Thoughts on Who Knows What

I’ve never thought about how important acoustics are in a building. It’s just something that I assumed didn’t have to worry about. Maybe in small buildings you don’t have to… I guess only architects know. That made me consider how things must have been for places like the Constitutional Convention in PA. Imagine how different things might have been if they were either less or more echoey. What if something was omitted because the person who delivered it wasn’t loud enough to be heard over he reverberation? Also, often these things are decided by how many people declare I or nay. It can’t be too accurate with all the echoes bouncing off the marble walls and columns. Like everything there’s a formula to help us consider these things and I wonder what all goes into that calculation.

There’s also places devoid of echo, these chambers have driven people mad. I don’t usually think about how much echo I’m hearing and I doubt others do either, therefore the absence of it really resounds with us (pun definitely intended). I can only imagine the things that go on in peoples minds when they hear nothing, something like wondering if what you’re hearing is what you’re saying or if it’s only in our heads. On a less meta note, it really is weird to think about how electric recording has allowed us to change how much of a person is emphasized in a music track… When the older greats were in the studio you might hear an orchestra behind them but their vocals come through louder. It’s something I have a hard time wrapping my mind around, how much music has evolved with technology. Now we even have music genres that are entierly electronic, dubstep, electronica, even funk which may be the first version of it. I can only imagine what that means for the future of music.