Graham English

I got excited about my previous creativity hacks and busted out a number of ideas for a hacks series. So stay tuned for songwriting hacks and ear training hacks and stay connected to my MusicHacks del.icio.us bookmarks. Because you’re going to help me write them…you’ll see why soon

Did you know that you can keep up to date on music news and music websites by subscribing to the music tag at del.icio.us? I do this and I bookmark all the important music sites right here on this blog. So I’ll do all the work for you.

But I thought you would want to know, because when I found it out, I also subscribed to the ear training and songwriting del.icio.us tags. Now I’m up-to-date on what all del.icio.us users think is relevant and important when it comes to ear training and songwriting. And since del.icio.us users are all “early adopters,” they tend to be pretty hip. If you need help subscribing, ask in the comments area below.

If you don’t know what del.icio.us is, it’s a social bookmarking website. It’s social because you can view other people’s bookmarks and they can view yours. I try not to bookmark anything embarrassing–but sometimes it’s a fine line You can also sort bookmarks marks by tags. Tags are descriptive keywords. One of the coolest things you can do with tags right now is view them as a “tag cloud“. Check my tag cloud out on my home page.

You gain much more insight when you view your information with tags. Why? Because it gives you a value-based visual representation of all your information plus it shows how many people have bookmarked the same information. It’s like getting a second opinion. Social proof. Because now you know what bookmarks are most popular and generally agreed upon. And when you know what tags you’ve used the most, you start to see trends in your very own values. Currently my number 1 tag is music and my second is eartraining… that’s how you tag keyword phrases–mash the words together without spaces.

del.icio.us works like this, after you’ve signed up (it’s free), you find a site that you like and then you bookmark it by using a special “del.icio.us button” right on your browser tool bar. Then you can tag it. Add descriptive keywords so you can find it later. If it’s a guitar site, tag it with “guitar”, “music”, “reference” and any other keywords that you may use to find this bookmark again. The more tags, the better.

To me, it’s a mind blowing way of organizing all my “stuff“. I wish I could tag my physical “stuff” with keywords for easy finding–like my wallet and car keys. And it’s fast becoming my search engine of choice when I need a solution to a problem–a hack. A lot of pains-taking research is done for you by other users who have had similar problems and bookmarked their solutions.

The first thing to do is go to del.icio.us and create an account. Then start bookmarking sites when you visit webpages that you like. It’s pretty intiutive and it’s a hell of a lot easier than trying to smash all of your bookmarks within several folders on your browser bookmark menu or side bar. What if a bookmark could go into two folders? Then you’d need to bookmark it twice or copy and paste it. But when you tag a bookmark with as many relevant tags as you want, then it’s pretty easy to find again by searching in your “vacation” tag and/or your “websiteswhilesurfingatwork” tag

Wow, this turned into a long post. I had only meant to announce my MusicHacks, not evangelize. I guess I really did get excited

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Tags: CreativityHacks, Ear Training, EarTrainingHacks, MusicHacks, Songwriting, SongwritingHacks, tag clouds, tags

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 at 1:20 am and is filed under Music Education, Prose. You can leave a comment if you follow my Living Room Rules. If not, you can leave a trackback from your own site.