Classical Music and Jazz Compilations for Training Your Ears – High-Fidelity CDs for Testing Audio Equipment (2)

1.Prologue

We live in a day and age when we can instantaneously obtain pretty much any song that we wish on demand through services like iTunes Store. And we can listen to songs on streaming services like Spotify till our ears bleed. So there may be some out there who feel that CDs have become obsolete.

However, the music you can get your hands on through platforms like these are often subpar in terms of sound quality; many of them deal chiefly in music data that is MP3 quality or equivalent. MP3s are about 1/10th the size of the music files on CDs, meaning the sound quality is compromised—although when listening through the type of in-ear headphones that come with smartphones or a computer’s internal speakers, it’s difficult to notice anything amiss. In other words, the sound quality is the bare minimum required for the music to be listened to without any issues. Like background music at a restaurant, you are only passively listening, but if you’re more of an active listener, MP3s will not cut it for music.

Have you ever listened to music on one of these streaming services and then later had trouble remembering what exactly you listened to? These days when I ask people what kind of music they listen to, I get many answers along the lines of “I listen to a lot of different music, but it’s on a streaming service, so I don’t have a specific musician or song title..." The extent of the conversation becomes “I’ve heard this somewhere before."

Unlike a radio DJ—who chooses new records and unleashes them onto the airwaves as if they were secrets they couldn’t keep to themselves any longer, or who goes to the trouble of digging up old gems that audiences need to know—the internet, while it wins out in terms of sheer volume of music, lacks the discerning eye to separate the wheat from the chaff.

CD music compilations don’t suffer from either of these problems: in most cases they are chosen (or to use a more current term, “curated") by a professional who is knowledgeable in the genre, and the sound quality is considerably superior to MP3. Depending on the disc, a CD can hold up to 79 minutes and 30 seconds of music. That number may seem pointless in an internet of ostensibly infinite capacity, but it serves as a quality control mechanism: there is space only for what is necessary.

Good compilations are a collection of music that should be considered required listening. They are enlightening, enriching experiences that educate the listener and refine their taste in music.

2.On good music and good sound quality

Let’s begin with some classical music and jazz compilation CDs.

What is good music? What is good sound quality? These are eternal questions. Ultimately, I suppose the answer depends on a person’s preferences. But in order to have tastes in music in the first place, you need a baseline—a certain amount of listening experience, a reliable standard by which to judge other music.

If you want to get a sense of what good music and good sound quality is, my recommendation is familiarizing yourself with classical music and jazz, both traditional yet universal genres.

Of course, both classical music and jazz have their own pantheons of music and musicians that would take a lifetime to get through, and for someone new to the genre it is difficult to know where to start.

That’s where compilations come in. Listen and compare, and get a sense of what you may like.

Japanese record companies and record stores like Tower Records (which lives on in Japan...) put out a range of compilations that are surprisingly well thought out.

To those visiting Japan, I recommend seeking out some of these CD compilations; these Japan-only releases make great souvenirs.

3.Classical music compilations

For beginners, listening to full-on symphonies may not be the best place to start. Symphonies are long, and as a point of entry will not do anything to dispel the notion that classical music is “boring".

Compilations lower the bar for entry by bringing together the “best" (read: catchiest) parts of different classical music pieces, making it easier for listeners to get a general sense of what kind of composers and what kind of forms (symphonies, concertos, opera, etc.) they might be into.

At its best, classical music is food for the soul, a waterfall of sensual pleasures. Once you fall down the rabbit hole, you start to pick up on subtle differences between different performances of the same piece by different musicians in different venues.