Playing Unplugged

randyz · Post by **randyz** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 7:27 am

The background sound level is very low inside our reverberant chamber. If you close doors and sit quietly, you can start to hear your own heartbeat. If that doesn't bother you, stay a little longer and you can hear the blood moving in your head.

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 7:34 am

Then there's the high pitched sound of the electrical impulses of your nervous system...and people complain about 'the 60-cycle hum'!

Apparently, this 'existential hum' goes away when one is on smack...one of the symptoms of withdrawal is the return of this noise, which we who are 'fully concious' can't hear...

(An auspicious 1400th posting...)

steve_hershberger · Post by **steve_hershberger** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 9:42 am

Randy and Dane - I really can and do hear such things at various quiet times - and I've never done smack (and never will).

I'd be most worried whenever I'd *stop* hearing those sounds! Of course, I'd probably only worry about it for a second, but still...

shamustwin · Post by **shamustwin** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:07 am

Sometimes I can hear my eyeballs move...

In my youth, the church on the corner of Highland and Fountain between the Hollywood Bowl and Hollywood Bl. let my band rehearse in some unused rooms, in perhaps an attempt to help out less fortunate kids. We were rather well off valley kids, but we didn't tell.

Being weird kids none the less, we'd goof off when taking a break, and once our guitarist was chasing us through the halls and empty rooms with two plastic forks in his hand making a cross symbol, and yelling "the power of Christ compels you"! Well, I opened a door to a room and he followed me in shouting it with upraised "cross" one last time before we realized the room was full of priests in conference. Our band lost it's rehearsal space.

randyz · Post by **randyz** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:31 am

I can always hear the 'existential hum' as Dane refers to it, but I didn't know what it was called. It is perceived as a sound, but do we really 'hear' it? Are our eardrums really picking up a sound, or is it simply noise caused by the electrical impulses of our nervous system passing through our eardrums? Hmmmmmm...

winston · Post by **winston** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 1:28 pm

I thought the hum that I can always hear was caused by playing too damn loud. Especially in my youth......

Shows you what I know about 'existential hum'. I am still convinced however, that the sound I hear is related to wattage rather than voltage.

kcole4001 · Post by **kcole4001** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 1:41 pm

A little off topic, but the coolest thing I've heard was this: I woke up at 3:20 a.m. to the tail end of the loudest thunderclap I've ever heard, which shook the brick apartment building like a freight train in the next room, to hear the sound of the air raid sirens howling all over the city (Halifax). Then the rain pounding down as only a summer downpour coming off the ocean can. I wish I'd recorded it. Quite a sensation.

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 8:32 pm

Kevin...are you by chance a...bass...player...??

So, in considering Randy's existential 'poser'...I think, whether you believe that what you 'hear' in aural isolation (and I have heard it) is a 'sound' (i.e...Are sounds 'waves of air which strike the eardrum', and that only?), or: that the electrical impulses of the nervous system stimulate the eardrums enough to cause a 'feeding back' of energy into the perception system, which is then processed by the brain as a 'sound', is a moot point...

It sure looks good when you type it out, though!

kcole4001 · Post by **kcole4001** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 3:19 am

Why, yeeees!

And the only residual sound I can hear now is technically called tinnitus.

winston · Post by **winston** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 9:38 am

Tinnitus The word comes from Latin and means "to tinkle or to ring like a bell."

In almost all cases, tinnitus is a subjective noise, meaning that only the person who has tinnitus can hear it. Someone with tinnitus often describes it as "ringing in the ears," but people report hearing all kinds of sounds: crickets, whooshing, pulsing, ocean waves, buzzing, even music.

Many people will experience it temporarily or intermittently and some may experience this "ringing in the ears" 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

kcole4001 · Post by **kcole4001** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 12:32 pm

Mine's a ringing 24/7.

winston · Post by **winston** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 12:43 pm

Me too

kcole4001 · Post by **kcole4001** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 12:49 pm

I found cymbals really decrease the high freq in whichever ear is closer. For years I played with the drummer to my left, so my left ear hears about 70% of my right's capability.

winston · Post by **winston** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 1:03 pm

We played far too loud on stage. Especially in the early 60's before good sound systems came along. After that you could mike everything through the P.A. and it wasn't so bad.

kcole4001 · Post by **kcole4001** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 6:06 am

Lower stage volume & a dynamic drummer are key. You still have to match the drum volume on stage to get a good feel, so if the drummer is heavy handed there's not a lot you can do but use earplugs. I've always had the good fortune to play with good, dynamic drummers, but there are guys around who just kill the kit in every song. Great technique, but very little dynamics.