I can remember when I was a child listening to my sister Grace playing Fur Elise on the piano in our family’s front room, and I was so impressed. I also recall that two of my sisters and I all sang in the Hayes Girls Choir under the directorship of Mr. Brian Trant. We didn’t realize then that we were on the cusp of a new musical generation. As we were learning to sight-read music and to play musical instruments, the world was moving on to music recorded electronically.

We lived in the same town as Electronic Musical Industries (EMI) which was about to change everyone’s perception of how music was made. It was going to be made in studios, recorded on vinyl, and purchased in record stores. Our corporate neighbour unknowingly helped in the demise of our family’s cautious ventures into music-making.

The singers in my family never stopped singing, but none of us continued to play musical instruments after a year or two. We all enjoyed listening to music on the radio, which then was primarily via the BBC. That entertainment was all-inclusive. It gave us information, discussion, comedy, music, drama, and news, all without anyone needing to find new apps. Their music was eclectic, too. Through the BBC I listened to classical music, show tunes, opera, pop songs, and humorous musical hall ditties.

When I was in my teenage years, music took a new stylistic turn. The BBC wasn’t ready for competition and was slow to take on board the evolving approaches. Consequently, the new music found alternative resources in off-shore vessels that were close enough to the UK to broadcast to most of the country. Radio Caroline, Tony Blackburn, Dave Lee Travers, and others opened up to me and to the rest of Britain a whole new world of music. Through pirate radio I heard more rock n’ roll, more rhythm and blues, more saucy language, and more regional accents than I ever heard on the BBC.  

Since then, I have tried to keep up with multiple technological changes. The vinyl collection was supplemented and overtaken by an audiotape collection, which then became an Apple iPod Nano collection, and then a CD collection. The CD collection became an iTunes collection, and the iTunes collection became an Apple Music collection, so that now I seem to be paying monthly for the privilege of listening to albums I have already paid for.  

I still have a CD player, but very few CDs. I no longer have a record player or vinyl records, but I do have most of my favourite albums on iTunes/Apple via my laptop. I even kept the iPod Nano because it was the best, but it no longer works. Recently, I subscribed to Spotify because it provides an easy two hours of music they think I might like. I find, though, that I don’t listen to any of those technologies much these days. Where once there was always music in my background, now there is often silence, sometimes audiobooks, and regularly television. But the music is mostly gone, and I miss it.

You are probably wondering why I don’t just play the music I have saved on iTunes or the music that the Spotify algorithm chooses for me, and I wonder why, too. It just doesn’t seem the same. Part of me wants to go back to the days when I had only one channel and it provided me with all kinds of different music whether I liked it or not. In those days I thought it would be great to be able to listen only to my preferred sounds, but now I realize I was wrong.

I have gone from listening to the BBC’s wide and deep variety, through genre-specific broadcasting, through algorithms that think they know me, to days without any music at all. I’m sure there is an answer to this dilemma, but for now I’m just remembering how good it used to feel to live with all sorts of music occupying part of my mind most of the time.

https://snowbirdofparadise.com/2023/11/12/once-i-listened-to-music/

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That sounds great!

https://youtu.be/8wAy6d6GKcA