The Cherry Hill Academy Newsletter

When I was a teenager in the 80’s, (No, that's not me) it was one of the best times for music. Back then, there were so many hit songs, you had too many to choose from! In the car we would switch stations if we didn’t like the song playing, and guaranteed another station would be playing one we liked!

One of the best parts of the musical experience was buying records. There were physical stores that sold vinyl records and cassette tapes as well as posters of your favorite bands or artists. When we bought a LP (Long Playing) album, it would be in a 12in. x 12in. cardboard LP sleeve cover, then you would slide the black vinyl disk out (in a paper sleeve).

Sometimes it would include a poster inside, and if we were lucky, the lyrics were printed on the paper sleeve. Back then we didn’t have the internet to give us lyrics, so most of the time we had to guess some of the lyrics. (It was fun to learn later that the lyrics were completely different than what we thought they were!)

If you didn’t want to buy the whole album single hit songs came on a smaller black vinyl disk in a 7x7 inch sleeve. These were called "45's" because of the speed in which they had to be played. Some sleeves had artwork, some just came in a solid color.  A “bonus” song was on the flip side, which was usually not very good.

The walkman was a small cassette player that you could clip to your belt and listen to your favorite albums through small headphones. The music in the headphones was very loud but extremely clear, as though the music was playing in the room.

I'm glad I could share a little of the music of my 80's generation with you. It's important that you learn how music has changed over the years and the techniques used to record and distribute them directly to you.

As you learn to read and write music you have a better understanding just how much work it takes to make a song. Then, it takes further work to bring it to public and make a living from it. 

Learning music from all the past generations will help spark new ideas for the future generations.

“Tune” in to the next newsletters to find out how these recordings were made and how they have changed our lives!

Q: What happened to the person who stole a calendar on New Year’s Eve?


A: He got 12 months.

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