MUSIC plays a major part in many people’s lives and I’ve also enjoyed making and listening to it over the years.

But every sound has its place and I can’t get my head round the thought processes of the people who will no doubt be buying the latest CD by acoustic musician Lee Gregory.

Lee, from Todmorden, has spent more than 100 hours putting together a 42-minute ‘symphony’ of natural sounds like birdsong, frogs and bees recorded as part of a project based in Burnley’s Towneley Park.

I’ve listened to some of the audio and can understand Lee’s motivation in producing what’s effectively a woodland soundtrack which will no doubt fit in neatly with those racks of CDs you tend to find in garden centres containing everything from South American panpipes to whale noises.

What is baffling is the motivation of his customers: Why sit indoors listening to the sounds of outdoors?

It’s as barmy as those runners and mountain bike enthusiasts who storm past you at various places of outstanding natural beauty with their heads down wearing iPod earpieces which tell you their head is full of anything from heavy metal to heroic orchestral symphonies – or perhaps even soundtracks of the mating calls of hyenas.

Yes, I admit it’s not a new phenomenon.

A large segment of the population has always followed sentiment of the final line from the popular nursery rhyme which reads: “And she shall have music wherever she goes.”

At least today, teenagers and adults keep their preferred background ‘music’ in their own heads rather than going into the countryside carrying ‘portable’ radios the size of suitcases as they did in the 1960s and 70s.

Picnics in the park on a sunny day then could became warzones with groups trying down each other out with the sound of that week’s chart-toppers.

Today everyone is entitled to listen to whatever they want provided it doesn’t interfere with anyone else but what’s wrong with just listening to the natural audio in its own setting whether that’s woodland, moorland, beaches – or our own backyard or garden?

And to quote Simon and Garfunkel, let’s relax more often and just soak up and enjoy the sound of silence.