Some recent experiences made me think about what we're after in music production and how our chosen audio language reflects
or alternatively influences our perceptions. This is one of those chicken or egg sorts of questions.
Along this same line of thinking, I've always had a fascination with learning the Chinese language, because its basic structure
is so different from Western languages. My curiosity was further stimulated by my Taoist philosophical underpinning. At the time
the Chinese language developed (both spoken as well as written) how did their world view differ from Westerners - a view that spawned
a radically different set of symbols and means of making sense of the world around them?
Certainly, most Eastern philosophy and religion differs from the Western approach, but the chicken or the egg question still
prevails. Did the symbology arise from the world view, or vice versa?
All of this came to my attention over the past few days - triggered by a visit to a customer, along with some parallel observations
made by an associate of mine.
Over the past weekend, I demoed a graphite TPI © platter at a customer's house. We sat back and traded our observations.
I'm fairly confident that we were hearing the same sorts of things, because they have acute hearing and musical sensibilities.
The three descriptions of what we heard were considerably different. Both the customer and his partner drew on typical
Stereophile approved terminology for the most part - parsing out the sonics as a function of the frequency spectrum. As they expanded
on their description however, they went past the usual jargon - realizing that the "authorized terms" were inadequate to the task of
describing what they were hearing.
They were trying to break out of the Stereophile mold, but at the same time, their thinking was shaped by it. A reaction to something
- even its rejection - is still grounded in that baseline assumption. One could tell that they were trying to break out of this
Stereophile mold because words like continuousness, and compatibility were surfacing - along with the now traditional Sterophile / TAS
jargon and secret handshakes.
When I described what I was hearing, I spoke in terms that I've described the graphite TPI © on my blog page - words like dynamic
growth, insight into the mix and the performance, nuance (low noise floor), as well as the sense of continuity that they too had noticed
and described - for the most part. They were in complete agreement with me, and yet the words they chose were quite different.
The late, great Harvey "Gizmo" Rosenberg coined the term
"wholosity" to describe this connected sense you get - whether listening to music, getting in the "zone" with sports, making love, or
any other basic human experience. Many viewed Harvey as a wacky, self-promoting crazy. Harvey was indeed crazy ... crazy like a fox.
Harvey got it, and the members of his expanding tribe surely do.
If we're to communicate with others about specialized subject matter, we certainly need to adopt a common language (jargon). I am
in no means debating this. What has occurred over the past 20 odd years in audio writing however is that the language has shaped reality
- the cinematic, visual model prevails and the transformational nature of music has been ignored. People walk around, in a zombie-like,
mass-marketing induced daze.
As far as the visual metaphor is concerned, I've frequently used the word Technicolor© to describe sonics, but my intention was
in no way meant to be visual one - other than in broad sweeping terms of relating rich tone colors to their visual equivalent in the
movies. The glossy rags occasionally get it right, using words like palpability and such, but for the most part, their language is a
reflection of an impoverished spirit - a spirit which passionate manufacturers and music lovers are in the process of recovering.
"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture".
