Hi All!
I just have to say that I LOVE my iPod! No -this isn't a paid advertisement for iPod. I would probably love any MP3 player but I happen to own an iPod so . . . I have always been a music lover thanks to my mother who made sure that our house was always filled with music when I was growing up. I learned to play the piano, the clarinet, the oboe, and the trombone. When I went to college I was a music major for almost two years and learned to play more instruments - not well but passable.
I have played in orchestras, wind ensembles, brass choirs, trombone choirs, and jazz bands. I was exposed to all kinds of different music and really enjoyed most of it. Heavy metal is probably one of the few genres of music that I really can't listen to! Sorry to all of those "metal heads" out there!
Anyway - when I got my iPod I started to load my CD collection onto it. Country, classical, rock, show tunes, jazz . . . everything went on. Because I wanted to listen to my music in a different way than with the ear buds I bought a small speaker system for the iPod which I set up in my music room. Docking the iPod was easy and now I could listen while doing other things (like cooking or reading). It didn't take me long to find the "shuffle songs" setting. Soon I was listening to a very eclectic mix of music. A jazz piece would be followed by a Beatles tune which would be tailed by a Bach concerto only to run into a show tune.
You may be thinking that it would be chaotic to listen to such a mix but I find it very enjoyable and even enlightening. Instead of the pieces just blurring together because of being similar to each other, each piece stands independently and allows me to really hear it. Does that make sense to you? I can hear the beauty of each piece - be it polka or rock - because it is so different from the previous piece.
This has made me crave more and more different kinds of music to add to the mix. I listen to several pod casts which introduce different kinds of music. I talk to friends and family and get ideas for different music. And, I must admit, that I bother my sign language lab partner to get him to give me some of his favorite music. We were in a discussion about the music we liked at the time so it just seemed natural!
Last night at class, my lab partner gave me three Cd's that he had burned with some of his favorite artists. I listened to one of the Cd's on the way home and liked the different sound of the music. Some of the lyrics were a bit "raunchy" for me but then again - I am "old." Well, I have loaded the Cd's onto my iPod and can't wait to hear the songs mixed in with my collection.
And I continue to prowl for more "different" music that I can put into the mix. There is one girl in class who is from China . . . she might be a possibility!
Trisha
2 comments:
I played the clarinet for a year in the 6th grade. I quit because my band teacher was a horrible wretch of a man with bad breath and a bad temper. He once threw drumsticks at our drummer while hollering with spit flying. He so terrified me that once, in a concert, I only fake played because I was afraid I was going to make a mistake.
My Dad also played the clarinet. He'd been quite good at it and was invited to play in the San Diego symphany (or so the story goes). I would ask him for help and he would take my clarinet and play all kinds of things. A couple of times he actually called up friends and played stuff over the phone. He was so tickled with himself that he could remember how. Whatever. He always gave me back my clarinet with a gross slobbered up reed. He was disappointed that I didn't want to play anymore after that year.
Since then... I've just played the stereo.
A way I find new music is this website called Pandora You put in an artist that you like, and it finds you other artists that are similar or that other people who like the same artist like. Now I like a broad range of music from classical to folk to trip hop to industrial and gothic, and one station won't go in such a wide range, so I've made two stations--one based off of David Bowie and another off of Laika. I might even make a third sometime. Pandora is really great. I tried it years ago and it didn't recognize much then (such as Laika, a trip hop artist), but it's grown by leaps and bounds since then.
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