As CCM goes our church is relatively innocuous. We don't rely on amplification. Many of the songs we sing are our own. The praise leader generally has an acoustic guitar, we have a grand piano and several excellent pianists, the possibility of bass guitar and trumpet depending on availability of players, a congregation that sings well. And a drum kit (next to the piano).
I experience mild tinnitus and loud sounds can distort. This is partly age related and partly due to angle grinders in my earlier years of stupidity. In retrospect I earnestly tell the youngsters to look after their bodies - we don't generally get replacement ears (or eyes or backs) and they can be so easily permanently damaged.
Looking at this diagram, and adding the blood and gore that doubtless accompanies it, it is frankly amazing that my or anyone else's ear works at all. I am so very thankful that I can hear as well as I can, and for my other senses too. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.
The cacophony of noise that is our praise is bad enough on my ears but the snare drum beats it all. One internet sufferer writes from bitter experience: The sound of a snare-drum hit is one of the worst types for the ear. The fast attack comes too quick for the ear to defend itself by closing down a bit, so the ear closes too late. Bad news for the ears. This guy recommends that all drummers wear ear plugs. Not that I am telling anyone to do anything in this post - I am merely relating my own feelings and I do not intend to offend.
The "snare" is a number of springy wires that are stretched across the lower drum "head" and thus jangle against it when the drum is hit. There is a lever that adjusts the tension and thus allows the snare to be disengaged.
It's not that I dislike drums per se. But to my ears the snare drum sounds a bit like a drawer full of metal pots and pans being tipped from about head height onto a concrete floor. On every beat. I don't particularly like this sound, let alone its volume. And whilst on this hobby, I hate the way the snare resonates when I play the piano (outside of meetings) and generally get annoyed enough to warrant getting off the stool and disengaging it. I've toyed with somehow permanently crippling it but I think this would be noticed.
Maybe I should wear ear plugs. But I don't want to make it obvious. Instead I tend to stand as far away from the drum kit as I can.
I used to think I was reasonably musical. I reckoned I could tune a guitar, understand music theory, improvise on the piano, and generally appreciate music better than the average person. Not having yet met the average person I cannot be sure that I was wrong but I have met several non-average people and have come to the conclusion that there are many who are a good deal more musical than I am. Which peeves me because I thought I had a corner. Hence my Song of Albionposts. Which I might yet continue anyway.
As an example - I love the piano - both playing it and listening to it being played. Of course I can tell if a piano is wildly out of tune but I am unaware of the nuances of out-of-tune-ness that some of my friends claim they can detect. But at least I am interested in out-of-tune-ness.
Which goes like this: The seven notes of the major scale are kind of "God-given" in that they result naturally from the vibrations in pipes or strings. The third harmonic of a string or open pipe is a "just" perfect fifth above the second harmonic, the ratio of the frequencies being exactly 3:2. The just perfect fifth is the purest sounding interval after the octave (ratio 2:1) because the ratio is so simple. So two notes are consonant if the ratio of their frequencies is simple. If you start at the bottom A of the piano keyboard and ascend by fifths 12 times you will get to the top A, seven octaves up. If these had been just fifths you arrive at slightly higher than A, this discrepancy being the "comma".
just perfect fifth = frequency ratio 3:2 = 1.5
1.5 raised to power of 12 = 129.746337890625 = 1.0136 x 128 (2 raised to the power 7, thus the top A)
equal temperament semitone = 2 raised to power of 1/12 = 1.0595
thus the Pythagorean comma is about 1/5th of an equal temperament semitone.
The purpose of equal temperament tuning is to divide the octave in 12 exactly equal semitones and thus to avoid the comma. At the expense of intervals no longer being "just" and therefore not being truly consonant. But it means that music can modulate into remote keys - whereas with just intonation remote keys are out of tune. So equal temperament has heralded the complex harmonies that are commonplace in today's music.
Thus all keys should sound the same thus dispelling the myth that flat keys sound soft and sharp keys sound crisper. Or is it a myth? In fact the piano is not tuned to equal temperament. Because of the stiffness of the piano "strings" the higher harmonics are out of tune - this is called "inharmonicity". To compensate so that higher and lower notes played together don't sound discordant the piano is actually "stretched" or deliberately tuned away from equal temperament.
Which begs the question - which is the more correct? Just intonation seems to be closer to what I describes as "God given". But then, frankly, who cares? The keyboard (which almost implies equal temperament) is here to stay. And who wants to go back to Gregorian chant? And most of us don't understand the distinction and of those that do, most cannot tell the difference.
And then most of the keys on a piano strike three strings or "unisons" because they are in theory tuned in exact unison see here. Except that this site says "a piano tuner's "secret" is that not all three strings have to be perfectly in tune, a slight difference (which you'll get anyway in a couple of months with regular playing) actually beefs up the tonal quality of the note (chorus effect)". This site claims the reason is to increase the loudness to compensate for the larger bass strings, but I think this is weak reasoning. The force imparted by a given amount of thump on a piano key will be divided three ways when striking three strings thus defeating this argument. Wikipedia and other sites explain that, because the three strings are coupled by the bridge, having three strings lengthens the decay rate although giving an initial sharp decay provided they are tuned in unison - this sounds more believable to me. A side effect of coupling is that it will affect the frequency of vibration thus giving another potential departure from true equal temperament.
This site claims that the three "unisons" may intentionally be de-tuned by an amount that is culture dependent - "The effect is to change what stage of a played note the tuning resolves for maximum appeal. In the American style, the attack, or initial sound is emphasized for optimum 'in-tuneness' tonality. In the Japanese style, the sustain, or the sound of the note after the initial strike fades is where the highest degree of 'in-tuneness' resolves. In the European style, influencing the overall color of the note is the goal."
Which views are rather confusing and not always consistent.
I have access to several pianos including a grand. I cannot comment on their relative degrees of in-tune-ness - at the moment they all sound OK to me - but the one I hands-down prefer is an upright: for its crispness of tone, its responsiveness to and lightness of touch, and its great dynamic range.
The piano, or more properly "pianoforte" which translates as "soft-loud", was the first keyboard instrument whose intensity could be controlled by touch over a large range. This variation is called the dynamic range and by it the musician can evoke emotion. You will probably never experience the awe inspiring 70dB dynamic range of an orchestra unless you attend a live concert. Sadly, when recorded the dynamic range is artificially compressed to make it easier to listen to in today's noisy environments. Popular music is generally designed to have inherently limited dynamic range for the same reason. Such is the demise of hi-fi.
The young woman who usually plays piano in our church - let's call her Rachel - took lessons when younger but more recently has been self-taught. With our style of worship playing by ear and improvisation are necessary skills and the piano is often the lead instrument. Rachel reads music well but knowing what harmony to play has not come naturally to her. And yet she has persevered and as a result her ability in this respect has improved remarkably over the years.
The piano is classed as a percussion instrument and Rachel makes good use of it in this way which suits our worship - our voices provide the melodic line. One thing that Rachel does particularly well is to use the full dynamic range of the piano - she can sensitively accompany the quietest nervous soloist or make the piano roar during high praise. So much so that I have often stopped singing myself to listen in awe to the sound she produces. And for this I bless her!
Joe, a friend of mine in his 20's, who knows all about computers especially multi-media, asked me "what is hi-fi?". I have other friends who set their Apple Mac on the counter to play music whilst they are working - playing music from unbelievably tinny speakers so that all you are getting is stuff between about 1kHz and 2kHz. An iPod (which equates to all that is music for many folk), even in a dock, emits audio so horrible that I find it hard to listen to at all. MP3, clever though it is, has become ubiquitous - who now appreciates that there was (better) quality before MP3? Or that audio is an area where technology is actually going backwards?
In its hey day hi-fi was a cult as aptly portrayed by Flanders and Swann. It's followers believed (and still do) that gold plated connectors, oxygen free copper wire, and valves (vacuum tubes) improved fidelity, and poured scorn on CD's and anything digital.
Not that there isn't some truth here. One of the many things I took to pieces in my youth contained a valve audio amplifier which I noted for its quality. It was, of course, valve - but in particular the output stage was a balanced pair of pentodes, driven from a phase-splitting transformer. Because a balanced arrangement like this tends to cancel out the more objectionable 3rd harmonic distortion, added to the "soft" sound of valves (which in objective terms is due to the gradual limiting when overdriven, as opposed to semiconductors which suddenly overload), the sound was very good. A pity I no longer have that amplifier.
And so it was with pleasure that I read the interview with Bob Stuart of Meridian in E&T July 2012. Here are some quotes. "One of the ironies of the digital age is that while we're listening to more and more music, we're listening to it on worse and worse playback systems. The biggest threat to the success of audio companies is that Apple has become the world's biggest audio company." "Music is one of the great social experiences, especially for the young, but they're listening to it on 1" speakers on their iPod dock... and these people are growing up thinking that this is what music sounds like." and "How does Stuart feel when a footballer pays £35,000 for a pair of his DSP8000 speakers only to plug his iPod into it?".
Console of the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ, Atlanta
Sadly I am unlikely ever to have £35,000 to throw around, and in any case my hearing is not so good now - reduced high frequency response and a bit of tinnitus. But I can still feel the difference between live sound and canned sound. Anyone who has heard the majesty of a large organ will appreciate that this experience is hard to reproduce on loudspeakers. Only two organs in the world (in Atlanta and Sydney) have 64' pipes - that corresponds to a fundamental vibration of 8Hz which is below the threshold of hearing: you feel rather more than hear the sound - you feel it in your belly. Not that I have experienced the 64' sound, but I have experienced and loved 32'. Try a live concert of Saint-Saëns' Organ symphony. The Atlanta organ also is the only one with pipes working from 100" of pressure, resulting in a very loud sound. Indeed one could be forgiven for imagining that the designers were doing that, oh so American, thing of trying to be bigger, louder, longer and stronger just for the sake of being better than anyone else in the world.
Bruckner's organ in St. Florian's Priory
Whilst I am talking of organs (which I have noted people either love or hate with a vengeance) I can hardly omit reference to my namesake's organ. And whilst talking of keyboard instruments, the common piano is also remarkably hard to reproduce faithfully, this time due to its sudden transients and large dynamic range. Here's another thing that has been dumbed down in modern audio equipment. The dynamic range of the human ear is immense, perhaps as much as 130dB. A good set of ears (mine sadly are no longer that good) can hear (in a suitably quite room) the Brownian motion of molecules of air hitting the pinna. No electronics that I have ever heard of, much less heard, even approaches this. In contrast popular music is actually designed to use a very limited dynamic range (put otherwise it is simply loud all the time) because that is "what people want" or more to the point it is "what people want people to want" because it makes the job of designing and marketing iPods and the like so much easier and cheaper. Classical music generally has a much greater dynamic range, but it is often artificially reduced when recorded or broadcast otherwise you would never be able to listen to it with ambient noise around (like in a car).
I still look forward to that day when audio reproduction can do justice to both organ (all 64' of, please) and piano. I hope technology can do me the honour before the capability of my ears to hear it fades altogether.
