For example, I started off with something classic, yet contemporary: Devourment. Apparently I am drawn to "hard rock roots, repetitive melodic phrasing, and extensive vamping." I'm not entirely sure what vamping is, but I like the sound of it!
Next, I figured I would try another artist that was perhaps a bit harder to classify: Anal Cunt. Pandora came through again, explaining that AC made heavy use of "experimental sounds" and a "gravelly male vocalist." So far, so good!
But things didn't go so well when I dug deeper. The fucking posers at Pandora have apparently never heard of Gothic Slam or Sockeye. Bogus. If they don't have "We Are Circumcised" in their library, what do they have?! I decided I would just go with something I knew I would love, and asked it to play artists similar to Crazy Town.
This is where I knew I had made the right move. It turns out that, like Devourment, part of the reason why Crazy Town is so awesome is that they also use "extensive vamping!" Who knew?! I'm still not exactly sure what that means, but I am assuming it refers to something sweet like bass drops. In any case, it played POD, Saliva, and Godsmack, and I started jamming in bliss. In case you think I'm joking or being ironic, please note that I gave a thumbs up to POD but not Rage Against The Machine (yuck!).
'Vamping' means repeating a musical phrase over and over. In other words: you like music based on riffs. Surprised?
ReplyDeleteThankyou
DeleteNo Sockeye? What a bunch of posers! they probably dont have any Traci Lords Loves Noise or Black Mayonaise either....they've probably never even heard of Nut Screamer or Pile of Eggs
ReplyDeleteYeah, its crazy cause, Pandora plays Hirax and Holy Terror, but its never heard of Dark Angel.
ReplyDeleteYes, it does have nerve to try and pawn of Death Angel as substitute.
"sort of like Last.fm only much crappier"
ReplyDelete^^brilliant.
I went back to give them another try. but after feeding them cynic, ulver, dredg, agalloch, and enslaved, they gave me generic melodeath. then i ran out of "songs skipped per hour", because they think that daylight dies sounds like high on fire, and because even though they do full page themed ads, they can't afford a play-on-demand license. what a bucket of fail.
also, the interface looks like it's from 1996 and designed for 640x480. i don't understand how anybody could possibly use pandora instead of last.fm, it's a fucking eyesore and doesn't have sockeye! maybe i should try AOL keyword "extensive vamping" instead.
ReplyDeletein regards to the play on demand license, "CASH FLOW FAIL."
Pandora is really good (in my opinion for music older than 1995 (or any that would have their creative license patent expired) Also, I have had a Pandora since 2001 and its interface has never changed so its familiar to me. Third, before reading this thread I had never heard of last.fm
DeleteTry looking for older music when you use pandora
Lucho,
ReplyDeleteYou liked Pile of Eggs? I used to write to them back in the day. I even got a zine from them at a Studio 1 show.
Do the "fucking posers" at Pandora know why I like Benediction?
ReplyDeletei remember liking pile of eggs i think. my brother has some stories about that dude that were pretty funny. their logo was putrid. the whole genre was actually. anyway, i probably liked them more than traci lords loves noise and all those noise bands that were just recorded in boomboxes, and would put out entire 120 minute tapes that were totally full of garbage. when people nowadays say "that band sucks", i tell them "you don't know suck...have you ever heard Black Mayonaise?". anyway,back then i honesetly thought that traci lords loves noise were a big/important band in the noise scene, and i wanted my band to be that big. can you imagine? yikes. you would have had to been involved in heavy tape trading in the noise/grind scene in the 1992-1993 era to understand that i guess. I remember my brother "doing mail" for hours on weekends, what an archaic thought.
ReplyDeleteOne day or another I must tell you about my italian gore grind drum machine project.
ReplyDeleteYou may like it!
Update: Geoff thoroughly explains extensive vamping:
ReplyDeleteVamping is essentially the repeating of a section of a song — such as a chorus, verse or (rarely) a bridge — one or more times to create space in the tune. Why would you do this? Maybe to extend a tune out, create space for a couple players to take solos or maybe just because the audience is having fun dancing and it’d be a shame to make them stop. Vamps are sometimes called jams (although jam usually connotes less structure).
Sometimes a vamp happens at the end of a song — say to accommodate a fade-out — but short vamps can easily happen in the middle of tunes. In live performance, bands usually return to the head, main theme or chorus one last time after a vamp before ending a tune. The underlying form is usually dictated by the song, but many elements of a particular vamp are improvised and spontaneous.
Extensive vamping means that the balance of a section or an entire tune is taken up with vamping. For instance, many standards are pretty short songs (often just 32 to 64 bars), so if you hear one of those tunes played for, say, six minutes, that’s a good candidate for the extensive vamping tag. But, basically, extensive vamping can refer to any time a listener thinks, "Oh, the band has gone off on its own now; this isn’t actually part of the tune." Sometimes this can happen in as little as four bars!
By the way, the bit of Pandora lingo that struck me as funny was mild rhythmic syncopation, which is like saying "a mildly woody tree." In music, you can’t have syncopation without rhythm (although you can have rhythm without syncopation).
so with all this definition of said "vamping", will that word be adequate to describe the whole Nickelback catalog!??
ReplyDeleteif pandora hasent heard your band you can drop it to em and they normally get it up in about a week or so.
ReplyDeleteBut i do grow weary of it, it plays the same shit over and over on 2 hour intervals, i guess you can say it has elongated vamping
Vamping is to suck. Like a vampire sucks blood. Extensive sucking.
ReplyDeleteLucho,
ReplyDeleteMe and my bro actually recorded a noise demo with our casio keybord and my bro on guitar with me screaming incohearently so we had something to trade with to get a Pile of Eggs demo. Pretty funny looking back on it now.
You're so street.
ReplyDeletefrom Pandora:
ReplyDeleteQ: What is "vamping"?
Vamping is a term that refers to extended improvisation over a repeated chord change. One of the quintessential examples of vamping is last section, or 'outro,' to "Freebird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, featuring a 5-minute epic guitar solo over some repeated chords.
Epic as in sickeningly repetitive...
DeleteI'm surprised they didnt have the vocal stylings of "spork" or "suburban assault". Both obscure garage bands from northwest houston during the grunge invasion of the early to mid nineties.Lets name the most obscure shit we can think of and complain they don't have it....fucking black mayonnaise? really? pile of eggs....w T FFFFF?
ReplyDeleteReggae uses extensive vamping too!! So its not just metal this is applied to, surprised? Learn some music vocabulary and maybe it wont make you think of blood sucking vampires next time you hear a descriptive musical term. I like Pandora fine, they are good to play all day. If you want obscure shit then go find it and listen to it!!! Obviously Pandora is not for everyone, they have never claimed to be. Pandora has helped me in my latest music love, I've seen new bands and actually learned new music. Pandora is for those who want it, those who don't should stick to their boom boxes and cassette tapes. People complain about anything see, I'm doing it RIGHT NOW!!!
ReplyDeleteOK, now that we know what vamping is, can you tell us a useful word for "absolutely no sense of humor"?
ReplyDeleteNever had problems with pandora. They give a nice variety. I've created a station just for instrumental music to relax to. With minor tweaking, it is what I want.
ReplyDeleteIF YOU'RE LISTENING TO THE FREE VERSION OF PANDORA, THEN QUIT BITCHING, YOU FUCKING JAGS.
ReplyDeletePandora is getting better. I tried Agoraphobic Nosebleed radio and so far have gotten Dying Fetus, Soilent Green, Gadget, Cephalic Carnage, Pig Destroyer, and Exhumed.
ReplyDelete"Death metal - cuz mommy and daddy never fucking loved me." You must be so brutal listening to terribly played instruments interlaced with shit lyrics that have no bearing on the songwriter's life, much less your own.
Delete