Sound

Yesterday I took Maxine to the studio where she and Big Lou are helping produce and mix a CD. The studio looked very much like the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise, only darker. Also, more technical and complex. It was daunting. Loops of the song being mixed were played over and over as the ears of the musicians (Big Lou and Maxine played on the CD, too) and the engineer caught tiny little nuances that I would certainly never have heard.

"That esss... Do you hear that essss?"
"Yes. I do."

And then the part in question would be pulled up on the speakers and on the computer where the sound of every voice and instrument could be seen and tracked (and you have to realize here that I have no idea of the technical terms that should be used but I'm making stuff up just to try and get the image across) and the essss would be discovered and dealt with and then the next two notes of the song would be assessed for perfection and dealt with if found wanting.

It was startling, in a way, to see Big Lou and Maxine so knowledgeable about this hugely technical process, being as how they are the sort of musicians who play extremely down-home music on acoustic instruments. But they are. They seem completely comfortable with the tracking, the looping, the whatevering with all the lights and wave patterns and buttons and bows.

Although it was fascinating to observe this process, after about twenty minutes of it I longed to be back out into the daylight of the real world where sound was just sound and so I left to continue on with my day and then ended up sitting in the waiting area of a tire shop for an hour and a half while a slow leak in one of my tires was diagnosed and treated.
I read a few magazines (and let me say that EVERY MARRIAGE CAN BE SAVED, at least within the pages of the Lady's Home Journal) and I did a crossword in the paper and I listened to a man's conversation with his mother on the phone and I observed the other passengers on that particular voyage of waiting-for-repairs and I didn't mind being there. It was rather pleasant except for the Muzak which drove me insane and I wanted so badly to just shut it off but of course, I couldn't.

After the car was fixed I went to various places for various items and every where I went, I noticed the constant background music being played and every bit of it annoyed the ever-lovin' shit out of me. Why do we have to have this constant dim clamor of notes and words cluttering up our minds?

I thought about what was going on in that dark studio at that very moment- every note and sound being assessed and altered and made right and how the yammering Muzak was played in such a way that you'd have to have the ears of a bat to be able to tell how well it was mixed and produced and it may be that very poor quality of the sound as I shopped that made me crazy, and not the unending relentlessness of it.

I don't know.

I do know that I can only take so much of that sort of thing and I was so happy to get home where the sounds of birds and the wind in the trees and the distant hum of traffic on the interstate was all I heard. My ears relaxed and so did my shoulders as I picked greens and chopped them and made bread.

And later that night we put some music on the CD player and we all listened and Mr. Moon and I even did a little dance around the dining room and again, I remembered why we listen to music and I was grateful that someone had mixed and produced that music in a way that made it so powerful, so lovely to listen to.

And once again, I have no point here today. It's just all a pondering on music and how it sounds best to me when it's played by living, imperfect beings in my hallway or on the back porch or in Big Lou and Maxine's living room and how music becomes nothing but a nattering, buzzing annoyance when it's played from hidden speakers in every store and shop. It's sort of like the difference between a homemade-with-love carrot cake and a Soy Joy bar. They are both food but not really.

And that it takes an awful lot of technical engineering to get a recording to sound a millionth as good as the same music would if played right in front of you by real people where you can look at their hands and their mouths and their arms and their bodies as they make the notes that fill our ears and touch our hearts. Where you can look into their eyes when they've played a tasty bit that makes them as happy as it's made the listener.

And that Muzak has absolutely NOTHING to do with that. Whatsoever.
And I wish they'd cut it off.
Or play it loud enough to actually hear and enjoy or at the very least appreciate.
One or the other.

Meanwhile, it's another gorgeous Friday and Big Lou and Maxine are back in the dark room of the studio and I am not, for which I am grateful.
And I have no plans to be in any place where Muzak is being played whatsoever today.
Which makes it, in my opinion, a good day and I love the sound of the wind chimes as they are played by the breeze, the almost palpable sound of the clouds as they drift past, the sound of the birds' tweets as they duck their head at the feeder, again and again and again, the rustle of the magnolia leaves, the sort of music I never tire of, that I dance to all day long.