Play This Loud
The real reason musicians can get fussy about whether you turn the volume up or down
Dear friends,
This is something a bit different from me, so I hope you like it. If you do, let me know. And if not, let me know that, too. I promise I won't do it again.
You may not know, but though I have always been a writer, I have not always been a published writer, and it has not always been my main job. I used to work as a clinical scientist in the NHS (the UK’s National Health Service), specialising in audiology, or the science of hearing and balance.
My job, on a day-to-day basis, consisted of administering scientifically valid hearing tests (mainly to babies, infants and young adults, as for most of my career I specialised in paediatric audiology), and then helping those who were found to have a problem through a mixture of ongoing monitoring, the provision of hearing aids, onward referral and so on. A hefty chunk of my training, therefore, was in the twin fields of acoustics (sound, if you like), and psychoacoustics, (or the perception of sound).
I was reminded of the latter last year, when Björk released the song Atopos, the first single from her latest album, Fossora. On the eve of release, she tweeted the following.
That request, to play it ‘loudly’, in turn reminded me of a note on the inner sleeve of The Cure’s 1989 album, Disintegration.
Now, when Disintegration came out I was of an age where I played everything as loud as I dared, parents and neighbours permitting, so at the time The Cure’s entreaty was superfluous. But even so, at the time I remember wondering what difference it could possibly make. If I turned the music up, surely it would just sound… well… louder? The notes were going to be the same, after all. The vocals too. The drums and bass and keyboards wouldn’t sound different, surely? Why should it bother Robert Smith whether I play Disintegration at volume 3, or with everything turned up to 11?
By the time Björk made the same request, some thirty-odd years later, I know the answer to that question. And it’s fascinating.