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Comment by gchokov | Hacker News Reader

I enjoyed reading your comment, and couldn't help but thinking how I miss this time. The joy of bringing something physical to somebody - a cassette, a vinyl - for their listening pleasure. The feedback loop from the act of giving and receiving. This whole idea of physical sharing made the music more personal and magical.

Nowadays I have shared playlist for family and friends, and it lacks magic.

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I remember discussing with a guy in college. He was deep into digital format. Everything he listened was encoded and store on hard drive. Which most of us did at the time. But I told him that I missed the physical side of things. LP covers, CD boxes. He was entirely dumbfounded, almost annoyed.

I missed it too. So I went ahead and got an old, refurbished harman/kardon cassette deck after months of research about different cassette and deck varieties. Learnt about type 1 (ferric), type 2 (chromium dioxide) and type 4 (metal) cassettes.

And now when I get back from work in the evening, I put on a cassette whilst making dinner. Or when I have friends over. And I let them pick the cassettes, which is always rather exciting.

I listen to a lot of metal and classical music, so finding original cassettes (even the really nice metal ones) isn't that hard at all. Plus they're cheap! (Waaay cheaper than vinyl).

And if all that weren't enough, there are bands still putting out cassettes: synthwave artists (Taurus 1984), indie bands (Tvivler), and even pop (Sigrid)! And if I don't find artists I like, I can always make my own ;)

tldr: If you miss it, you can still go out get yourself a cassette deck and enjoy it!

> a lot of metal and classical music

I find this part of your comment interesting because I have noticed such an overlap among a number of people versed in music. I wonder if there is a good way to explain this.

It is indeed interesting. I'd say that it has to do with:

- complex structures (not necessarily always 4/4 or 3/4)

- variations in dynamic range (loud parts vs. quiet parts)

- storytelling / philosophical themes (the human condition, freedom, suffering, literature)

- intense "solos" (Mendelssohn insanely fast yet moving segments on the piano vs. Petrucci going crazy on the guitar)

- mastery of musical instruments (particularly true in progressive metal, but metal drummers, guitarists/bassists and keyboard players tend to play at a very high technical level)

- song length (like Seventh Wonder's "The Great Escape" at about 30 mins)

None of these individually are unique to either genre, but taken together, we can start seeing quite a bit of an overlap.

From a fellow fan (and musician) of both genres I'd say that this analysis is absolutely spot on.

The only real difference in a lot of cases is the choice of instrumentation.

Ha ha, Dream Theater and Complete Mendelssohn String Quartets (Pacifica Quartet) are probably the top played on my phone. The string quartet tributes to Iron Maiden and Dream Theater are pretty good.

My daughter is going to a rock strings camp next week where she will be playing Metallica, Zepplin, etc on cello.

>>My daughter is going to a rock strings camp next week where she will be playing Metallica, Zepplin, etc on cello.

Have she listened to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptica?

A surprising, or maybe not so surprising, number of metal bands, and song writers have borrowed heavily from classical. No end of interviews with rock guitarists where they talk of listening to some violin piece and wanting to honour or duplicate in on the guitar. No end of albums with a rock cover of some classical piece, from The Agonist's a capella of Swan Lake through several Pachelbel's Canon in D, etc.

Not forgetting a good few borrowing from the folk canon, and I don't just mean late era Rainbow after Ritchie got his new girlfriend. :)

When I listen to Swedish death metal in particular, the tremolo picking and riffs, combined with the distortion (almost always a dimed Boss HM-2) almost sounds like a furious string section, somewhere around a cello-type sound. So many songs could just as well have been pieces of classical music.

I don't miss cassettes jammed in the player and vinyls ruined by scratches, personally. At least CDs are more resilient.

You also had the paper liner you could put your own artwork on to personalize it. It was a point of pride to "stick it to the man" and ignore the 10-12 lines for you to write a track listing on, and just share whatever you thought the other person would like to see.

> Nowadays I have shared playlist for family and friends, and it lacks magic.

The physicality of the medium is just one aspect - another source of magic was the lack of a skip button. Well, that and the fact that most people had fewer distractions back then and regarded listening to music as an actual activity, not merely background noice.

Your comment makes me nostalgic - few things feel as magical as carefully compiling and recording a mixtape for someone special and knowing, to a certain degree, that there's a good chance the gifted person actually takes the time to listen to it just as thoroughly. As a music lover and collector I still have the tape decks and, more importantly, the selection to create those tapes, but good luck finding anyone being able to play them.

On a sidenote: There's still a niche audience for tapes. If you spend time on Bandcamp you'll see quite a few labels and artists offering their release in good old tape format. There also this limited series inviting various DJs, selector and crate diggers to share their mixtape: https://www.alteredsoulexperiment.com/products

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