The Art of Listening

I’ve often talked about my CD collection on this blog. It’s large, its cumbersome and it takes up a lot of space at home. So much so that I've had a tidy up recently. Every track has been converted to an MP3 file and either added to my iTunes, or saved to an external hard drive. The discs have been packed away into a travel case the size of a large book, which takes up significantly less shelf space, and the CD cases have been put into a huge box which, with much difficulty and some swearing, is now in the loft.

On reflection, it made me feel quite sad. The CD's aren't just those I've purchased over the years. A good chunk of them have been given to me after people I know had passed away. It felt, in some ways, like I was continuing their collections. But the world has moved on, and CDs are largely a thing of the past, with downloads and streaming services the current most popular means of listening to music. And the more I think about it, the more I realise that the same was true, really, in the early 2000’s when I was becoming more interested in music, and brass bands specifically. My portable CD player was relatively limited as there were only so many CD's I could fit in my pockets, even those on massive baggy jeans (and loads of utterly unnecessary chains) me and my mates wore at the time, often teamed with a dark coloured shirt with flames on it. But, it wasn't long before, instead of listening to them on the player I was ripping the tracks off of the CDs and adding them to my AAA battery-powered MP3 player (which had been bought in Boots and held a maximum of 15 tracks). This too only lasted a couple of years, and a school trip to France, before it was superseded by my new silver 4GB iPod Nano (which, like all the cool kids at my school, I carried round in a sock).

During lockdown though, I started to get into vinyl. I'd never really listened to it before because, as mentioned above, I was cool and I had an iPod. Not only could the iPod play music but it also had games; solitaire, parachute or brick. When I was studying for my music degree my lecturers regularly extoled the virtues of vinyl, describing as "the most pure and heart warming means of recording". They had thousands of vinyl records between them, of all genres including their own field recordings, dating back years and would often play them to us. At the time I was content with my iPod and rather snazzy headphone combination and, I confess, never really understood the appeal.

Perhaps it's an age thing but I absolutely understand it now. Not only that, my two young children enjoy listening to vinyl with me. Generally the older one will dance, sing or conduct along (depending on the record) while the younger will usually stare, transfixed, at the rotating turntable, occasionally trying to lift the needle off. Watching their interactions with music, I can see exactly where my lecturers were coming from. It is so heart warming to see two young children interacting with the music in such a pure way. At a time when music and the arts more widely are being pushed to the periphery of mainstream education it is important to find new ways of engaging younger generations. I'm not professing to have the answers - I simply put on a record once and found the two of them were entranced, so much so my oldest asked for the Bluey album on vinyl for their birthday. For the record they also like classic marches and Meat Loaf.

In so many ways music is engaging, transfixing and indeed heart warming. It speaks to us all in different ways. It encourages us to sing, to dance or to stand still, drinking it all in. We are blessed that we can listen to music in so many different and varied ways and share it with those closest to us. When I bought my first MP3 player I couldn't have imagined being sat as a family listening to a decades-old vinyl together. Now I enjoy nothing more.