Casual running and jazz

Needless to say, the suggested 30-minute playlists at jogTunes.com are geared towards the casual runner who enjoys a half-hour jog several days a week. What better way is there to enhance the fun of a short run than by running to the beat of jazz? Music-based running (matching your pace to the tempo) is like dancing. It's fun, it keeps you going, and it invigorates.

Our latest playlist is the Basie/Ferguson jogSet. It builds to a BPM of 184 which is the tempo of Ferguson's Birdland. Watch your pulse monitor because this tune will push you.

Of course, the tune list in jogTunes.com provides many runnable songs that can be inserted into longer lists for the more serious runners or placed between several podcasts to make the mid-point of a run a little more fun. Or, just play a runnable song or two in the middle of a quiet run for variety and pacing.

And don't forget, we have links to the UK and Ireland iTunes Music Stores for many of our jogTunes.

Enjoy your next run!

Technorati tags: running, running music, music paced running, jogging, jogging music

The UK and Irish Connections

I'm starting to add links to the UK and Irish iTunes Music Stores in the jogTunes.com Tunes database. Users need to open their respective stores to facilitate access to the tunes. I hope people in the UK and Ireland will find this helpful and give me feedback on how it's working out.

Technorati tags: running, running music, jogging, jogging music

jogTunes Tunes List Updated

Since my last post I've been adding more songs to the jogTunes Tunes List. It continues to amaze me how few songs actually have tempos in the runnable pace range. I've added tunes from the following artists:

Filter
Soungarden
Freq Nasty
The Crystal Method
Paul Oakenfeld
The Prodigy
C & C Music Factory (Listed as C+C Music Factory in jogTunes)
Meat Beat Manifesto
Electric Light Orchestra
Marc Anthony
Oscar D'Leon
Crowded House
Peter Gabriel
Ben Harper
Counting Crows
Pearl Jam
Switchfoot
Depeche Mode

A Trail Runner's Blog (see Links) is the number one source of visits to jogTunes. I'm grateful to Scott for the link.

I'm developing links to iTunesUK and other European iTunes Music Stores. It will take some time but it'll be fun...and maybe increase my earnings.

I welcome any suggestions and comments here or on the jogTunes Forum.

Health

A New Playlist Featuring Bloc Party

jogTunes presents a new playlist (jogSet) called Bloc Party and More jogSet. We saved you the work of finding runnable songs in Bloc Party's recent album Silent Alarm and in an iTunes Live Session. Check it out here. The BPM ranges from 156 to 172. The iMix also includes runnables from Pearl Jam, NIN, The Chemical Brothers, and Ben Harper. The last song by Harper, Bring the Funk, should be walked in a cool-down mode at 100 BPM.

Rob Nelson of areyouageek (?) spoke highly of jogTunes on his 9/18 podcast. I'm grateful to him for helping to popularize music-paced running.

Finally a special thanks to Nathan Moore of phusebox and Scott Dunlap of A Trail Runner's Blog for their support of jogTunes.

The mornings are cool and crisp in Moab and there's a dusting of snow in the La Sal Mountains. It doesn't get any better for the morning workout.

jogTunes on the MacCast

The new and, I think, improved, jogTunes, was introduced to the podcasting world by Adam Christianson on his popular podcast, the MacCast. It was on his 9/13/05 show. And sure enough, the traffic to jogTunes increased exponentially. I'm grateful to Adam for his help

I've been thinking about the many ways users may find jogTunes helpful. They may place a "runnable" tune in the faster range (about 170 to 180 beats-per-minute) in the middle of their regular running playlist to ensure they're running at peak pace. Or they may switch to several runnable songs after listening to a podcast during warm-up. Others may create a full playlist of runnable songs or download one of the playlists on jogTunes.

I'm still waiting to find out how many other people will find it a whole lot of fun to run to the pace of music. I've written emails to several bloggers: A Trail Runner's Blog and A Runner's Blog, and will post to forums where there is interest in running to music.

Also, foreign versions of JogTunes may be helpful. Japan has just joined the iTunes community. Most of the European countries are already on line with iTunes. This may get interesting.

Happy running to the beat!

jogTunes Revamping

Over the past 2 months I've been working on a cleaner website with a mySQL/PHP database running in Apache on my PowerBook with Tiger now installed. It's been quite a trip. I vowed that I'd spend nothing on a database and application server and so far it's been on the cheap.

Well, we got noticed by another blogger, Thom, in the UK. Here's the post called BPM. I've entered a comment as well. Once I get the new version up and running, I'll start publicizing it via blogs. I understand that that's probably the best way to get noticed.

Running with my 2 dogs has improved. We took them to obedience training classes and now they understand the word "heel"...well, barely. The little Cairn Terrier is a bit feisty but then that's what the breed's all about.

So I understand that there's an mp3 player that you can use underwater! Some day jogTunes.com may include swimTunes for swimmers who do laps.

Gabi, my daughter, is now in India. Her blogs are wonderful and she even found the time to remind me to update this blog. Thanks, Gabi! You can catch her posts at Chartandwaters.

jogTunes update

Over the past month, jogTunes finally hit the Google list. We get a whole page when we enter jogTunes. Other keywords aren't so rewarding as yet...we may be listed, but on page 20+.

"Silly or Slick?" asks Pat of GotTheRuns.blogspot.com, about jogTunes. I thanked Pat for the citation. I really would like more constructive comments and hope they will be forthcoming.

After much input, mainly from family, I decided to simplify the site. The concept remains viable inspite of the presence on the web of other playlist sites like DailyTunes and the new beta of SoundFlavor.

Here's evidence that there must be interest in matching tempos to pace. It's An MP3/phone interfaced to a pedometer via Bluetooth that can change tune tempos without changing pitch. Sounds great for people who like to match tempos to their running pace. But, I would imagine few people would like to listen to a song they like that's sped up or slowed down. I guess it would depend on how much of a change is made. jogTunes playlists might work great on this system as the program would allow fine adjustments of tempos that are already pretty close to what the runner prefers. Here's the link:

Siemen's Running System

Running in Moab

For those of you who have never heard of Moab, Utah, it is the mountain biking capital of the world...at least according to many biking enthusiasts. Well, it's also a great place for running. Red rock cliffs surround the town and a beautiful trail (Mill Creek Parkway) runs right through it. (It's not really a parkway but it is partially paved.)

Even in this beautiful setting, the traffic on weekday mornings can produce irritating fumes...a big turn off for me. I need to run about 1/10 of a mile to get to the trail, but once there, the fumes are gone...or at least unnoticable.

Today I ran my typical circuit while listening to my new jogSet (Bob's jogSet Jazz 2). (For details about the jogSet, run on over to www.jogtunes.com.) Rylee, one of our 2 dogs, needed the usual coaxing to get him to run near a house along my jogging route where an unleashed dog occasionally runs out to the trail.

The obvious drawback to running with a dog is the need to stop for sniffing and other essentials. Jogging "in place" will keep your pulse up fairly well but not perfectly, and cleaning up after him slows you down considerably. These annoyances are usually completed by the halfway point and the run back home is usually free of hesitations. Of course, the return must be along the same trail so that the dog recalls all of the sniff points and doesn't continue this stop-and-go deal.

After arriving at home, I set my iPod to a podcast (I usually listen to Adam Curry's Daily Source Code), and I set out for short run with our other dog, a six-month-old Cairn terrier. She's learning to heel...kind of...but most of the time she's tugging.

jogTunes.com now "on the map"

My warmfelt thanks goes to Sean Lloyd, whose eloquent runnersblog posted a great introduction to jogTunes.com. Please see his entry for 3/7.

I finally recorded audio files for runners and joggers to use in determining their pace range. I find that I jog at a rate of 150 to 190 beats per minute. I therefore used GarageBand and Apple's loops to put together "songs" that demonstrate tempos from 150 to 190 BPM at 5 BPM increments. I stupidly tried putting all the tempo changes into one GarageBand song but then realized that each song can only be in one tempo. That's why I needed to create so many files. I converted them into AIFF format for playing in iTunes and they sound pretty good. It's amazing how minimal the difference is between 150 and 155 BPM but 20 BPM increments are very discernable. I hope to make these files available at jogTunes.com within the next week.

I'm still working on getting the website to run better in IE and Firefox. It looks great in Safari.

I look forward to any suggestions, jogTunes, and jogSets that readers wish to contribute. Please send them to me on this blog or by email.

jogTunes.com - a new website

I'm pleased to announce my new website jogTunes.com, a new music playlist exchange and resource for joggers and other people who exercise.

Have you ever noticed that, when you're listening to music on your iPod while jogging, it's more fun (and envigorating) to jog to a song that matches your jogging tempo? The problem is: how do you find all the tunes that match your jogging pace and arrange them in a sequence to match your workout duration and pattern?

That's where jogTunes.com comes in. We help you find the joggable tunes and arrange them into jogSets. You can then send them to your player and start your workout. Runners, walkers, cyclists, and other people who work out will also appreciate the features of jogTunes.

The website is still under construction. It's presently oriented to iTunes users and runs best in Safari on a Mac. But it can be viewed in any browser. Please check it out and send in comments and suggestions to this blog or to my email at jogtunes@mac.com. I look forward to hearing from you.