can lock the tempo into my brain and not have to adjust it or ignore it except during song transitions.
The first necessary tool is a Mac Dashboard widget called "BPM" (by flyingcheeseburger.com) that interacts with iTunes to calculate the ... you guessed it, bpm for each tune. Start the tune playing in iTunes, switch to the widget, then press the spacebar in time to the music. It does a rolling calculation of the average bpm and when it stabilizes (assuming a steady tempo for the piece) you click on the "write to iTunes" button and it inserts the calculated tempo into the appropriate iTunes field. Of course, I haven't calculated tempos for every piece of music I own -- for one thing there's no point in trying to calculate it for anything that changes tempo regularly across the piece. I only have the tempos listed for about a fifth of my library at the moment, and some of those are far enough outside my target tempos that they aren't useful. But still, that's 1.3 days worth of music to work with.
For convenience, I've also set up reference play-lists for 10 bpm tempo ranges (i.e., 100-109 bpm, 110-119 bpm, etc.), which helps in brainstorming when I want something with a particular tempo and also gives me a working folder with all the pieces for which I have tempo data. In combination with the search-filtering function, this lets me pull in sets of songs that fit particular criteria, e.g., classical only, works by particular bands or composers, or even songs with particular themes in the titles. (I have one set entitled "Night & Day" where all the tunes reference a time of day.) But mostly I go for band/performer-specific sets, simply because it creates more thematic difference between them.
So where does all this get me? Currently I have 25 workout sets (including the 7 I just set up today and haven't used yet):
11 single-group/performer sets (Beatles, ABBA, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Carpenters, Beach Boys, Elton John, Tijuana Brass, America, Beethoven (2 sets))
3 are "thematic" (Weather, Day & Night, Classical Abductions and Chases)
3 are genre-based (modern marches, classical marches, operatic vocals)
4 were specifically selected to use longer selections (no individual song under 5 minutes)
and the remainder are harder to define but tend to be sets of particular favorites. For example, I have one labeled "pensive" (maybe "melancholy" would be more accurate but it's an up-tempo melancholy) with the following:
* Moody Blues: I Know You're Out There Somewhere (140 bpm)
* Simon & Garfunkel: Hazy Shade of Winter (148 bpm)
* America: Lonely People (157 bpm)
* Simon & Garfunkel: Bridge Over Troubled Water (166 bpm)
* Caswell Carnahan: Borderlands (173 bpm)
* Gordon Lightfoot: Wreck of the Edmund FItzgerald (181 bpm)
* Janis Ian: Stars (157 bpm)
To avoid cluttering up the iPhone (and to avoid over-using my favorites), I tend to rotate them in and out, with about half a dozen available at any given time.
Well, enough with the analytic geeking. I really should get something productive done today.
The core element of my workout is about 35 minutes on the elliptical (in theory, 30 minutes up-to-speed and 5 minutes cool-down, but this is a loose guideline). In order to hit my target of not less than 500 cal burned (at resistance level 11, although this gets adjusted sometimes for the music tempo) I pretty much have to average a tempo of 150 bpm. For the effect I want, there's not much point in going below 120 bpm, and for pragmatic reasons I can't sustain anything above 200 bpm -- and a more practical limit for anything more than isolated songs is 190 bpm. I do have a certain leeway in how I count the beats (e.g., single- or double-time) to make them fit better in my target, and in a pinch I can always exercise with complex counter-rhythms (e.g., 5 against 6) but I try not to set the playlists up with this in mind since I don't have a way of annotating my intentions. Within this target, I tend to do cycles of ramping up the tempo then dropping back, usually with 4 of these cycles (not counting the cool-down phase). In general, these cycles correspond to direction-changes on the machine. I also have a few sets at march tempo for working on the treadmill, but those don't get as much play.
(Note that I'll also do my elliptical workout with podcasts and audiobooks, but it's harder to push the tempo that way, so those tend to get saved for the weight training part or for bicycling.)
The practical constraints already narrow down the field a lot because, as one might expect, a given band or composer will tend to have a relatively consistent style. A good example of this is the Beatles. I currently have 54 songs from two compilations covering the 1962-1970 period. Of these, given the way in which I calculate tempo:
13 fall under my target range (at ca. 110-135 bpm)
10 are low-target (135-150 bpm)
10 are in my sweet spot (155-175 bpm)
8 are in the "pushing it" range (180-190 bpm)
6 are above my target (200-220 bpm)
and they clump like that with tempo gaps between the groups. I could put together several non-overlapping Beatles exercise sets easily.
Now an example of a band I love listening to that simply doesn't work well within my constraints is the Eagles. Out of the 17 songs on the "Very Best of the Eagles" album, 11 fall in that awkward range that's just too slow to use (<120 bpm -- and not slow enough that I could work them double-time), 2 are at the very bottom of my useable range, and the remaining 4 are on the low side of my target range (135-150 bpm). I can use the last four but I can't possible put together an Eagles-only set.
Similary, I'd love to put together a Queen set, but there's simply too much internal tempo-shifting. What makes the music work for exercise is if I can lock the tempo into my brain and not have to adjust it or ignore it except during song transitions.
The first necessary tool is a Mac Dashboard widget called "BPM" (by flyingcheeseburger.com) that interacts with iTunes to calculate the ... you guessed it, bpm for each tune. Start the tune playing in iTunes, switch to the widget, then press the spacebar in time to the music. It does a rolling calculation of the average bpm and when it stabilizes (assuming a steady tempo for the piece) you click on the "write to iTunes" button and it inserts the calculated tempo into the appropriate iTunes field. Of course, I haven't calculated tempos for every piece of music I own -- for one thing there's no point in trying to calculate it for anything that changes tempo regularly across the piece. I only have the tempos listed for about a fifth of my library at the moment, and some of those are far enough outside my target tempos that they aren't useful. But still, that's 1.3 days worth of music to work with.
For convenience, I've also set up reference play-lists for 10 bpm tempo ranges (i.e., 100-109 bpm, 110-119 bpm, etc.), which helps in brainstorming when I want something with a particular tempo and also gives me a working folder with all the pieces for which I have tempo data. In combination with the search-filtering function, this lets me pull in sets of songs that fit particular criteria, e.g., classical only, works by particular bands or composers, or even songs with particular themes in the titles. (I have one set entitled "Night & Day" where all the tunes reference a time of day.) But mostly I go for band/performer-specific sets, simply because it creates more thematic difference between them.
So where does all this get me? Currently I have 25 workout sets (including the 7 I just set up today and haven't used yet):
11 single-group/performer sets (Beatles, ABBA, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Carpenters, Beach Boys, Elton John, Tijuana Brass, America, Beethoven (2 sets))
3 are "thematic" (Weather, Day & Night, Classical Abductions and Chases)
3 are genre-based (modern marches, classical marches, operatic vocals)
4 were specifically selected to use longer selections (no individual song under 5 minutes)
and the remainder are harder to define but tend to be sets of particular favorites. For example, I have one labeled "pensive" (maybe "melancholy" would be more accurate but it's an up-tempo melancholy) with the following:
* Moody Blues: I Know You're Out There Somewhere (140 bpm)
* Simon & Garfunkel: Hazy Shade of Winter (148 bpm)
* America: Lonely People (157 bpm)
* Simon & Garfunkel: Bridge Over Troubled Water (166 bpm)
* Caswell Carnahan: Borderlands (173 bpm)
* Gordon Lightfoot: Wreck of the Edmund FItzgerald (181 bpm)
* Janis Ian: Stars (157 bpm)
To avoid cluttering up the iPhone (and to avoid over-using my favorites), I tend to rotate them in and out, with about half a dozen available at any given time.
Well, enough with the analytic geeking. I really should get something productive done today.
no subject
no subject
drat.