Bits And Pieces

Is It Music Or Noise

     What's your favorite brand of music  these days?  Seems like the nursery rhyme "rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes," was never so true.

     With Hi-Fi and Stereo records to fill our homes with sound and AM and FM music to keep us awake while driving, we live our daily hours constantly bombarded with our own particular brand of music.

     Super markets pipe in "music to wheel our shopping carts by," restaurants offer electric organ selections or jukebox tunes for our eating and listening pleasure--even the dentist whisks soft strains through a PA system.

     Personally I kinda like that dead sound of absolutely nothing hitting my eardrums.  After a weekend of a radio swinging rock and roll from a bedroom--Stereo flinging out booming sound in the living room and TV bursting forth with a symphony, a sing-a-long or variety show--and the small phonograph owned by Son no.2 hitting the twist favorites--my station in the kitchen becomes a sounding board of snatches from each room, blending all the noise into a fine cacophony of sound.  So the absent silence of a Monday morning say around nine o'clock is deafening.

     There are several moods of music which are popular in this family.  Son no.1 likes things like "Victory At Sea", talking records, hootenanny, group singers and rock and roll.  Daughter, if and when she's around, likes symphonies or full scores of motion pictures.  Son no.2 enjoys Civil War songs, World War battle sounds, "1812 Overture" and parade and military marches.  Pop specializes in Dixieland and the big pipe organ music.  Now I'm partial to "Nostalgia" songs danced to and remembered fondly from proms or long dead romances.  The soft ballads sound sweeter to my ears than present day twist music.

     It probably would be rather nice if families agreed on this subject of music and enjoyed one variety.   For instance, any trip in our car calls for five voices trying to command one radio.  The choices are sports events from football, hockey, basketball, track, and naturally baseball which vie with the disk jockeys, rock and roll and twist.  Who wins?  Why naturally Pop as he is usually driving and has full control of the radio push buttons.

     But music is supposed to be an art which applies to organized sound.  in other words some of the way out yelling and hollering which is standard accompaniment for these short lived twist pieces wouldn't, no matter how you slice it, be considered music.

     Al teenagers go through a period of record collecting and listening, with volume turned up, to jump and jive records.  Isn't it nice though that it doesn't last to long, and gradually they settle into an enjoyment of the more standard types of music?  At least the kind that is passable and possible as background noises even though not necessarily your favorite selections.

     Since the record player replaced the old time Victor talking machine, our homes are constantly bombarded with sounds.  Remember when you were allowed to try out your selected records at the store, when record departments had little rooms equipped with phonographs?  Many an inexpensive evening of fun, when we were budgeting newlyweds, was spent listening to new records in the store.  We could spend an entire evening with our favorite music by just the purchase of a record or two for our collection of the 78's.

     According to Mozart "Music even in situations of the greatest horror should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music."

     I've a feeling that what is one fellow's music might be another's discord.  A good friend of mine dislikes most all but very classical.  Another hates anything with stringed instruments and another only listens to operas.

     The volume control probably is a big factor in musical enjoyment.  Soft background music is soothing and relaxing and many enjoy reading, eating and doing housework with the accompaniment of soft strains.  Ever notice the Stereo fan must be slightly deaf or always figures his audience is?

     "I know whether my record fan friends are a stereo fiend or just natural by how loudly he plays his phonograph," declares a friend.

     As Confucius say--"Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without."  To which I agree.  That is, if it's my kind of music.

Written November 9, 1964