An Unexpected Benefit of 33.3 Vinyl Records

Sit and Stay (for hours)

With our many devices, it’s easy to stay seated for hours and hours. To produce quality work, whether it is writing, design or photography, we all need to sit in one place and repeat many of the same things, typing, mousing, clicking. Repetitive stress injuries to wrists, hands and arms are not within the scope of my statements here; RSI’s are the bane of those that work doing the same exact operation for hours, days and weeks. Media production is different, as the variety of body motions we make as media producers are varied enough to not focus all of the stress on these very specific muscles and ligaments.

What occurs with us media producers is the sedentary nature of our work; where we sit in one place, in front of our screens, checking emails, twittering, editing images and writing text. When we are engrossed in our tasks, we never really need to get up and move throughout the room. Envision an office setup where we can build stuff with our production machines, while consuming content from television, radio or through streaming music. It’s easy to not get out of the chair for hours; to the point of when we do get up- the first thing our body does is require a big head to toe stretch.

What are these things called ‘Records?’

Years ago at the beginning of the affordable music cassette recording era, I made many tapes from ‘Records.’ I remember choosing a variety of my albums and calculating the average length off an old LP: the result was 27 minutes per side or 54 minutes total. Many albums just edged over 60 minutes so the choice of course was the workhorse c-90 cassette. With albums usually split between side A and side B.

Even today, discerning music listeners have revived in a small way the 33 1/3 rpm LP. An inexpensive turntable can be found for a few hundred dollars, and with a clean circle of vinyl –you’d be surprised at the quality of this analog source. Even some young people express a love for vinyl because of the sound quality, and the tactile product that a vinyl is.

So – I propose as a posture saving procedure – instead of pushing a remote control button to change the channel or select more music, put a vinyl 33 1/3 rpm record on a (gasp) Record Player and get your self up to flip the record or put another one on the turntable. You will get out of your chair approximately every half hour, and you will actually hear sounds that are missing from digital devices.

Vinyl for Posture!

Led Zepplin - Houses of the Holy Gatefold