[microsound] beware the decibel...

[nick knouf <nknouf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

.... is how a public service announcement at my radio station begins.

(What follows is a rant/polemic; feel free to move on if not  
interested in those sorts of things.  This is entirely separate from  
the recent myspace talk.  I wrote it last night when my thoughts were  
more raw, and I haven't edited it in the context of a morning re- 
appraisal.)

Tuesday night I went to a concert by Tetuzi Akiyama, part of the  
Japanese improvisation scene.  He is most known for his "onkyo" style  
of improv, focusing on austere, sparse, quiet pieces that make  
intense listening demands on the audience.  The first half of his  
concert focused on this style.

The second half was him, a guitar, an amp pointed directly at the  
audience, and 100 decibels.

This is not my first experience with this; I cannot even begin to  
count the number of experimental music/microsound concerts that I  
have attended that were simply too painful to listen to.  Not because  
of the content, but because of the physical strength of the sound.  I  
left only 15 minutes into his set; the ringing in my ears subsided an  
hour later.

"Well, dufus, you should have been wearing earplugs."  The simple  
response.  Yet I have to ask what gives the musician the right to do  
this *physical violence* to me?  Because it is physical violence;  
through his power, he is harming me in a way we seem to be  
encouraging through attendance at these concerts.  It is as if the  
musician is being so egotistical to say, "My music, my sound is more  
important than your ability to hear anything in the future.  I will  
harm your ability to perceive sound, and there is nothing you can do  
to stop it.  Oh, you can wear earplugs which will degrade your  
ability to hear me, but that is the only way you will be able to  
experience my works."

What other art forms allow the artist to hurt the art viewer/listener  
in this way?  Conceptual/performance art, perhaps, but I know of no  
visual art that is so intense that you can loose your sight by  
viewing it (the beauty of the sun notwithstanding).

Amplification has been around for a number of decades now.  Okay, we  
got it: you can play music loud.  You have the ability through a  
simple twist of your wrist, a turn of the knob, to destroy my  
hearing.  I bow before your power.

In Akiyama's case it was even worse; performance in a concrete room,  
with *his back facing the amp*.  So of course he's not getting the  
full brunt of the pressure waves, instead hearing the multiple  
decayed reflections.  Yet the audience, which dwindled quickly, had  
the choice to leave or stay.

Yes, we indeed have that choice.  But I have to ask: why do we even  
need to be making this choice in the first place?  We are not teenage  
punk rockers who don't know any better; we are not ravers for which  
the low frequency physicality is important.  We are people who love  
sound, who love the amazing ability we have to sculpt sound.  Yet too  
many musicians persist in playing music at volumes that will prevent  
us from experiencing these wonderful sounds in the future.

So again: I ask why?  If you play your music at physically damaging  
volumes, why?  What do you hope to get out of it?  And what are you  
expecting of your audience?

I'll also say that I'm 26, I hate being this curmudgeonly, but I want  
to be able to hear in the future.

nick

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.microsound.org