Mp3

I’m a self-professed Apple product nut. I have an iPod Classic, iPod Touch and a MacBook Pro. However, I am more than a little perturbed with my iPod classic. It’s a 4th or 5th generation, and honestly I can’t remember which generation because Apple comes out with newer versions of everything. Anyway, I used to have all my music 120gbs loaded onto my iPod at one time. Unfortunately I lost my external HD (it held tons of music)  and my iPod went nuts after that. I’ve reset the device twice already. It keeps giving me error messages and the like, which really pisses me off.

I collect music. No I don’t collect music, I hoard the stuff. If I had it my way, I’d be on that Horders television show with tons of CDs, Lp’s and collectors items.Wouldn’t that be interesting, a room just  I live for the record store and I’m probably one of a handful of Generation Y kids that still buys physical copies of albums, instead of those lousy compressed Mp3 flies. Yet here I am, ironically complaining about an Mp3 player that is probably 5 years old.

I don’t know what people did before Mp3s, CDs, or tapes. I remember my first SONY Walkman, walking around with cassettes or homemade mix tapes was such fun.  Now the Walkman is all but defunct. Nevertheless I still crave my music to be at my fingertips. What do I want to listen to? Madonna? Barbra Streisand? Styx? Pink Floyd?

I remember not too long ago, actually it was two years ago, I wanted to do my Honors Thesis on a music related topic. At my university, it was a requirement to prepare an Honors Thesis in order to graduate with a diploma from the Honors college. The sky was the limit, you could pick any topic (pending approval) and write to your hearts content. The Thesis room inside the Honors Building is filled with all sorts of papers on a myriad of topics, I was instantly in love.

I’ve always wanted to do a big research project on music. Researching one particular artist and a certain aspect about their craft that has always fascinated me.

Being the music lover that I am, a tuning forked pinged inside my head. A440 sounded bright and cheerful,  and my mind hummed the classic note. Streisand, I thought. But not just any thing regarding the entertainment icon. No, no. I wanted to do a project on the art of arranging.

You see, I’m a piano player. A pianist. I’ve been at the keys since I was a toddler. Ever since I was four years old, my family dreamed of me becoming the next Horowitz or Liberace. Sadly, that never materialized. I still play piano with a fervor and passion all my own. The same passion I have for the piano has inexorably permeated to other areas.

I love how music is created, how it is crafted. I thought it would be cool to trace the steps of how arrangers, composers, musicians and producers go about crafting music for a particular artist (i.e. Streisand). I wanted to focus on a one album in her career and go from there. I’ve researched and researched and asked around for possible interviews. Yet, nothing has come to fruition. It’s always been a dream to talk to Ms. Streisand herself. The perfectionist and task master doesn’t listen to her own recordings, nor does she think about a project after completion. But, how does she know what she wants from an album? How does an artist of her calabre know who to turn to for arranging an album? There is so much to think about, so many questions to ask.

As I sit here and contemplate why my iPod has decided to stop working, I’m reminded of the dreams I have and the ideas that are filed away, in some dusty drawer of my brain – marked “Someday.” Someday, I will write that paper, Someday I will to visit Columbia Records, Someday I hope to meet my musical heroes.