Of Music
Music is one thing I’ve found that I can always depend on, for everything except money. Music has always made perfect sense to me… it is really good energy, packed into a portable medium that can be played in my mind, or around me most of the time… my life always feels enhanced with a good soundtrack…
It’s been this way for as long as I can remember, and I love having music in my life… I am always able to ‘change my channel’ at any time; I listen to everything; I pick up on phrases in commercials or in shopping malls, what is stored or streamed from my computers, etc., but I can also turn it “off” and be silent for awhile.
As much or mostly; I listen for my own music… that I form in my mind and then try to record into my computers. I have all the arrangements, lyrics, etc., everything all playing out in my mind, but I find the increasing range of my technology has actually made it a more difficult process to get what is in my thoughts, over to become a printed recording that has something ‘intangible’ about it… for me.
For most of my early childhood, the only music I ever heard came from my father’s 1950’s record player – that I was forbidden to touch for years… (which explains some things).
We had one radio and one black & white television with 3 channels… this all was pre-Beatles, and Elvis didn’t exist as far as I knew…
On most work days and certainly pancake Saturday mornings, Dad would come home from his office job, loosen his tie, and head straight for his Kenwood stereo. He would stack his jazz records back up on his Dual auto changer and he’d go dancing off to find Mom. That stack usually contained Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson, and especially this Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd record. There is just something about the sound of this record that so epitomizes the cool jazz cats of the 1960s. There were others, but the "jazz standards" were always the core of the catalog, and I loved it all; especially anything that featured the piano or a drum solo.
I loved Christmas for the anticipation of presents, for the colorful lights and pine tree scent, but mostly for the whole new set of Christmas records that would come out for just those few short weeks… One year, my gift from Santa was a “Crystal Radio”; my father strung an antenna wire outside my bedroom window and I assembled a self powered radio that on a clear night would reach U.S. and Canadian radio stations… I would fall asleep every night listening to a far away world whose energy could magically find it’s way to the bare wire strung across the side of our house, and endlessly stream it’s way out of a cheap mono ear plug nestled in my pillow. Every music player except my father’s Kenwood was mono (single speaker) at that time – which didn’t matter – I could still hear every note of every instrument “crystal” clear…
From Stanton record needles to my current iPhone, I am in complete awe at the sonic range in my present day sound equipment, and the basically limitless multitrack recording software I have to record with today.
The current resolution of my audio and video systems have literally surpassed my physical body's ability to experience it. Our body's limitations are difficult to accept, but today's media technologies represent a factual "plateau" for the audio and video industries, and now anyone who loves movies and music can experience high resolution media in most of their current devices, if they want it...
For example; 4K video screens are a higher resolution than most people's eyes are able to perceive - especially at a distance or with eye glasses, which makes 5K iPhone screens, or anything further; irrelevant. It's the same with audio; 24 bit audio now represents a frequency range that our ears physically can't hear. This is a significant technical "plateau" and represents more long term change for the media and tech industry, as there is no further reason to "trade up" anymore.
Still, this perspective of having started from listening to a little mono earplug speaker as a kid, to my current 24bit/96kHz, 7.1, dual sub-woofer audio, 4K Video environment… when I focus and listen to it, I'm reminded that I have “joy personified”; bathing in quality audio is exquisite.
A connecting story, spun into song can be the most powerfully “good thing” in the world, to me. The song, crafted as a recording into something that then resonates even more powerfully when shared between large groups of people – live in concert or available via the internet, be they groups of any race, religion, culture, or what ever is the barrier that segregates our collective ability to easily communicate and share the overall experience of just being alive together… where instead, music connects people; many can also feel music… music transcends barriers with the greatest clarity, and is completely vital to my life.
