This morning I had Queen’s “I want to Break Free” stuck in my head.  Maybe because I saw this article last night.  Instead of me trying to sing and butcher the song, I played it off of my phone. I turned the volume up all the way, the song started to play and I tried to turn the volume up even more, but it was already maxed out. This didn’t come as a surprise since, according to some of my History 390 readings, my dumbed down generation has to have simple and loud music because technology has ruined our brains and we are unable to focus on things unless they are loud and simple… I don’t agree with this hypotheses. I tend to prefer loud music only when I am by myself,  in my home or car, and listening to music is my sole activity for that moment. When I am with others or when I am just using music as background noise I prefer to have lower volume. Music tends to be better at background noise than my washing machine or the air conditioning. While listening to Queen I couldn’t help but wonder what types of sound engineering the song had gone through. Was I listening to an original version or a version that has been sent through a series of technical music production steps? Thereby rendering the current version almost completely different from that which the artist originally recorded. I don’t want to have to think of how dynamic range and turning up the volume can make a song “good” or “bad”, I just want to enjoy the song. Focusing on the negatives of dynamic range and the loudness war takes the power of the singer or band and gives that power to the producers and sound engineers. Even though the most common way most of us listens to music is through some type of technological medium and not live performances, what comes through should be the skill and technique of the performers we’re listening to. On the other side of the argument, maybe I wouldn’t enjoy a song if I heard it without all the steps of music production, or maybe I would like it more. I have heard bands that I like live and they sounded terrible, I try to keep to my personal rule that bands are only as good as their live performances.

Hopefully my professor is happy that I am thinking of these things, even if I haven’t landed on one side or the other of the argument. I have a hard time choosing sides, maybe it’s because of my high level of empathy, I tend to be able to see both sides of an argument.

I can appreciate professor O’Malley’s desire to question the world around us, to stop and think about the small interactions we have in our daily lives. To not take for granted why things are the way they are. I guess I would just rather spend my mental energy questioning if the clothing brands I purchase use child or slave labor, or if I could be doing more for my health than just lowering my sugar intake. Personally, questioning whether the music I listen to has had all of it’s dynamic range removed or if it has been compressed to make it louder is not important to me. I tend to listen to music because of how it makes me feel. Although, to play devil’s advocate, since this is for a credited class using my time to question the music I listen to and how it has changed through the decades will ultimately get me closer to my degree, which is important to me. It may also translate to an increased skill in being able to question other areas of my life that I don’t take time to think about.