I Seem to Have Entered the 1960's: First Impressions of Music on Vinyl


I'm a techie. For my grad school classes at Brandeis I tend to take notes on my Microsoft Surface Book. I use a Nexus 6P phone for that "pure Android experience". I very rarely buy DVDs or Blu-Ray discs anymore, streaming most of my video watching. My comic book reading is electronic, as is my reading. Which is probably why the surprise expressed by family and friends was understandable when I picked up a TEAC Vinyl Turntable and purchased the first vinyl records since picking up the 45 single for Debbie Gibson's "Lost in Your Eyes" back in late 1988/early 1989 - my musical tastes have hardened rather considerably since then and I seem to have misplaced that single and everything else from my rather small vinyl collection of high school. As I recall, most of my music in high school was on cassette tape, with the occasional 45 or 33 record for singles/remixes. And then in 1988 I got my first CD player for Christmas. No one I knew in college had a record player - there were a few CD players in 1989 and by the time I graduated in 1994 most people had CD players in their room but portable music was still almost always a Walkman or similar device.

Over the past several months I'd been reading quite a bit about what I've seen described as a Vinyl Revival, with vinyl record sales increasing every year since 2006. There's been a variety of explanations - hipsters buying albums they never listen to, superior sound quality, preference for the tactile experience of spinning a record. Having saved some pennies over the past few months I took the plunge myself to try it out. I've started off with a TEAC TN-300, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, Miles Davis' A Kind of Blue, and the mono editions of the Beatles Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Bands. I wound up getting the mono Beatles' recordings after reading how the bulk of their albums were recorded with mono in mind.


What's the early verdict? Well I of course assumed I'd enjoy it or I wouldn't have laid out the money for the experience. But I' surprised how much I enjoy it. First off, I will state the sound quality is amazingly good - far more than I'd expected. My brother, who is a bit of an audiophile, tells me a large part of that is likely due to having listened primarily to MP3 music over the past several years and I'd likely get an even superior audio quality from a modern CD or other lossless audio such as a FLAC recording. I also suspect escaping from headphones (even good quality headphones such as the ones I usually use) has something to do with it - though it's not the whole story, as I did some experimenting in streaming audio out the same speakers. I've heard people refer to the "warmth" of vinyl and it always sounded like an odd choice of words but it actually fits rather well.

The experience of listening certainly is neat. It made me really appreciate more what goes into an album - how good albums have a certain flow that needs to take into account reaching the end of a side and flipping over. It also makes me appreciate an album on its own, without jumping around or including a song on a playlist. And there's the fact that changing position is a bit of an ordeal. Yes, I could emulate that aspect of it by streaming and being disciplined... But I know I won't.

The tactile experience is interesting - taking the record out of its sleeve, putting it on the turntable, starting the turntable, positioning and lowering the needle. And the artwork of the albums - I've seen Revolver as a small icon for so long that I'd forgotten just how... odd it is. Must be a sixties thing...

Long-term... No I'm not going to cancel my Google Music account. Tomorrow I'll be going to the public library to work on my grad school classwork and I'll be armed with a well-stocked Android phone carrying thousands of songs. And I'm not going to be getting everything on vinyl. I might try digitizing the records I picked up - my turntable does include a USB output. It's definitely something I'll continue experimenting with - I'm thinking it might be time for some Led Zeppelin. But I think it'll be a bit of a luxury.

Oh - regarding the title of the post - I know vinyl records predate the 1960's But all the music I picke up, aside from A Kind of Blue, is from the 1960's. And even that is from 1959.

Image Credit
Vinyl is too Mainstream image from Get It On Vinyl: Debunking the Myths of the Vinyl Resurgence

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jules Verne Translations That Don't Stink

Image
Shortly after I graduated from college R. Talsorian published their fantasy steampunk RPG,  Castle Falkenstein. Having missed out on Space: 1889  when it first came out this was my first steampunk RPG, though I had been exposed to the genre by Gibson and Sterling's novel The Difference Engine (a novel which, though I though I found the setting compelling, I did not particularly care for - must reread some day). Jules Verne was one of the authors in the inspirational reading section of Castle Falkenstein.  Heck, the game also made him into France's scientific advisor, having him responsible for their massive Verne Cannons  which formed a sort of nuclear deterrent.  With that in mind, one Sunday afternoon I was at a Barnes & Noble bookstore my new girlfriend (now my wife of nearly 16 years!).  On a whim I decided to pick up a Jules Verne novel. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . That night I started reading it, never having read any of his works b...
Keep reading

Stepping Away and a New Beginning

Image
After maintaining this blog for nearly seven years (an eternity in internet time), I've decided to step away from it. When I first began I wasn't 100% certain what it would be about. For a while I thought it would be a blog related to OSR type RPGs but I found my own tastes not firmly rooted there. Looking at the history of the blog, I see a lot of Call of Cthulhu which is hardly surprising. However, some lack of consistency definitely made it tough for me find a defined niche and over the past few months I've been giving some thought to starting a new, more narrowly focused blog. The imminent end of Google+ played a part in these thoughts, with much of my traffic coming from that site. I write because I enjoy writing, but I do enjoy growing an audience. My plan to start a narrowly-focused blog took a turn when I had the opportunity to join the  Rolling Boxcars  blog. Talking with the contributors (one of whom I game with on Discord already) and going through thei...
Keep reading

Using the Force in D6 Star Wars

Image
Defending yourself with just 1D in Sense is not easy, as Luke discovers when training with a remote. My previous post discussed the proto-D6 System as found in the Ghostbusters RPG. For those unfamiliar with the D6 System and the way it does the Force (or for a brief review) the essentials are: You roll a bunch of six sided dice against a target number, typically ranging from 5-ish (easy) to 20 or even higher. Your rating is listed as something like 2D+2 which means roll 2d6+2. By default, most normal/non-heroic people have 2D in most stats.  Starting heroes will might have their best skill be at 5D or a touch higher. You can take as many actions as you want in a round. However, taking two actions in a round reduces all dice codes by 1D, taking three reduces all by 2D, etc. Starting with Force skills will lower a characters starting attributes. Unlike most skills they start off at 1D. There are three Force skills - control, sense, and alter. Control lets you contr...
Keep reading

Developing Boston for 1920s Call of Cthulhu

Image
While Chaosium has produced sourcebooks for many locations in Lovecraft Country (Kingsport, Arkham, and Innsmouth) as well as non-fictional cities of the 1920s (such as New York City and New Orleans), the nearby city of Boston, while being featured in many adventures, has never received its own full sourcebook. The most common era for my Call of Cthulhu  games has been in the 1920s - some campaigns have been in New York City while others have been in Lovecraft country. For those in Lovecraft Country, many adventures have been in nearby Boston. Over the years I've slowly been building up some expertise in the area and I thought it might be of interest to others gaming in the same setting - whether with Mythos horrors or a purely mundane game. First, let us investigate those official sources. While Boston has found its way into many adventures, I can think of two sources where it has been given a fair amount of detail. First, The Unspeakable Oath  double issue 16/17 has ...
Keep reading

Balancing Classes in Swords and Wizardry

Image
DM: "The box is the size of a small trunk; it is latched but not locked."  Dougal: "I'm looking for traps on the box."  DM (rolling for Dougal's "find traps" ability. The roll indicates that Dougal has failed to find the poisoned needle in the latch.) "You don't find a trap."  Morgan (the group's leader): "Black Dougal will open the box."  DM: "Black Dougal, you find out that you missed a tiny discolored needle in the latch. Roll a saving throw vs. Poison, please!"  Dougal (rolling): "Missed it!"  DM: "Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."  Fredrik: "I'm grabbing his pack to carry treasure in." Game balance. It's a tricky concept in RPGs. D&D 3rd and 4th editions made a very strong effort to balance the character classes with one another as well as to balance encounters. For my purposes, they went too far. A...
Keep reading