A Personal Listening Environment

main_main-vinyl-roomMy first two vinyl records were Cheap Trick at Budokan and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I used to spend hours in my room listening to these albums while gazing at the art work. It was my personal listening environment.

After a while, I began to collect a small but healthy group of records. In order to listen to the songs I loved, I would record them on reel-to-reel tape. These tapes would become my playlists. What was great about my process was that I was actively listening to music: listening, analyzing, playing along with, and dreaming. Playing a tape, or putting on a vinyl record was temporal. It was a special and sacred event. I was an active participant to the creation of this event.

As technology has progressed music playback has become effortless. With the simple push of a button, one could listen to countless hours of music. The copying of digital music has also become effortless. It allows us to have far too many pieces of music than we can listen to. It takes away the sacred from our music.

How do you listen to music? In what environment do you experience it?