I wrote about false dichotomies the other day, and their close associates, false dilemmas. There are some circumstances, however, when reducing a vast array of choices down to just two, has definite benefits. A case in point: music genres.
There was a time when I would struggle with such questions as "Is this UK Garage or Funky House?" but a couple of years ago, I stood back and thought about my reasons for tagging music. I realised that to use genres in practice, rather than as an academic exercise in precision, meant that I needed only two: Vocal and Instrumental.
When I'm writing, I tend to listen to instrumental music, because lyrics can be distracting. At other times, vocals can be a source of inspiration, or just good to sing along with, or simply enjoyable. So that's what I did. I tagged everything in my music collection using just those two genres. Simple!
Here's an instrumental piece by a band called k u: l i:, whose music can be found on SoundCloud. The band tags this track as Jazzy, Guitar, Groove, Funky, Cool, and Instrumental. I wouldn't argue with that, but of course Instrumental is the important one for me - it's just right to accompany a bit of keyboard bashing.
If you go to the SoundCloud page for this track, you'll see that the track title is a reference to Noggin The Nog. Ah yes, I remember it... well, not so well, actually. But a quick Google gave me various results including, you guessed it, a Wikipedia article, and it all came back to me.
There are two other equally good tracks by k u: l i: on SoundCloud;
Pad Pod and Murphy's Jazz.
They seem to be fond of cats, according to the notes under those tracks!
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