May We Suggest....

We all have bands we love. In a basic sense, we typically know what it is about a band that draws us into them. Things like speed, timbre, vocal qualities and even looks are fairly normal ways we judge the bands we like (and don't). Some people get into details of which brand of guitar, cymbals or bass strings a band uses, but that gets too cumbersome for the average music listener.

What I have recently grown an affinity for are sites that play music they think you'll like because of a band or genre you entered. Primarily, I use Last.fm as my music recommendation site and player. With a little guess-and-check I'm usually able to enter a band, genre, or tag that brings me the kinds of songs I'm looking for. Typing in "Alice in Chains" brought me a number of their songs along with Jerry Cantrell (AIC's guitarist), Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots. Queens of the Stone Age brought me their songs and others by Kyuss (QOTSA's lead singer's previous band), The Desert Sessions (another of his bands), and Fu Manchu (who sound incredibly like QOTSA). Marcy Playground gave me a large number of mid-90s pop rock bands like Fastball and Barenaked Ladies. I found that choosing the option of "Songs tagged as" produces less accurate results. I tried listening to songs tagged as "Surf" and it kept playing reggae and punk. When I typed in "Bands that sound like the Penetrators (a surf band) my results were all surf songs. As I mentioned, guess-and-check methods do pan out.

Now here's the interesting part. Occasionally Last.fm will grow weary of catering to me and will stop working. Rather than shaking a fist, I hop over to Pandora. This is similar music recommendation engine/player where you can pick several bands you like and it will play you songs similar to them. But, instead of leaving you out of the loop, Pandora will tell you why you like the bands you like. Since they're currently my favorite band, I typed in "Play bands that sound like Queens of the Stone Age." On Last.fm it would accept my challenge and play me things by Kyuss. But on Pandora, it tells you:
"To start things off, we'll play a song that exemplifies the musical style of Queens of the Stone Age which features hard rock roots, extensive vamping, intricate melodic phrasing, minor key tonality and dirty electric guitar riffs."

Well, whaddya know? I couldn't define vamping for you and I'd say a lot of bands would consider themselves to have "intricate melodic phrasing." But the "minor key tonality" is fairly interesting because while the chords aren't minor, the scales definitely are. It seems that songs or bands that use major key tonalities will leave a more or less "happy" taste in your mouth (in your ears?) Or if not happy, then cheesy/sappy. I personally think it takes more effort to write things in minor scales, as far as rock songs go.

So anyway, the first track Pandora plays is a Queens song. Next is a song by The Cave In. After listening, I didn't love it, i did notice similarities between it and the Queens.
"This track, 'Anchor' by the Cave In, has similar hard rock roots, minor key tonality, prominent drums and many other similarities identified in the music genome project."

All in all, I'd say these types of sites are informative if a little unsettling to know so much about why you might like something. I also wonder if by reading descriptions of bands in this way can help savvy musicians figure out how to sound more like a band. This is a lame way to gain popularity (see: copying other bands) but there are definitely qualities about the bands I like that do fit into patterns I'm sure I could follow if I studied them as much as Pandora did. If I'm successful in writing a song that sounds like Queens of the Stone Age (and if I figure out what vamping is) I'll let you know.