The Amazingness of Technology

I finally have joined the iPod wave. For this year of renovations at work, I realized that I would not have my old reliable CDs and stereo system attached to my cart, so I asked for an iPod. Now, I am NOT an apple person AT ALL, so the decision to get an iPod was carefully considered and extremely difficult for me. I decided the iPod was the way to go since my iTunes program was more easily accessed using work's network and servers than Windows Media Player or the whole Zune fiasco. I also like the 160GB of memory that allows me to sync most of my music library to one device...

So, I am now getting used to the iPod. My clients seem to enjoy the fact that there is something for everyone on that little box. They do not understand why I bought the iPod classic rather than the Touch version - I did it so I would have a bit of control over what they were seeing and listening to...

This just amazes me.

When I started my career as a music therapist, CDs were the newest thing - pretty interesting and rather expensive. Most of my therapy music was on cassette tapes and records. Of the two, records were more efficient when it came to switching music quickly and in response to the client's musical needs and wishes. They were bulky - you had to bring the record and the record player to a session. There wasn't much space available in my bag, but I made some space for the recordings.

For the past several years, I have kept going with my old standbys, my CD burner and my specifically burned playlists. It was easy to sit at the computer and make a list of songs developed for specific students at specific times. Sure, there were lots of CDs and CD books, but it was easy to take a CD book and have hundreds of songs available to me for a session, but now...

Now I have all of my music with me, all of the time. I like that I can access my classical music and my obscure children's songs and my Tibetan chant with a couple of minutes of pre-planning and some scrolling.

For the record, I still am not a fan of apple products - I don't think like the folks at Apple - never have and never will. I like that I can organize playlists, but I don't like that I have to use the computer to do so rather than the device itself. I don't like that I can't delete songs from my iPod without hooking it into the computer, and the fact that my iTunes account is not always compatible with my work's server either, but it is still better than the days of lugging around the record player and tons of records.

I absolutely cannot wait for the days when I can use my eyes to scroll through a list of music and activate a playlist with a simple word command...

Someday.