Sound, tempo, colours of venues
Concert halls, just like clubs, venue or any sort of place where music is played has a specific sound, an ambiance, a tempo. Just like with innovations in the instruments’ territories, this has forced, see even sparked, entire genres of music. This keeps on happening today, just as much as humans help shape new music, venue and instruments direct humans into new uncharted artistic territories. This has happened at any moment of human history, from rock banging in caverns days, to piano (pianoforte) invention, to guys putting together a symphonic orchestra and hall for to this dude Wagner in Germany having Bayreuth Shauspeilhaus built just for him by the King just because there liked each other… Music room influences new sort of music creation just like instruments do, it happened with opera, with chamber music, with symphony stuff, with caves for jazz and garage for rock, it happened to stadium with U2, Coldplay and obviously the Stones. In any of these occasions, the venue and the technology were part of the elements leading to a drastic change and innovation in music style, offering new possibilities, usually seeking for a mean of addressing more people via more powerful instruments, like piano, symphony orchestra, electric guitar and stadium sound. As any venue has a colour, a tempo a resonant frequency of its own, it sort of dictates the sort of music than can be played there adequately or composed for.
Rooms all have resonant frequencies related to their overall dimensions. Large rooms have a tempo, as their dimensions are too large for their resonant frequencies to be high enough to be heard, while smaller rooms have a tone, which we call modes. The limit, the change of scale happens at the size where resonant frequencies shift out below audible range, in or around say 30 cycles. This happens in rooms in the 10 to 15 metres dimensions. Smaller than that audible & resonant, larger than that, echoes. Ironically, as if by some sort of magic, by the moment you stop being deeply annoyed by room tonal resonances, as your audience gets bigger, you start being annoyed by room delay and echoes.
Resonances will make specific piece feel good or feel bad, depending on which note it emphasises or kills in the low frequencies, around the root note. So, in a cave, a garage, a club, one song that was feeling just great one night will feel utterly annoying when played in other room the evening after. That because one night a room could emphasise say a D all the while killing a D sharp. Arenas and stadiums with their huge dimensions and their resonant frequencies being so low, will most likely exhibit these in the from of a huge delay or echoes, so in these venue you are a lot more free with the key of the music played, while the sound of the room tends to force you into some tempos better suitable for the music / room ensemble. Please note that the more boxier your room is the more prominent specific resonances will be and the less adequate your room will be for music. But be they echoes/delays in large places or emphasised notes & cancellations in smaller ones, in both cases what you are dealing with is the resonant nature of the venue.
Some bands are now excelling at creating tailor made stuff ready for stadium filling stuff, like U2 & most of their records from this century, mostly mid tempo with long notes and ample ambiances, while say Dinosaur Juniors or Marmozets, for example, have the exact hymns for filling a garage or a garage sized club. Talk about equal chances.
Earlier last century, jazz was invented in and for suburban basements underground clubs, by black dudes for black dudes, with loud instruments like trumpet and drums requiring very little expensive technology to be heard and no specific amplification. Incidentally, these low income dudes also took the opportunity, while inventing a brand new revolutionising genre, to discover ways of playing really fast notes in really complex & changing scales, if only to make sure it would require spoiled white guys intense efforts and years of dedication and schooling for approaching the same level of virtuosity. The fact that jazz ended up being played by nicely dressed dudes by the side of posh pools should make you think, but that is a different topic altogether. Then, since having been deprived of their invention, basement clubs population had to react, and come up with something more extreme, more underground, still suitable for arched small clubs. It took years, but house music was born, on the way using whatever electronic instruments left over from the 80’s, again dictated by room size and instrument choice. And now, again, house is played by the side of the pool. And this should make you think, again.
Sort of completely off our topic about the sound of venue idea, it is nevertheless amazing to note and realise that every time an instrument has been invented or put to good use, some listening habit and venue have adapted alongside and some new music has come up from the new tech. And a smart ass motherfucker has harnessed that for creating brand new innovative stuff.
Harpsichord / fugues / Kapelle / Bach
Chamber orchestra / lounge / concerto / Mozart
Symphonic Orchestra / concert hall / symphony / Beethoven
Tape Recorders / broadcasting, recording / musique concrete / Stockhausen, Varese
Trumpet / basement / jazz / Duke Ellington, Miles Davis
Microphone / crooners, singers / songs / Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong
Electric guitar / bars & 45rpm records / blues, rock / Elvis, Rolling Stones
More electric guitars / gymnasiums & 33rpm Lp records / prog rock, Led Zeppelin,
Synthesiser, sequencer / MTV / Pop songs / Depeche Mode, Ultravox
TR808 & 909 beat machines / Chicago clubs / House Music / Frankie Knuckles, Juan Atkins
Electric guitars again / stadiums / stadium rock / U2, Coldplay
Turntable / basement again / rap / well you know
Computer / Internet & Stadium again / EDM / Rap / Kanye West, David Guetta…
It should also be noted that has 20st century progressed, music availability and visibility enhanced seriously, along with better access to media for a larger number of artist and fans. Thus generated a sort of fractioning of access to public and what was once a neat monopolistic binary system, nice clean simple; Beatles or Stones, Miles or Frank, has become a very large mess. It therefore no longer makes much sense to try summarising technology innovation that really goes off in about any direction, valid or not. Especially not when your list ends with David Guetta. This subject is officially called the long tail and has been observed and describe in very interesting books that I urge you to take interest in. Particularly by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief at Wired Magazine: www.longtail.com
A bit of history of room acoustics
I was in (east) Berlin the other day, at the Funkhaus, the house of radio from (former east) Germany, on the bank of the river Spree overlooking the West, with a subtle and ironic eastern stylish arrogance most probably adorably suitable for the period it was created in.
This building is formidable, its beautiful. There are concert rooms, halls, studios and lounges in there that, believe it or not, despite the lack of access to prestigious high profile international consultants, managed to show excellent acoustical properties. How is that, I mean, how on earth was it possible to create a place with decent acoustic back in the mid 20st century, whereas about 80 years later, almost every single new building, not to mention concert halls, seem to be a total acoustical and living approximation.
Could it be something to do with common sense? It seems like today, by some sort of mysterious fairy spell, any new or refurbished building as to be sleek with wood and glass and concrete only, in any combination, that would have even a caveman rush away with a sense of horror. All the while, no one seems to notice, in restaurant, in public buildings, in concert halls, how tedious and intrusive the sound, the acoustic imprint of the place, can be.
Granted, 80 years ago, there probably wasn’t that many architect’s magazines and books and website to please. But the fact remains that people live and breathe and are supposed to enjoy life in buildings, even in east Germany. Sound is part of that.
I refuse to believe that the ancient art of creating a place that is simultaneously pleasant sounding and beautiful has been lost forever, so I will summarise here what remains of the humanity knowledge in this regards, juts in case someone in charge would notice.
For a start, the more there is space the less there’s sound, somehow. Let me develop. This can be of help when designing a room, you can put that knowledge to work for you or against you, we shall see that now. The Romans, the dudes that spent their days lying down sideways in fancy little dresses eating grapes nicely understood that.
Go to Goby, or Gibson or Joshua Tree somewhere, it has to a big wide empty space like a desert. Set-up a noise source of your choice, any giant PA system, any loudspeaker, any friend or even car’s sound system will do. Put it on, turn it up and listen, hey, no reflexion, at all, only the plain clean sound of your source. There you have it, since there are no walls at all, an infinite space with no sound coming back… . That can be called infinite absorption and this seems pretty logical thus far. And since your sound is travelling in all directions you loose a fair bit of the power at hand. Regardless of the source type, as no sound is reflected, no sound comes back. On the way, no bad resonances or reflections just a nice clean sound vanishing into the infinite.
Now, build an imaginary stage for your imaginary band, still, no so many reflections in sight, you still have a fairly appropriate and clean sound. But still have a fairly open half space with not enough power for a good rock show.
So what would modern dude do, bring in and pile loudspeakers till it is loud enough, and that indeed is a good enough solution for an open air festival; getting rid of room sound and reflection while blasting eardrums with a severe stack of powerful things. Provided some basic PA knowledge summarised in other chapters have been implement on the way tough, it does work rather well indeed.
But what would Romans do, besides thinking about it while eating more grapes lying down in their fancy dresses? They had no loudspeakers, no plywood, no copper, no jet fuel sucking power generators, not even paper. But hey, did they have great ideas:
They would divide their space in halves again and again, and they would be doing so first by creating an angled stepped area so concert goers would be able to sit and, miracle, see the stage as a bonus. Halving the space a first time would give them a first increase in sound pressure levels of about 3dB by effectively reducing the space needed to be filled by sound by half, which has the effect of doubling the power at hand, seen differently.
Then they would be halving their space further by putting a big thick wall behind the stage, gaining another 3db on the way. Finally they would half the space once more by limiting the left and right edges tangentially to a cone extending toward the rear of the room, with more walls.
At the end of their grape eating and wall building day they would end up with a very decent theatre with voice amplified just north of 12dB (or about 10 times more power, as dB are logarithmic things by design) in a very natural way and because they had no ceiling and to contend with, they would get no sound damaging late reflections. The mere reflexions left on the seating area would effectively be damped by the public itself. So with the same brick and mortar technique in use today they would end up with a vey nice show theatre hosting hundreds or more, with no soul sucking, ear messing sound reflections and they could happily watch more very talented actors impersonating people lying sideways eating grapes in fancy little dresses. And, granted, they would get rained onto every know and then, yes.
What is happening here is simply that each reduction of an acoustical space by half offers you a doubling in “power”. Same energy half the space to fill. In effect this is achieved by reducing the infinite absorption surfaces. This is the exact opposite of the absorption effect, where on the contrary, you make sure you increase the absorbent surface as much as possible, in order to reduce the noise level in a room. First concept is great for shows, second one is very desirable for restaurants, offices or open spaces. In both situation the same concept of balancing reflective versus absorbent surfaces to obtain a specific acoustical effect is put to use, in one example, for acoustically, passively, increasing the sound level, in the other for reducing it. Depending on the room’s intended use. Please note the Romans did harness both concepts, with their open ceiling and seated area that would rather effectively absorb unwanted excesses in room resonances.
See, no magic, just plain basic understanding of one single physical law, the inverse square law, where the energy of your sound has to cover 4 times the surface every time you double the distance, a phenomenon that could be expected and pretty much relied on in our world, which happens to pretty much be 3 dimensions most of the time, if I may say so…
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