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!
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