my knitting soundtrack.

in part one of this series, television knitting, i covered television programs and films suitable to knit to. in this episode i'm going to write about some of my favorite knitting soundtracks.

either you're not into music or you probably haven't been knitting for very long if you fail to grasp the importance of having the right tunes to knit to. it can make the difference between getting into a zen-like state and merrily cruising along with your project or getting so distracted by what you're listening to that you spend most of your time unknitting or you simply neglect your project altogether. when it comes to music i can waste a good 30 minutes just trying to decide what to listen to. that's precious time that could be spent knitting. to combat this i've started compiling monthly playlists containing new songs that i'm listening to and old favorites that suit my overall mood. i haven't compiled a list for november yet, but here's my playlist for october;

the key to a good knitting soundtrack is to keep it light and to jump around between artists and genres. if i listen to a favorite album in its entirety like David Bowie's Aladdin Sane, Sandinista by The Clash, Beth Orton's Daybreaker or Bjork's Vespertine i tend to abandon my knitting in favor of staring off into space and reminiscing about where i was then and what happened when. the only complete albums that i can listen to while knitting are more recent ones like Sufjan Stevens' Illinoise or Thom Yorke's The Eraser because they haven't been around long enough to accumulate any mesmerizing memories. the key is to pre-select your music and to have enough tunes to cover the time that you plan to sit and knit. that way you don't waste precious time deliberating on what to listen to next.

David Byrne does a fantastic streaming radio thing on his website. every month he chooses a different theme. one month it was all Missy Elliot all the time, another month it was latin standards. this month's playlist is called "Textures, Soundscapes, Melodies Even". he describes it like this;

For much of my musical life I have alternated between songs and other types of music. Here is a selection of the latter, some of it pretty well known, other tracks unreleased and unavailable. Some of it tuneful and some textural.

It's a cliché that soundtracks are a refuge for the has-been pop musician — some of these (The Catherine Wheel, done for the Twyla Tharp dance-theater piece) were done while Talking Heads were having their biggest successes, so the argument sort of falls apart there. But in other ways it is indeed a kind of refuge.

Doing music that is done "to order" and with creative freedom within boundaries is both challenging and stimulating. If the music has to satisfy some need — if it has to work with a particular stage movement or the mood of a movie scene — then whether it's working or not becomes pretty clear-cut. It has a job to do and it either does it or not. Working to order also frees one of personal liabilities; one doesn't have to fear that the music will be viewed as a personal statement. It's liberating to write to help support someone else's statement.

i know a lot of people like to listen to audiobooks while they're knitting. and i know a lot of people have abandoned reading in favor of knitting. i, however, still read actual books and i cannot stand audiobooks. i get impatient with them. i get annoyed by the narrator. i miss turning pages and assigning my own inner voices to the characters. so, yeah, in that hour before falling sleep and on what has become the rare occasion that i open my door and walk 10 yards to the gym and sit on the bike, i read books.

oh, but wait! there was one audiobbok that i enjoyed. it was David Sedaris reading his book 'Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim'. now that was funny!

podcasts are great to listen to while knitting. and while i do, have a couple of favorite knitting podcasts, i rarely listen to them while knitting. somehow i find it all a bit hokey to sit on my sofa with a project in my lap while listening to people talk about knitting. it's a bit much. i tend to listen to them while i'm cleaning my apartment or walking my dog. my favorite is produced by the Thelma and Louise of knitting, Knitty D and The City. you can even find an interview with yours truly there! the very first knitting podcast, Knitcast, was produced by Marie Irshad who works for the BBC. Marie's on hiatus now, but i hope she'll be back soon!

i like to listen to This American Life on podcast. if you've never heard this NPR show then you are really missing out. this description of the show comes from their website;

One of the problems with our show from the start has been that whenever we try to describe it in a sentence or two, it sounds awful. For instance: Each week we choose a theme and put together different kinds of stories on that theme. That doesn't sound like something we'd want to listen to on the radio, and it's our show. In the early days of the program, in frustration, we'd sometimes tell public radio program directors that it's basically just like Car Talk. Except just one guy hosting. And no cars.

It's easy to say what we're not. We're not a news show or a talk show or a call-in show. We're not really formatted like other radio shows at all.

Instead, we do these stories that are like movies for radio. There are people in dramatic situations where things happen to them... We have the themes because mostly they make it sound like there's a reason to hear a story about, say, a contest where everyone stands around a truck for days until one person is left standing ... or a grown man trying to convince his friend that he has heard the greatest phone message ever made ... or a man who's obsessed with Niagara Falls, lives minutes from the Falls, writes and thinks about the Falls all the time, but who can't bring himself to actually visit the Falls, because, as he says, "they've ruined the Falls." If you're not doing stories about the news, or celebrities, or things people have ever heard of elsewhere, you have to give people a reason to keep listening. The themes make it seem like there is a reason.

We think of the show as journalism. One of the people who helped shape the program, Paul Tough, says that what we're doing is applying the tools of journalism to everyday lives, personal lives.

Which is true. It's also true that the journalism we do tends to use a lot of the techniques of fiction: scenes and characters and narrative threads.

Meanwhile, the fiction we have on the show functions like journalism: it's fiction that describes what it's like to be here, now, in America. What we like are stories that are both funny and sad. Personal and sort of epic at the same time.

Some of the writers whose work has been on the program: David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, Russell Banks, Dave Eggers, David Rakoff, Tobias Wolff, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anne Lamott, Michael Lewis, Michael Chabon, Nick Hornby, Alex Kotlowitz, Dan Savage, David Foster Wallace, Spalding Gray, Chris Ware, Gay Talese, Haruki Murakami, Aimee Bender, Lydia Davis, Junot Diaz, Sherman Alexie, Bill Buford.

my absolute favorite podcast is the Smithsonian Folkways Collection, available for download on iTunes. this remarkable series of 24 one hour programs chronicles the history of Moses Asch and Folkways Records. from the website;

Folkways Records & Service Co. was founded in 1948 in New York City by Moses Asch (1905-1986) and Marian Distler (1919-1964). Under Asch's enthusiastic and dedicated direction, Folkways sought to record and document the entire world of sound. Between 1948 and Asch's death, Folkways' tiny staff released 2,168 albums. Topics included traditional, ethnic, and contemporary music from around the world; poetry, spoken word, and instructional recordings in numerous languages; and documentary recordings of individuals, communities, current events, and natural sounds.

As one of the first record companies to offer albums of "world music," and as an early exponent of the singers and songwriters who formed the core of the American folk music revival (including such giants as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly), Asch's Folkways grew to become one of the most influential record companies in the world.

Following Asch's death in 1987, the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington, D.C., acquired Folkways Recordings and the label's business papers and files in order to ensure that the sounds and genius of its artists would continue to be available to future generations.

As a condition of the acquisition, the Smithsonian agreed that virtually all of the firm's 2,168 titles would remain "in print" forever--a condition that Smithsonian Folkways continues to honor through its custom order service. Whether it sells 8,000 copies each year or only one copy every five years, every Folkways title remains available for purchase.

i have a pretty short attention span and a constant need for stimulation and all of this gets me through my daily knitting. if this doesn't satiate you then you might need more help than i can give you!

** update ** btw, my life in stitches is TypePad's Featured Blog today!

Comments

[meg]

thanks for david byrne link. that's one of derek's faves. if he doesn't already know of it, he'll be pleased.

i love this american life. i listen to it at work when i am sitting here thinking about how i'd love to be knitting and really not working.

anything david sedaris does is fabulous!

[Divineladi]

I just received my copy of YarnPlay in the mail last night! I love it! I haven't had the chance to sit down and read thoroughly ( I read patterns like I read novels :-)), but I love what I see. Congrats again on everything! Let me know if YarnPlay does a tour in NYC! I would love to stop by and say hi!

[Darci McGrath]

Signed up for "This American Life" Love the concept...Also love the playlist. Would love to see that as a sidebar feature.

[Phoebe]

Wow...featured blog of the day how cool! About to caston for Tulip and still trying to hunt down a copy of Yarnplay at a local bookseller. I love Poppy...Wendy's totally sold me!

[laura]

i second the idea of seeing your playlist as it changes! the only thing i love as much as knitting is music. i also try to create a monthly playlist of songs that i have recently discovered or rediscovered, or otherwise am currently obsessed with.

btw, Thom Yorke's The Eraser is one of my two favorite albums of the year. it's gorgeous.

[Kathy]

Playlists...now I just name them by the month, but I was doing a swap with a bunch of bloggers every few months with a theme in mind. We had Summer mixes, and Holiday mixes and Driving mixes...and then when Lolly was doing her Project Spectrum I did a Yellow/Orange mix. These mixes have become some of my favorite playlists. I've never done one specifically for knitting...but it sounds like a great idea!

And I did notice your Type Pad mention! Cool!

[del]

I don't care for audiobooks either. I feel old-fashioned saying that sometimes, but I don't think I'll ever prefer those over paper.

[Angie]

My husband burned me a CD with all of my favorites, complete with cover art and the title "Knit Jamz". Knitting and my favorite music? Seriously, I could cry.

[LBellatrix]

Woo-hoo! I have streaming radio on iTunes! (Yeah, I know. I've had an iPod for over 2 years now. I'm kind of slow on the draw when it comes to gadgets.)

I'm listening to Radio David Byrne right now. VERY cool! Thanks for the info. Sure wish I was knitting instead of trying to prepare for an exam...