The first piece I would choose to add in my own version of the Golden Record is the  Schindler’s List Theme by John Williams.

This piece is the opening theme to Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film, Schindler’s List. It is a haunting melody, played mainly by a solo violinist (Itzhak Perlman), and is accompanied by a string orchestra.

When looking through the list of what was included on the original Golden Record, I thought about how what sort of sounds influence our lives today that were not included in the original project. One of the first things to come to mind was film scores, as so much of culture today is influences by films and other visual digital media that we consume, and music is such a large part of that. John Williams’ Schindler’s List Theme is in my personal opinion one of the most moving pieces of film music, and I think that it is a piece that is beautiful both within the context of the film and fully separated from it.

The second piece I would add is Hideaway by Jacob Collier.

This is a contemporary pop song, which mixes digital contemporary sounds with the sounds of many different acoustic instruments. Collier uses elements of both polyphony and homophony to create harmonies.

I chose this song because I think that it would be important to include some modern music on a Golden Record being created in 2020, and I personally think that this is one of the greatest contemporary pieces of music I have come across. The smooth blend of instruments and the changes in colour and tone throughout the piece tell a full story.

The third sound I would add is the sound of a telephone ringing.

This video contains a repeated sound of a telephone ringing. It doesn’t quite sound like a modern cell phone, but closer to the digitalized sound of earlier landlines.

While telephones did of course exist at the time when the original Golden Record was created, they were not as large a part of society as they are today. This simple chirping sound conveys a bright and friendly greeting, that has come to mean something to us, but I believe that even without the prior knowledge of telephones, it is a sound that can be interpreted in that bright and friendly manner.