Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results
I've been slowly making my way through Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste, and just picked up a copy of This is What it Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You.
So I'm stuck in literature that will apparently explain why I like Counterparts as much as The Byrds. But as I usually am with people that attest to know something, I'm skeptical of their ability to detail why my musical taste may take the form it does, because I'm not even sure why I know that.
I may absolutely be expecting too much from these books, even though Why You Like It is 720 pages, so that must mean he gets close to a science of musical taste.
Much of my daily musical interest depends almost completely on mood, and that mood can oscillate rapidly.
I have always had a preference for volume. In high school, for a few months I would listen to Axis: Bold as Love on my discman while going to sleep, so loud that my sister could hear it in the hallway from outside the door.
Volume is definitely a compounding need: loudness diminishes quality of hearing which then begets more volume, rinse repeat. But I probably still attribute volume to clarity of sound more than any other factor, more than balance or frequency equalization. And loud music just feels really good too, especially when I started going to concerts. High volumes out of PA speakers become high pressure winds of sound.
When I heard the reversed guitar tracks in "Castles Made of Sand", I wanted to hear more of them, or feel more of them, or hear them harder, and at the time I assumed the way to do that was just turn the volume up.
One area of music fandom that I have spent less time in than I could, because I know how technical it can get and I worry how it could become an obsession, is high-fidelity sound. I have a decent pair of bookshelf speakers, sort of a mid-range record player, CD player, and a 100-watt stereo. And all of that functions for how I want to listen to music at home. My earbuds are accessibly-priced JBLs.
It's a weird thing to be a person devoted to music but to also express a lot of hesitation with perfecting the listening experience, constantly pursuing the correct electronics to elevate the sound, maybe even beyond what the performers ever cared to express in the first place.
So my focus has generally been to buy equipment to listen to music that can withstand strong volumes. And those volumes contribute to more air movement, and how music that is contained in a box-like object suddenly becomes enveloping and three-dimensional the more air it moves.
If you listen to the outro for "Floods" off of Pantera's The Great Southern Trendkill at a moderate volume, it'll sound interesting but still very much contained within the object you're using to listen. If you crank the "big knob" on a higher-wattage stereo through 6-8" speakers, at least, then that outro starts seeping out of the speakers and filling your room with Dimebag's echo-saturated guitar, as if the music started rising around your ankles, and then your knees, and then you're treading in it.
Music deserves to be a foreground artwork, like paintings or books. And it is, especially when we go to live shows. Volume is often the best way to pull music into our foreground. Crank it, and start treading.
If you want to continue the discussion, send me an email or put it through the snail mail
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