A Natural Surprise

The other night while waiting for Zero 7 to come on at the Metro in Chicago, something very cool happened.

I was there early and made my way right to the front. The hall was basically empty and some pretty cool music was playing through the house system. The system had INCREDIBLE smooth yet loud bass, which I felt through my entire body.

More and more people arrived and the hall filled up with happy chatty concert-goers. I was at the show alone (which was a first for me) so had nobody to talk with and was forced to just sit and listen.

I’m glad I did, because what blossomed between the rhythmic pulsating speakers and the light chattering people was literally music to my ears!

You see sound is just simply moving air. That’s all it is. Big fat bass is then a big powerful whoosh of air. Like I said, this bass was so powerful I could feel it through my entire body.

Chattering people is a much higher and less powerful movement of air than this bass. The chattering people was a constant random combination of pitches and volumes as such a cacophony usually is.

The bass is a very scripted rhythm with subtle detailed fluctuations in pitch and volume.

When you combine these two, because of the sheer power of the bass it cancels out and literally silences the sound of the chatter. As the rhythm plays it fluctuates in a melodic pattern, and the chatter decreases in an exact opposite and RELATIVE PATTERN!

So the result was the chatter which was a constant random chaos without the bass became a PATTERNED RHYTHMIC sound with a subtly random pitch!!!

At first when I noticed it I thought “NO WAY! how on earth did they sample the sound of the audience talking and turn it into a complimentary melody to the sound of the music?!?!?!”

Then when I figured out acoustically what was goin on I was just ecstatic. How friggin random and cool!

Had the music not been so sparse and bass heavy, and had I not been alone without trying to socialize I never would have noticed it.

It was a pleasant and natural surprise!