Concerts & Music Events

While listening to recorded music is a modern blessing, live sounds and instruments will trigger a superior emotional response from animals. I am not certain why. When you think about it, the sound patterns that can be recorded and reproduced is going to be very close to the live pattern. But it’s not exactly the same, is it? Sound waves are infinite, and while humans may not be able to capture (record) every note, our brain does get two different signals. They are as close as “humanly” possible. So put that in your pipe and smoke it for a minute. At least, that is what the green/blue brain tells me. The yellow/red on the other hand? Well that told me for years to just feel it. Don’t try to hear it with your ears, but feel it with your body. If you turn on all of your input senses, and not let your mind dull any of them, you get a richer experience. It also helps if you are listening through some speakers like the DALI Oberon 3, or headphones like the AKG N700. And that brings me to the engineer, or balanced man, or logical thinker or whatever control pattern is governing my brain at the time. Balance it man. When you are at a concert, listen with your body. When you are listening to recorded music, let your mind have more governance, and align it to that behavior. Don’t try to feel it like it is live. Then, it might surprise you with its own uniqueness, the machine. Enjoy the machine. If it sounds like a guitar, great. If it sounds like a recorded guitar, great. Enjoy the sound, the melody, the craftsmanship of the artist, the lyrics, the rhythms. I remember the “Wall of Sound” on an AM radio carried very well and no doubt helped those quality individual performances come through to me in the 60s and 70s.

And with that digression behind us, let’s look at live musical performance experiences.