disintegration of music

When expressing myself through art when painting on canvas, drawing on paper, or by writing in my journals, most often I listen to the sounds I hear, when that isn't an option and the peace that holds needs interuption... I decide to play some music. Odds are that most of my favourite music will have a big dynamic range and affect on me -- it'll be whisper-quiet in some parts and booming loud in others. As I create I pick up new nuances every time I listen.

Yeah, never was fan of much dance, rap, or the hip hop music. Now and again, my neighbour just another room away from me listens to something else radically different. The dynamic range is gone, the entire track is loud all the way through. The sounds are mostly of genres not of my taste but I’m only thankful it’s not the top -10 track on pop radio. I must say, it is a lot more intense, and it "grabs" more quickly the first time when heard. Every time I ask, (more likely complain) is it still rewarding to listen to it over and over again, more and more often?

Nope, says a writer at Stylus magazine. In this amazing and lengthy piece, he argues that the loudness wars are destroying music. Record labels for decades have tried to make records louder, on the mostly-correct theory that louder music is more likely to pull you in on first listen. But the way you make music louder is via "compression". In a normal recording of music, the loudest parts -- the peaks -- are much higher than the quietest ones, the valleys. Compression shrinks the difference between the peaks and valleys, so there's less dynamic range; this frees up more room up top so you can boost the whole volume of the entire song.

Take nearly any track recorded in the early 80's and you can see the wide dynamic range if say you listen to the available remix (remastered as they say) from todays standerd, you'll find it is compressed to make all of the sound-wave big and louder. The author also argues that the jump-the-shark moment for the recording industry was ... Oasis. In 1987, the average album like Appetite for Destruction by Guns 'N Roses had a dynamic range of 15 decibels. Oasis' 1994 Morning Glory had a range of a mere... 8 decibels -- compressed to make it louder and louder.

So what? Why does this hurt music? Because of the psycho acoustics of how loudness and quietness affects us. When a song has less dynamic range, even if it's louder we are -- paradoxically -- more likely to tune it out, as the author argues. It's worth reading his entire essay, but here are some excerpts:

One result of [overcompression] is that modern CDs have much more consistent volume levels than ever before. But when is it desirable for music to be at a consistent volume? When it's not being actively listened to; i.e. when it's intended as background music.

Music isn't meant to be at a consistent volume and flat frequency; it's meant to be dynamic, to move, to fall and rise and to take you with it, physically and emotionally. Otherwise it literally is just background noise ...

Music is about tension and release. With nearly every "hot" single released I hear of un-dynamic music without release because the sensory assault simply doesn't let-up. The people I see out and about wearing walkmans or MP3 players seldom seem to tap, or nod, or hum along at all; instead their gazes seem fixed with a steely resolve, their bodies tense and their minds seemingly tenser. To me that isn't the body language of someone enjoying music.

People are forgetting how to listen to nearly everything and who can blame them? Compression is addictive. This weekend when I visit the city you can count me out as a passenger aboard the BS train because I will be pacing back and forth to the sound of my music.