Why You Should Start Listening to Vinyl Records – How-To Geek

Sales numbers for vinyl records have been surging for years, and for good reason. There’s something about listening to music on vinyl fabric that just doesn’t seem to have an analog in the digital realm.

Listen to Albums Instead of Just Songs

In most of our music listening, we’ve stopped listening in order to entire albums of songs the way people used to. While being able to instantly call up your favorite song or hear a playlist of potential favorites is nice, it can rip tunes from their intended context, weakening them as a result.

With a vinyl record, it’s possible to skip to a song by locating the right groove on the record, but it certainly isn’t easy. This almost forces you to listen to an entire album, hearing the tracks within the order the artist intended. This gives a flow to the music that is missing otherwise, and a person may even find you like certain music more or less due to the songs surrounding them.

A single vinyl report can hold around 15 to 20 minutes per side, maxing out at around 22 minutes. This particular means a single disc won’t have more than 45 minutes of music. For anything else, you’ll need a double album: two individual records packaged together.

This gives you a lot more options. Don’t have an hour-plus to listen to an whole double album? Play just one disc, and you’ll start in order to appreciate those songs more. Want to get to know a good album even better? Play all of them a side at the time.

Of course , to get the most out associated with your records, you’ll want to listen in order to them intently, instead of just letting them play in the particular background. It helps if you have a quality stereo or even some great-sounding headphones .

Read the Liner Notes

You may not notice when you listen to a single song in isolation, but artists put significant effort into every single aspect of a release. This means more than just the music, as this level of detail often goes into the particular packaging.

Services like Spotify and Apple Music can now show you lyrics alongside a song you’re hearing, and if they don’t have it, you may probably find the lyrics on Genius . That said, there can be something nice regarding reading the lyrics from the lyric sheet included with the particular record.

Some vinyl releases are barebones, but given the popularity, this isn’t all that common. Rather, artists devote extra time towards the plastic release, adding liner notes with details about the record that you may never discover online.

Don’t forget the credits, either. Especially with today’s productions, you may find an performer who consistently contributes songs or words to works by another designer you love, helping you expand your musical horizons.

Enjoy the Artwork

While we’re looking in the packaging of vinyl records, we’ve got to mention the artwork. Artists place plenty of time and effort into creating or collaborating on album art work that most individuals only ever see as a roughly one-inch square thumbnail on their own phone.

Even if you tap around the recording artwork to inspect this closer, the majority of music services don’t offer a way in order to get a good look at it. A vinyl fabric record, upon the other hand, gives you a detailed copy associated with the artwork a little over a square foot inside size.

Along with albums that I first heard digitally before buying the plastic, I’ve had many times when I’ve noticed details in the art work that I’d somehow missed countless occasions before. Looking over the particular artwork as the music plays is another great way to increase your own immersion in an artist’s work.

Vinyl is an Experience, Not Just a Sound

Hearing an record mindfully—putting aside your connected devices plus anything otherwise that takes your focus from the music—isn’t for everyone, yet it can be an incredible experience. It’s a great way to hear music for the first period or to revisit an project you’ve noticed more periods than you can count.

Even hunting for records can be fun. You don’t have to be a collector to keep an eye out for great deals at songs stores or even yard sales, but this can be a great way to grow your music library within the cheap .

If you’ve got a stereo system or even headphone setup you love, you’re already most of the particular way there. Just pick yourself out a turntable , pick up a few records, and start hearing .