Life, Living and Loving: Mrs. Fever’s September Song Project II – Apple Music

Music is a big part of my life, as a listener as well as a composer and performer. There’s no such animal as too much music and to the point where there’s a pretty good portion of my mind that always has music playing, whether it’s something I’ve heard before or something I’m composing.

I have both an iPad and an iPhone and I always made sure that I had my music loaded up from my huge stash kept on my computer – which ain’t even close to speaking to all of the music I still have on CD that I’m too lazy to put on my computer and a project, due to my laziness, I have been putting off for years now.

To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of Apple Music or any of the other services that offers music, like Amazon, Spotify, etc., because, like most people, I have my favorite kinds of music and, at least in the earlier days, none of them had the music that might pop into my head at any given time. So if I didn’t have the CD already and it wasn’t on my computer, bleh – the various services couldn’t be that good and more so when they say they have the music you want to listen to… and then they don’t.

But when I upgraded my iPhone, they were offering a year of Apple Music free and I thought that, well, it’s free so why not? I’d taken a look at the other services and my son-in-law gave Amazon Music some props but, after checking them out, nah – I wasn’t feeling them. So I signed up for the free year, put an entry in my calendar to cancel it before the year was up, and we’ll see if Apple Music really does live up to the advertised hype.

In reality, there’s a lot of music I can think of that Apple Music doesn’t have, either because they can’t or haven’t obtained the rights or, in a lot of cases, the music is literally no longer available – it’s “out of print” and like a lot of books are. When I have music on my mind, it’s usually the music I grew up with; yeah, some of it I do have on CD but, again, I’m just too fucking lazy to pull out my stash of CDs and put them on the computer so I can upload them to my devices. It really is easier to think of a song, pick up my iPhone or iPad, tap the Music icon, and go looking for it and with the thought that, chances are good, they’re not gonna have it.

Then be pleasantly surprised that they do have it and, yeah, often finding new music to listen to. I don’t remember which iOS update changed the way Apple Music behave but I was quite upset to find, after updating, that my music apps – other than the one that came with the phone/pad – could no longer see the music I had painstakingly uploaded from my computer – it was now all in Apple’s cloud. Okay… my music was “safe” in that sense but let’s face it: Apple’s music app just flat out sucks. No EQ to speak of or any other way that enhances what you hear and a reminder of why Apple pisses me off so much given how fucking proprietary they tend to be and, as such, not allowing the apps that gives me the best listening experience to access Apple Music in the cloud.

And there are few apps in the AppStore that meets my needs… and the ones I often see there includes a lot of shit I’m just not interested in, like radio stations that are streaming music I’m very much not interested in: I want to listen to what I want to listen to and when I want to listen to it and how I want to listen to it, damn it to hell!

Still, um, Apple Music, surprisingly, hasn’t disappointed me all that much when I think of a song, search for it, and find it, adding it to my ever growing collection – did I mention that I have a shitload of music? All kinds of music that covers my tastes? The good part in this is that despite whatever Apple has to offer, I still have access to my favorite music to listen to even if it’s now hanging out in the cloud – and it’s still on my computer so I guess it’s really a win/win.

The thing is that, for me, I can’t imagine a life without music. One of my biggest fears, when I had my stroke, was whether or not my ability to play an instrument was going to be lost and if I’d even be able to remember any of the music I love so much. My ability to play an instrument was, sadly, impacted; while I regained a lot of the fine motor skills required, I didn’t get it all back and I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it is to know I can, say, sit down at my Korg workstation and I know what to do… and I have a problem doing it the way I know how to. It’s… muscle memory as well as being able to remember what’s called for to be able to play a given instrument… but the brain is mysterious: I know how to do it but my hands and feet – because I’m also a drummer – can’t get back on the same page with each other.

I need my music. Even if playing it poses a problem, I need to be able to listen to whatever I feel like listening to and in the moment I wanna hear it. Like, I was watching a movie – or, really, the tail end of it – and I heard Brian McKnight’s, “Back to One,” a song I hadn’t heard, oh, since it came out – and one I knew I didn’t have in my library or on CD. I had my iPad in hand, exited out of the book I was reading and a few taps later, the song is mine… and along with three more of his songs that also happened to come to mind.

It makes paying that $9.99 every month worth it. Oddly enough, I recently signed up for Amazon Prime – something else I wasn’t really feeling so much but Amazon had something I needed right away so, okay, I needed Prime and got it. It comes with Amazon Music… and I haven’t even bothered to check it out… because I don’t need to but maybe I should; they could have something that Apple doesn’t.

Mrs. Fever picked September for a music meme project… but for me? Every day is a musical meme for me; I pretty much live for music. It’s been an integral part of me since I was seven years old, having been bitten by the music bug when our church organist sat me down at the gigantic, four manual keyboard and showed me how I could make it do music. I could barely reach the lower manual but I managed it… and I was hooked after she taught me how to play “Chopsticks.” Today, I think she’d be proud to know that I learned how to play such a big organ and can play something other than “Chopsticks.”

I know music. I can read it. Perform it with and on various instruments. I can compose it, write it using notation that I trained hard to learn and, of course, I listen to it and hear it playing non-stop in my head.

How’s that for a meme?