HIGH FIDELITY ..... FIDDLE DE DEE

There was a time when I used to think about sound quality in recordings and spent a silly amount of money on good stereo equipment with good amps, turntables and speakers.

To reproduce the best sound I used to buy vinyl recordings which had to be carefully wiped before playing and stored properly to avoid scratching.

The latest equipment (bought 15 years ago) now sits in a little pile tucked away behind the china cabinet in the lounge - one step away from being relegated to the shed.
The vinyl records are all still in boxes from the move from Auckland to Whangarei in 2009 and are stacked in the shed.

When I listen to music now it is usually through an iPod and a Bose sound dock or via YouTube through the smart TV in the lounge.


Sure the sound might not be as good as from Hi-Fi equipment but hey, my ears aren't what they used to be as my hearing is suspect. Also, the convenience of finding the desired album or track on iPod or from the YouTube menu far outweighs any sound deficiency.

When I'm cooking I like to put the TV on with YouTube and access the musician or genre I want and search using 'mix' as a suffix. I can then get a loop of music from a particular artist or a group of musicians or artists in the same or similar genre. For example - I like jazz, blues, opera and old R&B. If I search for Maria Callas and type in her name with 'mix' after it I might get a selection of her arias from great operas interspersed with recordings by other greats and, if I leave it going long enough a segue into other 'classical' music. Wonderful and as I can hear the music well enough from the lounge when I'm in the kitchen I can get on with my cooking.

The iPod is very portable and we easily take it from the lounge to the snooker room when we have a few games. The Old Girl has loaded hundreds of tracks on this which are automatically sorted by genre, album and artist so for example accessing Miles Davis can be done by individual tracks or albums or by setting a loop of all tracks. Just the thing for an hour or so of pool or snooker.

OK, I might be a Philistine but .... "Eeee I know what I like".

CALLAS

A BIT OF JONI MAGIC

The following two clips of Joni Mitchell singing her iconic song 'Woodstock' come from the excellent OPEN CULTURE website.

The two versions sung 31 years apart each have loveliness and show why she has been celebrated as one of the greatest folk/pop performers.



JONI MITCHELL - 'WOODSTOCK' 1969






JONI MITCHELL - 'WOODSTOCK' 1998