Understanding… the relationship between music choices and audio tasting, sound, pleasure and obsession, aural memory, absolute inner ear and ideal DNA music of shares, sound and noise.
Is it possible?
Everyone chat with everyone sharing same our virus;-) about the above.
I won’t tell you about my habits when making adjustments, new gears insertions or parts swapping, or what I experienced around the world, at audio fairs or at friends places.
Too various, yet similar… I can easily say I always, ALWAYS know when things sound right.
Some considerations: I noticed that during my several music afternoons and evenings with pals or hosts, not a single meeting was focusing on same music playlist…
I sort-of rejected the approach of prior music choosing… making a list of discs or tracks to be played in that sequence.
I tend to do not have – say – Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and its pan potting helicopter or Hugh Masekela’s Coal Train as a demonstration disc… I hate demo discs, period.
Every music demonstrates how deep and far the artists or the composers went, so, let me ask: what is the average audiophile demonstrating about their audio systems?
The boom-boom, the 1812 blast, the highs… the songs text, the soloist dexterity, the virtuosity, what….?
The music is beyond my own… I dare: human comprehension.
It is, hic et nunc… you know: “There is no scientific proof of existence of music”… just think about this.
Human mind is both endless, boundaries-less and very limited, when we think we’re the best in the universe, you know… music is simply not only human: think about blackbird endless variations and you’ll get the idea… or sperm-whales deep water singing… and music is democratic and supremely money unrelated, at its best.
Music and math and anarchy… surprise and ABA form, minor and major, showing landscapes and suggesting streams of consciousness, moods… ever changing moods.
This mood of the moment was – IS – guiding my choices… and not only: the chemical between or among my hosts was and is deeply influencing these choices.
Some requests are able to bend the listening session stream…
An example: from The Grateful Dead’s Nobody’s Fault but Mine from Dick’s Picks # 1 I choose to begin with a session, I could easily think about the beauty of the classic blues, the song itself… so why not going ahead with, say, John Renbourn’s version from Another Monday disc…
Maybe this will be followed by, say, Bert Jansch Moonshine, ’cause, you know, The January Man Dave Goulder’s little masterpiece song sounds appropriate… hey: it’s January.
This kind of alliterations may goes on and on and on… freewheeling’…
… another example: sometime, while lazily reading the record cover liner notes, I read the recording was held that very date, maybe 10, 15 or more years before… a rare evenience, but it happened to me three times…
Like listening to a passed away artist in the very same day when this happens… a far too often happening, recently… and so sadly.
It’s a quite pagan homage, a time warping choice which blends souls, unconcerned about life facts, but more hinting to higher and deeper beauties.
… the above it’s only an example, of course, yet true and being one of the infinite choices, like stars in the sky.
Incredibly and out of my imagination, music and human creativity are beyond my knowledge, so an interchangeable compass is necessary to sail in this immensity.
You know Quabaala? The ancient, eons old number discipline dating thousands years ago… to my flawed mind, label prefixes are a pleasure in itself… Deutsche Gramophone, ECM, EMI, Decca, Island, RCA… the beauty of numbers and combinations.
Sometime the sum of the discs prefixes I’m listening to makes a definite grand total, say 15, 20, 27.. or my birthday date or my wife’s… or the exact time showing on the wall clock…
Stupid I am… everything does… just consider I no more read anything, nor I digit on the laptop when listening to music… it’s avery personal mind game, also when not listening alone, and I love loosing myself in the notes, colors, layers, interactions and intersections, contrasts, dissonances and assonances.
A tourbillon.
I like chatting during a listing session, but sparingly, not a thick, heavy and dense kind of chatting… the best meeting with my pals are usually a random mix of pauses and words, laughing and deadly seriousness, long and short tracks, comments and silences.
… and not by chance, when I deeply enjoy the evening, I say almost unison with my hosts, thanking and bowing to each other like old times gentlemen.
Pure bliss at their best… but not always happening.
Sometimes, friends of friends come with their own music, vinyl discs or disks… yes, of course I agree in playing this or that, but the flow is someway not working like when a first track or disc is chosen for pleasure or beauty-sake and then followed and chosen by a stream of memories, both aural and personal or mutual.
Music, time, present and past are linked and thanking music my mind goes freely, I see colors, smell scents, feel happiness and sadness.
Also when alone, I smile or am in tears, like a perfect lunatic.
There is no an ending, folks… music, like life and death, are infinitely and ever-changing looping.
… yet, if you insist in reading a closing… try to variate your “demo” records, insert between Radka Toneff’s Fairy Tales and Jazz at Pawnshop, Nick Drake’s Pink Moon or John Martyn’s Solid Air…
Special discs… sounds BS, to me, as everything good is special.
Just give your whole discotheque a chance… explore it and demonstrate, yes, truly demonstrate – at fairs and at your place, to yourself and friends – how deeply and sincerely music hits your truest, most inner and pure trueness.
Stefano Bertoncello