Collecting & Listening – Why we Accumulate So Many Discs

Proposition 8:

Senior members of the board have a wealth of knowledge on the great music available out there. They share this knowledge through these boards. Junior members such as yours truly just cannot resist following these suggestions because we are in awe of the beauty of the music.

Proposition 9:

Music sounds so good on a Naim that it is virtually addictive. It is better to have this sort of addiction rather than other vices of the world.

quote:

Proposition 7. Whereof we can not speak, thereof we must be silent.

Very droll!

Being old is one reason, why I have so many (approx2500) albums, CD/LP/DA, compared to some a low amount.I also never get rid of any except duplicate copies.

True it would take some time to play them all, but I wouldn't. I know there a many that will never get played,inherited ones and frankly unplayable (LPs) that had visited parties etc.

Other things change,I am now in a position to fill some of the gaps left when I couldn't afford more than 1 may be 2 albums a month.

Also my taste has changed ,or more accurately expanded, so my collection has expanded too.

I like BigH47 have a larger than normal collection of music.

I go through periods of playing different styles of music for months on end only to change to another style once I get a little bored.

I posted this in another thread recently as my decision to try an make a lean mean collection without any filler and not to buy on a whim or hype.



I made a decision a couple of years ago to cut down on buying new music and concentrate on particular artists, genres or labels that have come to my attention. There can be many reasons but the main one is of a respect from others about the quality of their output respectively. So I joined Rough Trades album club to keep an ear on what was happening on the new music front and started to look into artists, labels and genres that I already had an interest in and to keep an ear out for respected artist, labels and genres that others were enthusiastic about. So in my mental list I have things like exploring Prog Rock (and all its derivatives) from the early until recent bands, Italian House and Disco, Classical and modern Jazz. Labels like ECM, ACT, Warp, Soma, Domino and also celebrated artists like Robert Wyatt, Nick Cave, Bob Dylan, Monolake, Vladislav Delay and the list grows longer. Now I stay away from the interwebz for buying because I have access to loads of record shops and the thrill of not knowing what I'll walk out of a shop with is great and hopefully I will not have a lot of hyped up filler in my collection that can result from buying on impulse.



Dean..

A very nice summary tpia. I cannot disagree with anything you wrote. There is some truth in all the points.

For proposition 2, I would add a 2a. As a Hunter-Gatherer myself, I have to admit that behind the "fun" of it is also the slightly pathological, neurotic, obsessive nature of addiction. Everyone has some addiction and I'm just thankful mine has to do with music. Related to this is the thrill of something new and the hope and anticipation connected with each new purchase. I'm always looking for something to better the best. Of course, I intuitively know that the reality is different and you will never win in this pursuit.

For most people, buying more expensive Hi-Fi takes discipline and planning and years and years of financial commitment. Buying CD's on a weekly basis, in comparison, is low risk and seems innocuous. It's a small, easy thing to do and gets us pleasure in the moment. Buying things does release some pleasure chemicals in ours brains doesn't it and you can only eat so much chocolate.

Also, being that Hi-Fi and the Music Software are highly complimentary (as opposed to substitutes) we always have two choices. Buy more hardware at the expense of the software or buy more software at the expense of the hardware. (I'm speaking of a typical person who has competing interests for the dollars in their pocket). What has complicated this relationship is the rapidly falling "monetary" value of music. It isn't difficult these days (especially in classical) to get a larger collection quickly if you pick up the box sets. Even accounting for inflation, with the same dollar I had 20-25 years ago I can buy at least 20 time more music today.

Lastly, I'm still from the old school as far as my buying preferences are concerned. I like to buy things physically so that I have evidence of this purchase for the rest of my life. Then someone following this also has something tactile to hold and relate to and a connection to me. I also collect because I like choice. When I focus in on an interest at a particular time I can decide what I feel like listening to for whatever reason. And it's convenient to have it at your ready.

I don't ever want to buy MP3's and the like in this digital world. By going on a massive buying spree now I think I am also protecting myself for the future when you can no longer buy the physical good anymore. I only wish I had boughten more LP's when they were the main choice.

Regards,
Doug

Florestan - nice addendum. Dopamine and prices and insurance.

Oh, and I should add that I also accumulate so many discs simply because I like completeness. If I like a certain artists this causes me to want all of their recordings (and I like variety and different points of view). If I like a certain composer, this causes me to want to hear it all to. Just doing the math explains why I'll eventually need to build a shed in the backyard to store everything.

Three things drive the expansion of our collection of recordings :

1 - One of us will read about a piece of music in a text, and then acquire a recording, to feed the music history bug.

2 - Because we have an interest in performance practice, we try to have representative recordings of the same music from different decades, allowing comparisons.

3 - someone will recommend a recording on this forum, and we scratch that itch.

So our collection is a resource for research into music, as much as anything else.

My current collection runs to c 4000 LPs and singles, 1500 CDs, and 1000 DVDs

There's no doubt that I'm an avid collector of AV "software" and my reasons for collecting are :

1. TV series where I missed the earlier episode
2. Recommendations from friends/relatives
3. Investigating the output of various classical composers - that, for instance, is why I have the full Teldec set of Bach Cantatas. The only thing that annoys me about that set is I have it all on LP (complete with scores), but the last 2 volumes were CD only (without scores)
4. To hear various pieces (such as operas) which are rarely or never broadcast
5. My music purchases soared when I got my first Linn/Naim setup.

The only thing I would pass on is that over the years I have gradually come to believe that with popular artists (be they Country, Heavy Metal or whatever) it's usually not worth owning more than 2-3 albums, as they seem to start repeating themselves.

Basically, I just enjoy collecting - although I am trying to reduce my rate of purchase (problems of storage!) 8-)

Like many I have discs that I play regularly and others that are rarely if ever spun up. However by owning a collection of albums, I am provided with choice, and when the whim to hear a particular piece of music is upon me, generally it is at my fingertips.

I would like to think that on the whole I have collected the music I like rather than simply accumulate discs.

In a similar vein I have built a collection of DVDs, books and whisky. I may not watch, read or drink all my collection all the time, but it is there to dip into if I want to.

On the other hand I have a collection of about 400 vinyl albums gathering dust that I don't listen to, so ownership of this collection does seems pointless.

I suppose I am verging on being an anti-collector these days.

In 1991 I had about 900 LPs and about two feet along the shelf of CDs in those days. At that time I sold most of my LPs to help finance a major restoration on a London made double bass from about 1780. Over the years my CDs built up to over 800, but now the count is about 520. [24 days worth of music played from end to end, hard to imagine anything escaping being listened to over a year period].

I work more or less on a one in one out system these days. The way it works is I consider any recording not listened two for a couple of years and consider if I will ever listen to it again. If not then the CD goes to Oxfam and I delete it from the iTunes folder.

I have really only repurchased about half a dozen CDs over the last seven years since I implemented the policy of not keeping the redundant recordings.

Some works are represented by considerable duplication in different recording even so.

ATB from George

I'm not sure I'd describe myself as a collector - I think collectors sensu stricto acquire recordings for reasons other than to listen to them. I've got an awful lot of recordings I must admit, including rather a lot of recordings of the same piece in some cases, but I'm interested in different approaches, and a variety of performances helps offset the problem of over familiarity. Plus I like to have a well-recorded version of a piece even if I tend to prefer an old crackly mono one. I don't get rid of recordings unless I don't like them, basically. Unfortunately, looking back over the past 15-20 years, I've also got rid of a number of recordings I really wish I'd kept.

The only drawbacks to a large collection are :

1. Space
2. Knowing what you have and finding it when you want it. I compromised on keeping the whole lot in 2 Word Files (Classical and Popular). When I want to find something, I do a word search (keep them on my iPhone as well)
I also have a separate Database file for spoken word/radio comedy and suchlike.
All of the record cataloguing systems I've looked at so far don't seem to cope particularly well with compilation albums.
After all, often I'm just looking for particular song or classical snippet.

I think German band Can explained the reason we collect on one of their many appearances on TOTPs - please click here

I have a large vinyl collection , (so Mrs Lutyens keeps telling me) and a fairly large cd collection. ( I also have several boxes of cassettes in the attic which I don't listen to now and we won't talk about yet).

Music has always been part of my life from my parent's membership of The World Record Club, which brought me to Mendelssohn's Incidental Music for A Midsummers Dream and the music from Calamity Jane sung by Doris Day, via Paul Robeson and Beethoven to the first record I bought to go with my portable record player for christmas in 1969 which was Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme by Simon and Garfunkel, (I still have it and listen to it and still think it is wonderful and note an Lp none of this 7inch single stuff). At school we generally managed to buy different records so that we could listen to as much as possible, Nic Penny got Dark Side of The Moon and I had ELP Pictures In An Exhibition etc. Most of my pocket money was spent on music, not necessarily the most popular but the music I was interested in ( some of which was popular ) but also included jazz and classical and particularly reggae.
At college I went to gigs.......those were the days of the student union circuit from John Martyn to Stackridge etc. I bought the records to remember and listen over and over again, to hear how they thought, to hear where they were going.

At different times I would find a new area of music and as there was no other access to it, it meant buying it, Blue Note, Romantic Symphanies etc. You occasionally found a library with pristine records...Wood Green circa 1978/9 with lots of Irish folk, Planxty etc. ( this is were the tape came in useful but actually the tape usually taped the album I had just bought so that the tape could be leant, played at parties and I would still have an lp! An Lp was never lent. A tape was entirely disposable.

As I got older while I continued to buy popular music, the only way to hear new music was to buy it! Radio was limited. Alexis Korner on sunday introduced me to JJ Cale, John Peel to obscure reggae and Punk, Andy Kershaw and Charlie Gillett to 'world' music. Or as Van says (paraphrasing)Radio 3 with Debussy on sunday mornings.

I still do this. I buy to explore. Radio has got better but I still buy because someone here has said have we heard about the latest Tomas Stanko. I read George and Mike talk about certain recordings of Bach/Mozart/Elgar and want to listen to them.

And the 'need' to find more about certain corners of music still tugs, I will buy music for small string orchestras almost without thinking, or by english composers. Most of this is somewhere and most often on vinyl....which is fortunate!....because to me there is nothing like the anticipation of taking out a thin slab of black plastic from its sleve and putting in on the gramophone and waiting to being washed in it.

Mrs Lutyens realises it keeps me out of trouble although I get grumpy if I haven't been able to listen to it for a few days.......hence the system at work!....and if truth be told I have begun to realise that I will visit my favourite second hand record shop and buy music when I am completely snowed under at work and need a break...buying it in the anticipation of listening to it in that break seems to compensate if you know what I mean........but that's maybe just me!

When my eldest two daughters were at school and doing music they would get home and check whether my collection had the peice of music they had just done. The in joke was simply 'yeh we know that, my dads got it'. ( I had something to talk to one of teachers usefully about!). In their mid twenties they have always had music in their life too from opera ( cd seemed the only way to listen to this as changing records halfway through an aria was a real pain) to country ( songs as my father would and still says are about dead dogs and lost women!). My eldest daughter seems to postively seek out obscure Hank Williams and Johnny Cash tracks at the same time as playing Lady Gaga.

Age has brought me new undiscovered areas and buying it still seems to be the only way to explore that too. I am lucky in that I have some 'disposable' income for this essetial part of my life, and although I really would like a MFSL copy of Thick as a Brick to replace my original and well played one, I am just as happy if not more so with the £5 copy of Philip Catherine who I would never had heard of or listened to if I had not just taken a chance.

Age seems also to have taught me that now is for Part or for Van Morrison more quickly.

So I will have to move to fit the collection in soon....but it does get played...mostly! Mr Catherine will move into the shelves for a while while Mr Cockburn comes out. Then they will swap.

Now back to Mr Brand ( yes he was still that on this album that I found a few days ago. Not yet Mr Ibrahim)and then on to Mr Davis by way of Mr Morgan and his new found land

atb
james

1. I buy records that sometimes stay on the shelf or on the floor for days, weeks sometimes years just in case i need something to listen to i did not before or just in case i got records in the wrong moment.

2. I do not have a collection but a lot. This keeps me free from the "filing clerk" syndrome.

3. I do not consider the value of my lot in coins.
My father once did try to but only to create a sense of guilt that i do not have

4. The meaning of the word "record" is in the possibility of taking back something that happened.
Many start listening to music using a radio set and then they decide to start buyin' what, in their own meaning, they consider nice.
We do the same thing when we buy a camcorder and take clips of wife, children, animals, holidays etc
We of course do not spend our days watching those clips again and again but we do it when we think this can generate pleasure.
So we create or buy records, of what we think can give us pleasure, to have them close at hand when we want to take a feeling back in the more faithful way possible.

5. Music and gears consumption are related only in the case you are not the happy owner of Naim Audio stereo set.
Indeed many "hi-fi" gurus do not have a records lot like mine but keep on listening always to the same things.
That's when music is not music at all but only a comparison tool for gears.
So they sit home and listen to a cable or to a spike while i'm jumping up and down the room (yes i can).

6. This forum is splitted in different areas.
If you don't want to feel the pain just ask the moderator to close your permission to enter the Hi-Fi corner and you'll be safe from all those capitalists.
That's a step in recovery.

Welcome to the Naim forum.
:]