Tag: Music

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Wow! The other half had a lot of musical scores in digital format.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a filing system for either Paper or Digital scores.

Screenshot 2023 09 30 at 7 29 50 AM

I’ve been trying to collect up all the music (Digital and Paper), and sort it with the intention of making sure that it got to the people that could use it and who would appreciate the effort.

I’m using a 32GB thumb drive now and unlike previous attempts will hopefully not run out of space.

I’ve also been finding a lot of duplications. I suspect that is in part due to the lack of a filing system and in part it might be further evidence that he’d been “off” for a while and was doing a damn fine job of hiding that fact from me.

No, I’m not angry about it. I’m just a little sad. He did his life, his way, as do I. We called “Shotgun” on each other’s journey through life and rode together for a long time. It’s cool, even if I am a little sad about the way things went from time to time.

As an aside, I have no clue how music is supposed to be catalogued, or indexed, or anything else.

I’m just doing what seems “Right” with the music much the same way I’ve done with every other curveball that’s come my way over the past 10 months.

In addition to the actual musical scores, some of which are only identifiable by opening them. (I’m fixing that slowly but surely.) I’ve also run into actual recordings where he was playing and recording into GarageBand either via a MIDI connection or he was using a microphone. Hearing him play has been somewhat jarring because I recognize his style and technique. It’s okay, but I’m still prone to crying over stuff like that, because the memories of him practicing a particular piece come flooding back. 

I’ll be a little sad over not being annoyed and hiding out in the office as he played the same measure over and over again trying to get it just right. In a way it was like RAP with Classical music!

I hate RAP!

As I typed that, I was smiling through misty eyes.

I’m sorting the music as best I can. If something has Hebrew characters in it, then it’s obviously going into the Jewish music folder. If it’s written in Russian It’s probably a fair bet that too is going to be Jewish Music. That is also true of German and Spanish.

I’m so out of my depth!

I’ve been looking for keywords in the scores. If I find anything that is recognizably Hebrew or Yiddish I know where to file it.

Christian music is a little easier because there I only have to scan for “Jesus” or Holy Ghost or Father, Son and Holy Spirt. You don’t find those kinds of references in Jewish Music.

Things start to get dicy when there are no lyrics, only the musical notation. If the title isn’t obvious, then I’m in a bit of trouble. 

If I can sound it out and recognize the roots or the rhythm of the piece  then I’ve got a shot at getting it in the right place. Some music is instantly recognizable as Jewish when you hear it.

I recognize the names of many classical pieces, or at least the composer so those scores go into the Classical Folder.

But wait! There’s more…

The harp music, the organ music, the piano, harpsichord, and even accordion music is all in one big assed digital pile.

For him, this presented no problem. He’d open an arrangement and know exactly what instrument it was for just by looking. Hell, I think sometimes he didn’t care what the score said the instrument was supposed to be. I think he’d just figure it out on the fly. That’s what a classically trained musician can do. It’s a skill built up over a lifetime and it’s amazing to watch in action.

I’ve been trying to sort the Harp and keyboard music into separate folders. Some of the folks that will be looking at this are classically trained musicians, but others aren’t.  Some of the amateur choir members can carry a tune and read music, but I know the other half curated very carefully what he gave to the choir.

It wasn’t about him disrespecting them, it was about not wanting to frustrate them with super busy scores. Sometimes he’d sit down and manually do choir only notation as a new file that he’d print here. Then we’d assemble the choir books if he wanted or needed my help.

I was probably next to useless because I didn’t read music. But I could follow instructions, run the printer, punch holes in pages, and we’d be spending the time together.

I know I could just hand all of the over to “Real” musicians instead of a hack like me. One reason that I don’t is because also mixed in this big pile of musical scores are receipts, and medical evaluations, and all the usual documents that one accumulates. So I have to be the one that filters all of this stuff out. 

Some of the pieces of music where he’s actually playing are in Apple only formats. Not a problem for me… But the Synagogue and Church are Windows based. So I’m letting my super fast computer handle processing the music into something universally playable. That takes time. Not much in the way of computer time, but time listening to the various edits and editions to determine which one is most likely to be the “Final” version that he’d want distributed.

Perhaps I’m doing all of this as much for me, and the other half, as I am for the Synagogue and Church.

It’s tedious, and time consuming. But I’m hoping to construct something that he’d be proud of. 

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So Sirius & I are done.

I’ve had  Sirius for more than a decade.

Originally, they were pretty cool and the variety of programming was a delight to listen to.

Then slowly things changed. The “News” Stations got more and more left and I just stopped enjoying the spin that was on everything.

I tried the conservative stations, and they were mostly people screaming all the time.

I settled on the Spa Channel and enjoyed it. It was pretty much the only channel I listened to. LA Freeway traffic is stressful and that channel seemed to be mellow all the time.  Except when Sirius decided to stop playing Spa and play something they thought was important. A George Michael week? Ugh!

As to many of their other stations, I simply wasn’t interested. I don’t like RAP. I couldn’t stand their ideas of a nice Rock & Roll set. Talk radio was like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard, and many of their other “Themed” stations were either annoying or completely mis-named.  No matter what, I always ended up on the Spa channel, and after a while, I stopped even checking out the other stations.

I’d purchased a lifetime subscription for my 1 Series and enjoyed never having to think about the Spa channel being on if I wanted it.

When the car was totaled in 2017 Sirius told me that I couldn’t have the subscription transferred to another car. (More on that later.) 

I went ahead and activated Sirius in the new car, and when I changed to the 440 I transferred that subscription. 

That transfer process was a nightmare and I really thought about pulling the plug more than once during that call.

Late in December 2020, I got an email saying that there was a class action lawsuit regarding Sirius and their lifetime subscriptions. With all the chaos around the election, my life, being unemployed, and oh yeah, my health insurance being cancelled. I never got back to the Sirius email. There is, after all only so much time you can spend on the damn phone before you’re over it!

What I didn’t notice was that the deadline to respond was Jan 12th 2021. Somehow I thought it as the end of January… I missed the deadline of Jan 12th. DAMNIT!

But I got to thinking about the Sirius subscription. 

With fingers crossed, I went to their site and OMG! My id and password actually worked. 

(This was surprising since the last few times I’d tried to log on, I was met with password and user ID issues.  These issues persisted even after multiple password resets. This is part of what made my last phone call to Sirius such a pain in the butt. Well, that and the fact that like so many companies they’ve put their call center in the Philippines so with a static filled connection and sing song English. Having a conversation is a challenge.)

Once I was logged into the page I saw the last bill which looked normal. Then I happened to notice that Sirius had changed the billing cycle from 1 year to quarterly. 

They were clever… They kept the amount the same but increased their profit X 3 with the quarterly billing. Great way to rip off your customers Sirius! 

Obviously, they were counting on the amount being familiar, and people’s short term memory being completely overloaded to hide what they’d done.

Now I’m very interested!

I call their customer service number, (conveniently hidden 3 menu items deep, with a warning popup that said, “Beware of Tiger!”) 

I waited on hold after dealing with the genuine people emulator call routing AI.  After a time, I was connected to a cheerful lady in the Philippines and asked her what gives?

I’m told that I was on some kind of promotion and that this reflected the end of the promotion. Uh Huh… When did the billing cycle change?  No answer. Uh Huh. 

Then I asked about putting my lifetime membership back in place which is what the lawsuit provides for. 

I get a bullshit line about that. In 2017 they claim they weren’t allowing lifetime subscriptions to be moved. I told the little lady I knew that, but that the lawsuit says they will now.  She doesn’t know about that.

She offered to give me a promotional special for a year on the two radios (Portable & Car) of $200. I tell her that since I only listen to one channel it’s still not worth it. And that Apple CarPlay works just fine in my car meaning I don’t have to have Sirius and that I have greater control over the music I want to hear.

She asked if I’d let her check another promotion.  I say sure why not?  She comes back and tells me that I have have both radios for $120 a year.

I think about it, and decide that I just want to not have a subscription at all. I tell her that and that I want the subscription to terminate as of the March 1st billing cycle. She fiddles around a bit more and tells me that she’s sorry she couldn’t keep a valued customer like me. I’m Like Whatever… I obviously wasn’t all that valued a customer.

So come March 1 2021 for the first time in many many years I won’t have Sirius.  Unless of course the court decides I can have my lifetime membership transferred. In that case, I’m calling them back with the case docket number in hand and demanding they re-instate the account.

In reality, I’d pay $60 a year for Sirius in the car. But now it’s a matter of principal.

I’ve said it before, If companies would just provide the service they’ve contracted to provide at a fair price, and not screw around with the billing because they think they can get away with it, they’d have a lot more customers and those customers would be a lot more loyal and happy.

On the plus side, It’s one less online account for me to fart around with.

Update 1/22/2020

I got one of those little “How did we do” surveys fromSiriusXM

When I answered that I was not satisfied, the survey opened a tex block where I could freely type. I do hope that someone who reads this is able to understand the words written on the page. I’m not hopeful. There’s that old adage, if you don’t want to know the truth… Don’t ask the question.

I never got an answer as to who authorized or when they authorized a change to quarterly billing. 

I was told that I couldn’t reactivate that lifetime subscription on my new vehicle because the transfer wasn’t available in 2017,  regardless of the fact that I had a lifetime subscription, and there is currently a class action lawsuit pending about not allowing people transfer those subscriptions to new vehicles. 

Then when I said that for the 2 stations that I listen to (1 in my car and the other on a portable radio in the house) wasn’t worth $423 a year and that I wanted to cancel the account, I’m told that suddenly there’s a discount of 50% and when that wasn’t good enough the yearly cost was reduced again. 

Frankly, if you’d offered your service for a fair price in the first place and been upfront about your billing practices I’d still be a customer. 

However, given that you won’t let me transfer my former lifetime subscription and apparently have no trouble charging outrageous fees for your service it makes me question your business model.

I have Apple CarPlay in my vehicle which works just fine. I have Apple music and can use it throughout my home on all my devices. This ability makes your service redundant and excessively expensive.

For many years now, the few times I’ve called your customer service department it is difficult to understand the representative. In part due to the accent but the greatest part of the problem is static on the line or background noise in the call center’s environment.

The young lady I spoke with, to her credit tried to do the best she could and aside from the noise she was well spoken. My dissatisfaction is in NO WAY with her. 

My dissatisfaction is with SiriusXM’s corporate policies and practices. 

My feeling now is that I will not be purchasing a vehicle where I pay for the SiriusXM option installed. I will also not be turning on the SiriusXM option if it is supplied with a vehicle.

I will continue to seek out Apple CarPlay or some similar option.

I can only imagine that as your satellites age, and you continue to alienate customers that you will find it harder and harder to maintain service. Perhaps that is a good thing and your company will go the way of the dodo.