Christmas Music! How to use a playlist on Flash Media

A big problem for me—as you can easily imagine—is to have some quality music to listen to while I’m reading or writing!  On one hand, I know dozens of pieces of music, and I have hundreds of CDs, each of which will have a cut or two that will do.  But what I need is music for a few hours, so that I don’t have to get up and change the record.  So I’m surrounded by water, but not a drop to drink, as the saying goes.

I whined at my daughter, who stopped me abruptly, and said there were two videos on YouTube that would almost certainly hit the spot for me, and she sent me links to them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE9Q4JN-Yek,

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myyAkYqykbs. 

Well, that would settle the whole issue, except for the fact that YouTube has peppered both videos with commercials!  So if you are more annoyed with commercials than you are starved for Christmas music, don’t put these on.  Instead of changing your records, you’re going to have to run to your device—phone, computer or tablet—and hit the “Skip Ads” link.

People have been making “Mix tapes” for centuries; collections of their favorite tunes to play on their portable tape recorders, until nobody had tapes anymore.  For those of you who are about my age, and whose tapes are about to quit, (and of course, those 8-track tapes have already quit long ago,) the latest thing is a Flash Drive.  This is a tiny gadget, one that also goes by the name of Thumb Drive, though it has absolutely nothing to do with Thumbs.  It is—well, I’m not going to tell you; it won’t help you at all—but it is something very much like a tape cassette; it stores “digital stuff”, or files.

Now, it isn't going to play it for you.  It is like a CD or a tape, not a tape player.  But if your receiver (which means radio) has a little socket that looks like a USB socket, the computer side of one, then chances are, if you insert the Flash Drive in there, your Receiver will play the music on your flash drive for you.  The things cost about $25, or even less.  There are also Flash Cards, which are the little cards like the ones that go into your phone.  (Note: don’t steal the one inside your phone; some of those phone memory cards contain all the phone numbers you need, etc.)  Some cameras also have these memory cards.  They're almost as good as a Flash Drive, except that you need to have a Receiver that has a slot for a memory card, or a Flash Reader that reads a Flash Card.  (Still, these Readers are not music players, unfortunately.  Luckily, your Radio is a Player, or could be.)

Something more likely to be a player is your DVD player.  My DVD player has a slot where you can slide in either a Flash Card, or a Flash Drive, and if the card or drive has music tracks, it plays them.  In fact, your TV set might turn itself on, and display a list of the tracks on the drive.  At the very least, it will display “Track 1, Track 2” and so on, for however many tracks are on the card or drive.

OK.  How are we supposed to get the music tracks onto the Flash Card or Flash Drive?  Let’s show you how to do it in the case where you don’t care what order the tracks are played in.  First, you have to “rip” these tracks into your computer from the CD that contains them.  Unless, of course, you bought them online from some Internet source such as Amazon, or Spotify, in which case they would have sold you these tracks, all ready to go, except of course, that they’re not on your Flashdrive (or card).

Plug your Flash device into your computer.  (The drive should show up on your Explorer.)  Use your mouse, and drag the files onto that drive; the system should tell you that the files were successfully copied to the Flashdrive or card.

Now, don't be in too much of a hurry to unplug your Flashdisk; there should be a little icon somewhere in a corner that alerts you to the fact that removable storage is connected to the computer.  It is usually in the lower right-hand corner.  Click on it, and it will ask whether you want to remove your Flashdisk.  Say yes, or just click on the question.  If the Flashdisk does not remain on the list, it has been disconnected, and you can pull it out.  (If you don't go through this rigmarole, you risk having some of your tracks not sent over, or having a broken track sent over.)

FINALLY, how to get these tracks played in some specific order you desire?  You need to make a playlist.  First you get the tracks installed on your Flashdisk as above.  Now you need to create a plain text file (I don't know exactly how plain text it has to be; I have only ever used Notepad, a legacy "App" from Windows, which only creates plain text.  (Plain text does not have italics, bold, or anything; you can create plaintext files in Word, for example, but it needs to be saved in a special way.  Ask your pre-schooler to help you.)

In the plaintext editor, write, in a single column, the names of the tracks in the order you wish them to be played.  The names have to be exactly as they are on the Explorer.  If any name is misspelled or altered in any way, that track will be skipped, and you will feel like a dolt.  Save the file with the name Playlist.m3u (assuming that all the music files you have put on your Flashdrive are in mp3 form), and put that (the playlist) too on the Flashdrive.  Now, when you slide your Flashdrive into your DVD player, it will (hopefully!) start playing the tracks listed on your playlist, in that order!  This is particularly useful in the case when you’re listening to an opera, or a favorite album, when the sequence of songs is familiar, and it would be disconcerting to have them playing in some random sequence.

Happy listening!

Arch

Messiah Sing-Along!

 The best Messiah Sing-Along I have heard this season is this one, from the Boston Haydn+Handel Society.

It is a distanced performance, with one instrument per part, and just a couple of singers per choir part.  (Or maybe just one.)  If you want to experience a really high-precision Messiah, appropriate to our pandemical circumstances, this one should serve, because it is on YouTube, and can be played on demand.

More later, after I finish watching, and trying to sing along!  (No, I haven't finished singing along.  They must be near the Shepherds' Scene...)

Arch

Joys of the Holidays: Hansel and Gretel, by Engelbert Humperdinck

Hansel and Gretel, the children’s opera by Engelbert Humperdinck (not the singer, but rather the 19^th century composer) has been, for most of a century, a beloved fixture of the holiday season.  Unfortunately, the population that enjoyed children’s opera, or even opera of any sort, has been in decline, and the new generation of TV executives is probably unwilling to program anything that couldn’t go head-to-head with the SuperBowl, and so I suspect that Hansel und Gretel will probably only be scheduled at 2:00 AM on a Sunday night.  The libretto is by Adelheid Wette, the sister of Engelbert H.  (The premiere of the opera was conducted by Richard Strauss, well known as an excellent conductor.)

‘Hansel’ is an abbreviation of Johannes, a common old German name—Mozart’s first name, incidentally—and the el ending of the name is a characteristically South German variant of the diminutive, I’m given to understand.

Likewise, ‘Gretel’ is an Alpine diminutive of Margaret.  So that should settle any questions in anyone’s mind about how exotic these names were; this is a story about Peggy and Johnny, the kids next door.

Even though the story (from the Brothers Grimm) is well known all over the world, and certainly in Germany, what is amazing about this opera is the music.  Engelbert Humperdinck was a Wagnerian, which means that he had adopted Wagner’s brilliant idea (which Korngold, and John Williams, and other Hollywood composers also used) of referring to various ideas, feelings, and events, with a characteristic, memorable snippet of melody, or harmony, or both, called Leitmotifs.

The Overture is a conventional potpourri overture, which is the most sensible choice for a children’s opera; if kids hear a catchy tune right at the beginning, before any action takes place, they’re likely to remember that tunelet when it makes its formal entrance.  (A major problem to be solved for Wagnerian composers is: how to introduce a Leitmotif, and anchor it to the intended idea.)  The first tune in the overture is the hymn-like tune to which is sung the Children’s Prayer; a sort of “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer in sung form.  Next is a fierce segment, depicting the Witch.  This is the violent aspect of the Witch, in contrast to the sneaky aspect of her! 

The Overture does contain fragments of all the important themes, but all adjusted to the needs of the overture, and not letting it degenerate into a mere catalog.  The evening prayer is its central melody, and ends up being a sort of anthem for the entire opera.  Next in importance is a jolly little tune that represents the playfulness and innocence of the two children.  Gretchen teaches her brother a little dance, and sings this little tune with the dance instructions.  These two tunes are the poster-boys for the entire opera, though neither of them, in my mind, have much to do with the plot.

The story is more elaborate than the basic one which English-speaking children learn; German versions of the story are typically a lot more elaborate.  Germans take their children a lot more seriously, based on their children's literature.

The story begins in the poor home of the children, and for reasons I cannot remember, the two kids find themselves in the woods, and unable to find their way back home.  Gretel—the older child, in the story—tries bravely to keep her brother’s mood cheerful (hence the little dance), and presently, they settle down to sleep, because it is getting dark and scary.

While they’re asleep, a whole ballet troupe of angels come and parade around them, to keep them safe through the night.  (A ballet sequence is common in most German operas.)

When they wake up in the morning, it becomes clear that the trail that Hansel believes he has laid down, to help them return home, has completely vanished.  The children are led further into the forest, until they stumble on the witch’s famous cottage.  The cottage, of course, is made of gingerbread and candy, and the hungry kids cannot help themselves, and pick off pieces of it to eat.  They hear a raucous voice from inside, calling: “Nibble, nibble mousie, nibbling at my housie!”  The kids are momentarily transfixed, and after much clever dialog, find themselves shut away in a little cage.

The rest of the story goes according to the conventional plan with the possible addition of a few hunters.  (One is led to speculate that the hunter lobby was strong in those times.)  The enormous ballet interlude lengthens the story by almost half an hour.  The kids return home, to find that all the financial tribulations have somehow been swept away, which is just as well, because they bring with them a score of formerly ensorcelled young people.  (As is well known, the death of a sorcerer releases all his or her spells.)

While Humperdinck was a serious musician, and his adherence to Wagnerian principles was serious, he keeps a careful eye on how palatable the melodies and the harmonies of this work are, to kids and their parents.  In the end, his efforts were well rewarded, though whether the man himself was rewarded I do not know; very little of his output is well known today.  H and G, though, deserves a century or two more of popularity.

Archie