Mercoledì 10 Ago 2011, 21:25
When I was young, lets say back in 95, I used to write down each 7" record I bought into a yellow school book, one page for each letter of the alphabet. I quickly discovered that far too many records I was buying were by bands who started with S or M and that there were not many Ts. I gave up the book after a year and just stopped recording what I had. A fairly half arsed stab at being organised. Should point out that I didn't get any sort of computer till sometime around 2007/8 - maybe if I had one earlier I would have kept lists on that and had a better idea…
Even though I only had a couple of hundred 7"s I still never bothered sorting them. They would just go back on the shelf, or into a pile somewhere in the bedroom I shared with my little brother. I had even fewer 12"s and LPs so they were always easy to find. Finding a specific 7" would take a few minutes I guess.
Anyway, needless to say, my collection (and I guess it has become that) has grown from a few hundred to a few thousand - still not sure how many - probably more 12"s that 7"s these days. I'm not counting CDs here, all those just get ripped and put into cardboard boxes never to be seen again, tracking digital is, well, easy!
How do you sort a collection then? Well, the most common must be alphabetising everything. But that works if you can remember most of what you have, and if you only have so many… So I am trying to sort into vague genres; indie/rock, dance/IDM, dubstep; old stuff, weird shit, etc…
This itself takes time. mainly because as you sort you find something and just have to play it, or put in on a pile of stuff you should listen to again. So you end up with more piles…
So I have 90% of my dubstep on one shelf now - but what's the best way to sort stuff now? I've gone for by label, sort of. All the hyperdub stuff is together, all the hessle audio stuff is together, all the tempa stuff is too - but then what to do with the tiny labels? I've just looked at the artist and seen if I can add them somewhere where they appear already. It's a bit of an improvement… maybe…
Or you can just have random piles - that usually works.