What music do you have on when you’re playing bingo online? I was asking some Bingo onliners in a number of chat rooms recently, and had some interesting answers. It seems that the music you play, or don’t play, is dependent upon a number of factors: Firstly and most obviously, your own individual music taste, secondly, the mood you are in (which of course can be affected by how well you’re doing at Bingo and who is in the chat rooms), thirdly, the time of day (or night), and lastly (for one person only, Ralph!) doing a job while playing Bing
Let’s get that off one out of the way first. Ralph told me that he has a part-time job for a record company listening out for new talent, and that he is given scores of CDs each week to listen to. He has fine-tuned his talent-scouting by being able to have the music on while playing online Bingo, and chatting away in the chat rooms. He says that as a rule of thumb, if a piece of music, chorus, song intro, or whatever distracts him from the game or the chat, then it’s put into the “possible” pile and he’ll listen to it more carefully later and review it. Those that don’t get the heave-ho!
Gillian told me that she plays Bingo after she’s put baby down for the night, and has about five or six favourite albums that she has found relax her and help her unwind, along with the Bingo. She says there are some slow orchestral pieces, plus albums by Barry White, Brian Ferry, ELO and Celine Dion. She gets mellow, and comfortable, and that reflects in the warmth she gives and gets in chat room conversations.
Steve is into heavy metal and just plays a variety of hard-core noisy music. Doesn’t he find it distracting? Not at all- he normally has the sound on the online Bingo switched off anyway, and just lets the auto-dauber do the work for him! I had this bizarre image of him shaking his head up and down, lank greasy hair flying, Rammstein (a German Heavy Rock Group) playing at full tilt, while waiting to get that second Bingo line!
Angela, like Gillian, also likes mellow music- but her preference is more slowly unfolding electronic “ambient” music by the likes of Philip Glass, Future Sound of London, and a number of ambient dub music collections from the label “Warp” that started in Sheffield. She says that the drifty music combines with the number calling to make her own soundscape into which she can enfold herself (steady on dear!) and be as one with the Bingo karma (ooh errr Missus!). I have to say that I have met Angela, and lovely as she is, she is well into the trippy-hippy-dippy new age cosmic alignment astrology type thing. She’s also a bit prescient- so beware if she’s in a game where you are playing- she probably knows what the next number going to be called is!
Finally, Jane likes... silence. Fine. She says she likes to concentrate on things, but is not a multi-tasker, so it’s music or online Bingo. She’s a purist!
Whatever music you may or may not have as your online Bingo accompaniment, I wish you luck!