The Grand Whittling Project

So when you select those tracks, do you put them into a separate playlist?

I would love to hear the reasoning behind your personal 'curation' of any specific album, even though we might not agree.

Regarding curation.... I am sometimes baffled by the reasons professionals make, and the positive critical response it receives; Morricone Segreto is a random example. I know, given my dislike of almost all official (Morricone) compilations, there really is no professional art to them, whereas there is at least some to a short or longer official presentation of any original score.

To quote a review by James (http://www.movie-wave.net/morricone-segreto/)

''This is an unusually well-curated compilation. I know that the genuine cognoscenti will already be familiar with what’s here, but I have to say I don’t consider myself a slouch when it comes to Morricone – I really need to build an annex just to store all the albums in – and yet virtually all of it was unfamiliar to me beforehand. It’s not just the selection of tracks that’s been done so well (all 27 of them are really great), but also the sequencing – there are the briefest of pauses between them and they flow so well through the album (to the extent that it can be hard to believe there were years in between some of them having been recorded). It’s superb.''

Unusually well-curated? Superb? It's a copy of paste, with some thoughts behind the flow and choices, but really anyone could make a similar, or entirely different presentation based on this segreto premise.

Frustratingly, this project expanded before I was even finished whittling the "major offenders" (i.e. those beyond CD length, mostly hailing from digital releases).

I came to the new release of Moroder's SCARFACE -- so not even half way -- when I realized I should really also whittle those albums that had a (more or less) curated OST presentation, but where the duration of 70-minutes plus is excessive. PLUS, I should also fill in some remaining composer holes while I'm at it. So back to start....

Geez, what have I started?

Are they whittled down to smaller album-length listens?

And when can we whittle down your infamous academic thesis?

I've started another project, which is even more time consuming than the whittling.

I'm going through all of my collection, and sampling unheard scores by composers I already own and like, but where my collection perhaps isn't that big, or not representative. So with the prospect of expanding and building my collection of said artists. That's a HUGE project when you have 574 artist folders. A few weeks down the road, and I'm still on "A".....

Example:

Right now, I'm on Armand Amar. Always loved him, but only ever owned three of his soundtracks (TU SERAS MON FILS, HUMAN and UN SAC DE BILLES). Sampled some more here and there over the years, of course, that I've also enjoyed, but never really acquired them. So now I'm going through ALL of his work to find those lost gems I should own. Even though Amar didn't really start his film music career until 2002, when he was already almost 50 years old, he still has an impressive 135 credits in the timeframe since -- that which is available, anyway. It helps that he has his own label called Long Distance.

Surely, I can't be the only one doing these things now and then?

Thanks for the heads-up. I didn't explore his dance music, only his film music.