I have about 1,800 mp3 tracks in my personal collection, all carefully selected, all significant to me in one way or another. Which ones are on my Favourites playlist? Shall I reveal?
Why not? These are the tracks that I would mention, if discussing my approach to life on some programme. There are only seventeen of them. Some appeal to the emotions. Others are calming. Here they are, in playing order:
Edge of Night, otherwise known as Pippin's Song, from The Lord of the Rings film The Return of the King. I have two versions, one with the background sounds of battle, one without them.
Farewell, by Apocalyptica.
The Watch Chimes, otherwise known as Carillon's Theme, from Ennio Morricone's score for the film For A Few Dollars More.
The Glasgow Love Theme, from the film Love Actually. I have two versions, by Craig Armstrong and Jacques Legrand.
La Route Est Dure, sung by Georgia Brown. This was the theme song for the 1970 BBC2 TV drama The Roads To Freedom, based on the works of Jean-Paul Sartre.
Lady D'Arbanville, sung by Cat Stevens.
Like An Angel Passing Through My Room, by ABBA.
The Love Theme by Vangelis, from the film Blade Runner.
Miserere by Allegri, sung by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge.
The hymn O Holy Night, sung by Aled Jones.
Parce Mihi Domine, sung by The Hilliard Ensemble with saxophone by Jan Garbarek.
Rejoice in the Sun, sung by Joan Baez, from the film Silent Running.
Soldier Blue, sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie, from the film of the same name.
Sparrow, sung by Mary Hopkin.
The main title theme to the film Where Eagles Dare.
It would be nice to provide links to this music, but Blogger won't let me. However, I dare say that many readers will if curious simply turn to the speaker in their room and say 'Alexa! (or Google!) Play me Sparrow by Mary Hopkin', or whichever of my favourites catches their eye.
Although these are my favourite tracks, I wouldn't say they are typical of the others in my collection, which on the whole are much likelier to get your feet moving, or your hands reaching for that air guitar! It's a very eclectic collection. Half of it can arguably be dismissed as Top of the Pops fodder. The other half not so easily, I think.
I bought a tiny Alexa machine in a sale to see what it could do. A friend suffering with dementia was finding trouble with remotes and his wife had bought the amazon device to try and help him and I wanted to understand why he was having trouble with his voice assistant too.Both of us , so I thought, had clear standard English voices but the machines rarely understood what we said! I tried setting it up to turn on a light but that stopped working and could never link up again. As you suggested you could request songs but it usually went on a rant about having to sign up to a monthly service, a month trial of that showed that it could not always find them either! I doubt that older folk are their target audience / customer base.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that it was good at playing audio books but I just fell asleep. Now it is living in the garage so that I can ask it the time when I go out there to repair things.
Until these things are 100% stable and reliable they proved to be useless for my disabled friend...
Well, they seem to work well for some other people I know. But I don't want one.
ReplyDeleteYou have to think before you speak, and your requests/instructions must be clear and unambiguous. It's easier to press the right buttons yourself, I'm thinking.
Lucy
My friend, very well mannered but sadly dead now, could only speak to Alexa as if she was fully sentient, it could be hilarious!
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