Interesting Speed Camera/Live Music Analogy!

[regmolehusband]

I help out a local five piece band and last night they played at a local village hall to about 200 people.

At the opposite end of this village hall was a "Noise Monitor" with green LED's that rise to a red triangle of LED's as the music reached a volume that somebody had pre-ordained as being "loud". It was just like you have on some hi-fi amps but 12 inches wide.

During their first number this thing was bouncing off the red and half way through it chopped all the power other than the hall lights - silence apart from the drummer.

Having reset it and discussed sound levels the band then embarked upon a very strained set regularly glancing at this brainless automatic monitoring device. And do you know what? This band with 150 years of live performance experience between them made several totally out-of-character errors as a result of paying too much attention to their precise volume instead of paying full attention to what they are good at - playing!

Sound familiar????

[Dwight VanDriver]

But the Decibel device was at the other end of the hall not under your nose where you could see it withou difficulty and still play safely concentrating on the job in hand.

(Was the drummer standing? You the piano and stool plus drummer and drum = 5 piece band ------ I jest of course)

DVD

[regmolehusband]

You don't get it do you DVD. It's not about eyes, it's about diversion of thought processes and diversion of concentration away from the main task.

[james_j]

regmolehusband said:

You don't get it do you DVD. It's not about eyes, it's about diversion of thought processes and diversion of concentration away from the main task.

Exactly! It really is difficult getting this message through to some quarters isn't it?

[SpudGunner]

I can see exactly what you mean. I had to drive through London to Luton the other day, and realised that I was spending an excessive amount of time looking at my speedo just so that I didnt get caught by the various speed cameras/vans/coppers hiding in bushes.

Luckily no kids ran out in front of me cos I was too busy looking at my dashboard to have noticed them.

[Apache]

I'll say it again, if your car has cruise, set it at 30 next time you go through town. Be amazed at things you hadn't seen before, marvel at your lightning quick reactions, wonder at your powers of anticipation and arrive relaxed from not having to monitor the speedo or spot plod and cameras.

[regmolehusband]

Ole'Pop, don't turn this into a debate about live electric music versus live acoustic music FFS. I don't know why I bother, hopefully some of the more intelligent PHers will be along later.

It just struck me as very interesting how their playing (analagous to driving geddit?) performance suffered significantly when they were forced to focus on not exceeding the overall noise level (speed yes?) when a big brother noise monitoring device (analagous to a speed camera?) threatened to penalise (NIP OK?) them by cutting all power instantly.

Perhaps you had to be there.........

>> Edited by regmolehusband on Sunday 18th April 19:59

[cortinaman]

i think music should be played at the appropriate level.....as robin williams said in 'good morning vietnam':-

"I DONT CARE WHAT YOU PLAY,JUST MAKE IT LOUD!!"

[regmolehusband]

Well I don't think the Halle orchestra would fit into the village hall Ole-Pop though the noise in that enclosed space would be intolerable if they could.