For me, it really started about six years ago. I had been using an iPod for a while before that, but the real transition took place sometime in 2015. I had been notified that I was moving cross country for work and things were getting boxed up and ready. All my CDs and vinyl were carefully packaged up for the move. I was left with an iPod and my computer for playing music. That was when I started my slide into bad musical habits.
When I arrived at my new home, things were chaotic. My small CD player was broken in the move and not replaced. So my CDs and vinyl were left in boxes. I promised myself I was going to “get to them” sometime “soon”. But the music was all on the computer as well, so I didn’t really feel the pressure. I could load vast amounts of music on an iPod. I told myself this was better. So my physical media gathered dust for almost two years.
Then, again, I was moving back across the country for work. And again things were chaotic, and again, my amps were being driven by iPods, cell phones, and computers. and I didn’t realize what was happening. I had easily slid into a habit of playing “playlists” and “collections”. The thing about computers, iPods, cell phones, and other digital music contrivances is that they let you customize everything. You can set up “play lists”, play mixed sets by artist or genre, some on-line services actually pick the music for you. Soon everything begins to blend together. And something very important is lost.
So it’s been almost three years since the second move and I’ve been wanting a new CD player for a while. This winter, my wife, tired of my indecision, bought me a nice Cambridge Audio CXC player. It’s not the most expensive unit out there, but the performance is very good and it sports a digital output if I want to use my own DAC.
After installing the player in my office and patching it into an amp (vacuum tube, of course), I broke open the large box of CDs and began sorting and stacking my physical music collection. And that’s when it happened. I picked a CD out of the pile and put it on to play. As the music filled my office and I worked away at getting things organized, something very different happened. I listened to an entire album, and then another, and another. And I suddenly realized what I was missing.
An “album” (a term left over form the original vinyl albums of the last century) is more than a collection of music. It is a reflection of the artist and the performance. Each album has a special gestalt; the whole being much more than the sum of it parts. Each individual album may represent a story told in music or a particular time in an artist’s or composer’s life. It contains flows and overtones that transcend the individual movements, suites, or songs. And when we listen to the album as a whole we experience it differently.
“The Planets” suite by Gustav Holst is an obvious example but there are many others. And it’s not just true of symphonies and big classical scores. Diana Krall’s “Turn up the quiet” has a flow all it’s own, that is lost when mixed with other albums or performers. The album “Hemispheres” by Rush is itself a continuous story. But even just collections of music may represent that particular period in a performers life. Melody Gardot’s “Some Lessons” is such an album. And even “Greatest Hits” type collections are chosen and ordered with some overarching purpose.
All of this is to say that there is something special in the collections of music which artists assemble. And there is value in experiencing that music as the artists intended. And as I start my own journey away from the short attention span “play list” and back to album length listening, I invite you to join me. Rediscovering the part of the music which has been hidden; the collection, the overarching story, and the feeling.