Soundcheck Blog
AM I SHOUTING?
By John Schaefer
May 8, 2009
I’LL BE WITH YOU IN JUST A SECOND! I JUST WANNA HEAR THE END OF THIS SONG! ‘CAUSE I REALLY LIKE IT, YOU KNOW?! OK - WAIT. THERE, I’LL TAKE THE EARBUDS OUT NOW! OKAY, SO… oh. Okay, so I guess maybe I
was shouting a little. It’s just that I like to listen to music loud. Always have. There’s something about letting the sound hit you, and wash over you, that turns the act of listening to music into something you feel, physically.
Just last month, I was doing one of our annual New Sounds Live events at Merkin Hall, with Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo and the Bang On A Can All-Stars. Lee’s piece, for electric guitar and amplified ensemble, was LOUD. Having interviewed Lee on stage and introduced the piece, I made my way back to the recording studio, which is beneath the back of the hall. In the hallway leading back to the studio, every piece of metal ductwork in the ceiling was vibrating wildly, and perhaps dangerously, because of the squall being created by Lee’s guitar onstage. I thought about ducking into the studio, but this was too cool - I stood there for a few minutes, listening to the guitar music rushing down the hallway from the stage and also hearing this weird, buzzing, refracted version of the sound in the building itself. It was a great, immersive way to experience a piece of music.
I know that I have to be careful with loud music, but in those occasional moments when music reaches for something special, I just can’t help myself. Sitting close enough to the stage to feel the breeze coming from the NY Philharmonic when they got to the ecstatic finale of Schoenberg’s
Gurrelieder was an experience I will remember long after I’ve lost whatever hearing I’m going to lose. And that’s the problem with all the warnings we give people about turning down their iPods and stuff - you’re asking people to act logically when something is moving them on a deeper level. Whether it’s Schoenberg or The Who, sometimes the right thing for the music is to just turn it up.
I know, I know - if I want to have
more experiences like the Schoenberg or the Ranaldo, I have to protect my hearing. Otherwise, all I’ll have are memories of those experiences, without the possibility of having any new ones. I guess it’s a little like drinking: you want to be responsible most of the time - you know, a beer with dinner, or a single malt after work - but if the Giants are in the Super Bowl, you ain’t counting the number of beers you’ve had by halftime.
The problem with iPods is that you get that “immersive” experience with everything, which risks making that special moment completely commonplace - and if you’re in a loud place, you need to crank up the volume just to hear what’s playing. I don’t know what the answer there is; I hate the idea of putting a limiter on these things so they can’t go above a certain decibel level. For me, I’ve just stopped listening to my iPod on the train - it’s too noisy and the music has to be too loud just to compete, reducing it to more noise. Plus having grown up in NY in the 70s, I still instinctively travel the subways on High Alert Mode, and being “under pod” makes me feel unaware and unprotected.