Rainy Days And Vinyl.

Rainy Days and Vinyl.

For the first time in a few months of fine and dry weather (yes we did have record breaking floods early in the year) we had a couple of heavy rain showers today with about 31 mm so far in our rain gauge, with the promise of more rain showers overnight. I don't know why it is so, but rain and playing vinyl somehow goes together nicely. Actually I was hoping for a fine day today as it was yesterday, as I purchased seven more LP's from my favourite charity store yesterday in our nearest city including three albums of superb acoustic Classical guitar by John Williams, and a quick play to one of them revealed that a good wash over the laundry basin and an air dry in the sun was necessary!

Unfortunately, it rained today! Well it was nice to see the rain and the rather dead looking brown grass in our yard already has a tinge of green thanks to the rain! Anyway, helped along by a family hair dryer I did manage to wash and dry one of the John Williams albums and it came up very well, still a few clicks and pops remaining, but a vast improvement over its original unwashed state, and it is superb music played by a true master on that instrument! I simply love Classical acoustic guitar music. Ah, the seductive sounds of the Spanish countryside!

To my way of thinking, acoustic guitar just sounds so much better on vinyl than CD. I have a couple of Classical acoustic guitar albums on CD, and whilst they sound very nice, only vinyl seems to impart that sense of realism, dynamism and ambience to Classical acoustic guitar. Years ago I recall reading that the human voice was perfect for auditioning the midrange performance of a high fidelity system. I agree with that, however when it comes to acoustic musical instruments, I think the acoustic guitar is a great test of the general quality of a high fidelity system, as reproduced off vinyl of course, particularly in areas such as transient 'attack' and general ambience and realism.

Although all the musical instruments are capable of wonderful sounds, the guitar in all its forms has such a wonderfully seductive and exotic sound to me. For sheer relaxation I find acoustic guitar, well played of course, a musical experience with no peer! Once again I read that any 'plucked' musical instrument has a uniquely complex tonal and harmonic structure and as such it takes a superb audio system to do justice to it. When I was younger I was quite keen about learning to play acoustic guitar, however I never ended up taking any lessons so these days I spend my time as an appreciative listener of others who can play that instrument well!

I guess that I'm not only referring to the acoustic guitar in that context....yes electric guitar too. Well, I am a fan of one Jimi Hendrix after all! Thinking about the great guitarists, it occurs to me that the guitar has become inextricably a part of numerous musical genres such as Jazz, Blues and Rock and the well known guitarists are always instantly recognisable through their style. An example, early this morning before sunrise I switched on my bedside radio and some guitar music was being played. I heard about one second of it and I thought, 'B.B King'. Yes he's that instantly recognisable!

I guess that the playing of the instrument directly reflects a very tangible and human thing, almost an extension of the players hands, which I guess it is. No robot or computer can do that (I sincerely hope!). I see a similar thing in Amateur Radio in the use of 'Morse Code'. People with use this mode (I still do occasionally), although now thoroughly 'ancient' in the minds of some, and who use a straight hand key to generate the Morse Code characters are often instantly recognisable by their style or 'fist' to use Ham Radio parlance! Yes, the direct human touch, that's something so wonderful in music!

Well, anyway perhaps tomorrow I'll get to wash and dry a few more records, with a little luck. Mmmmm, that sounds like a song title! However perhaps not, as I believe more rain is forecast for tomorrow. We'll see. I'm itching to listen to the remaining John Williams albums, along with the other records I purchased yesterday. More to come! Felix.