Super Extreme Long Play

[Ryan]

A friend of mine once had Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in his car stereo
for four solid months. Sure, he would listen to the radio at work,
and I would play other CDs at my house that he heard during this time,
but this was the only CD *he* played. Keep in mind, nothing was wrong
with his stereo, the disc was not stuck. He simply chose to listen to
it over and over again for four months. The disc is not too long
itself, fifty minutes or something, so often, as we drove around all
night we would hear it repeated four, maybe five times, the same
songs, in the same order, and it never seemed to bother us, get
irritating, or become fatiguing. It wouldn't be an absurd estimate to
say that he probably listened to it around 800 times during this
period, and a few months later, guess which CD I heard coming out of
his speakers again?

I would be interested to hear some theories on why some recordings can
do this, and some can't. Obviously, the listener would have to really
like the music, and it would have to be well performed, so we could
assume that. What else is it about a recording or a song itself that
makes it become, somehow, more comfortable. Maybe it's "vibe," but I
was hoping for something more constructive. I mentioned fatigue
earlier, I think this is a part of it, in terms of listening fatigue.
I have read that the highest audible frequencies can bring on fatigue.
Perhaps Nirvanas Unplugged had a lower "peak frequency" than most
records. Maybe this is due to mic selection, maybe to EQ, maybe to
both. In terms of writing and sequencing an album, I would say it is
paramount to have many of the songs written, played, whatever, in non
related keys. That is, each song in a different key, and a distantly
related key as possible.

Also, I'm sure this type of thing has happened to others. Maybe or
maybe not with the Nirvana CD, and even with people who, like myself,
can't keep a single CD in their car stereo for more than twenty
minutes, there will be one or two CDs that seemed to stick in there
for an inordinate amount of time. Ideally, these would not be mix CDs
and would not be "best of" discs or etc, as these often have many
different engineers, studios, and mixing philosophies per disc.

You know, I've read somewhere that if you do something for 21 days straight
it becomes a habit - this supposedly includes anything from addictive
substances to getting up at 5am & going running.

Maybe that's all it was.


"Ryan" > wrote in message
om...
> A friend of mine once had Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in his car stereo
> for four solid months. Sure, he would listen to the radio at work,
> and I would play other CDs at my house that he heard during this time,
> but this was the only CD *he* played. Keep in mind, nothing was wrong
> with his stereo, the disc was not stuck. He simply chose to listen to
> it over and over again for four months. The disc is not too long
> itself, fifty minutes or something, so often, as we drove around all
> night we would hear it repeated four, maybe five times, the same
> songs, in the same order, and it never seemed to bother us, get
> irritating, or become fatiguing. It wouldn't be an absurd estimate to
> say that he probably listened to it around 800 times during this
> period, and a few months later, guess which CD I heard coming out of
> his speakers again?
>
> I would be interested to hear some theories on why some recordings can
> do this, and some can't. Obviously, the listener would have to really
> like the music, and it would have to be well performed, so we could
> assume that. What else is it about a recording or a song itself that
> makes it become, somehow, more comfortable. Maybe it's "vibe," but I
> was hoping for something more constructive. I mentioned fatigue
> earlier, I think this is a part of it, in terms of listening fatigue.
> I have read that the highest audible frequencies can bring on fatigue.
> Perhaps Nirvanas Unplugged had a lower "peak frequency" than most
> records. Maybe this is due to mic selection, maybe to EQ, maybe to
> both. In terms of writing and sequencing an album, I would say it is
> paramount to have many of the songs written, played, whatever, in non
> related keys. That is, each song in a different key, and a distantly
> related key as possible.
>
> Also, I'm sure this type of thing has happened to others. Maybe or
> maybe not with the Nirvana CD, and even with people who, like myself,
> can't keep a single CD in their car stereo for more than twenty
> minutes, there will be one or two CDs that seemed to stick in there
> for an inordinate amount of time. Ideally, these would not be mix CDs
> and would not be "best of" discs or etc, as these often have many
> different engineers, studios, and mixing philosophies per disc.

[Scott Dorsey]

Ryan > wrote:
>
>I would be interested to hear some theories on why some recordings can
>do this, and some can't. Obviously, the listener would have to really
>like the music, and it would have to be well performed, so we could
>assume that. What else is it about a recording or a song itself that
>makes it become, somehow, more comfortable. Maybe it's "vibe," but I
>was hoping for something more constructive. I mentioned fatigue
>earlier, I think this is a part of it, in terms of listening fatigue.
>I have read that the highest audible frequencies can bring on fatigue.

I don't know.

But, I worked in an instrumentation lab where we had a 1/2" IRIG deck
hooked up to speakers, and I brought in the only thing I had on 1/2"
tape at the time, which was a dub of the Zeffereli production of Carmen.
And I listened to Carmen two or three times a day over the course of the
summer, until everyone else in the building wanted to kill me.

And of all the songs in the opera, SOME of them I got horribly sick of
to the point where I can't stand to listen to them. And others, I liked
more and more every time. (After a couple weeks of listening to the
Flower Song, I first noticed that it has no repeated bars anywhere in
the song. None. That's so bizarre. It's still one of my favorite tunes
ever.)

If you ever find the lost chord, please let me know.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> A friend of mine once had Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in his car stereo
> for four solid months. Sure, he would listen to the radio at work,
> and I would play other CDs at my house that he heard during this time,
> but this was the only CD *he* played. Keep in mind, nothing was wrong
> with his stereo, the disc was not stuck. He simply chose to listen to
> it over and over again for four months.

> I would be interested to hear some theories on why some recordings can
> do this, and some can't. Obviously, the listener would have to really
> like the music, and it would have to be well performed, so we could
> assume that. What else is it about a recording or a song itself that
> makes it become, somehow, more comfortable.

Could be laziness, the fact that the music wasn't objectionable, and
he'd rather hear that without paying a lot of attention to it
(hopefully he was paying attention to his driving) than listening to
Rush Limbag.

I had thought about getting one of those in-the-trunk CD changers for
my previous car (which had no CD player) but feared that I'd load it
up and then listen to those same ten CDs for two years until I
remembered to reload it. My present car has a 5 CD in-dash changer and
I usually load it up for a trip, and take along 5 other CDs for the
return trip, but usually stick the adapter in the cassette well and
on a lont trip, listen to radio programs that I've recorded on my
Jukebox 3, occasionally breaking it up with a CD. I usually never get
to re-loading the CD player for a a typical all day drive and all day
return.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Raymond]

>Ryan > wrote:
>>
>>I would be interested to hear some theories on why some recordings can
>>do this, and some can't. Obviously, the listener would have to really
>>like the music, and it would have to be well performed, so we could
>>assume that. What else is it about a recording or a song itself that
>>makes it become, somehow, more comfortable. Maybe it's "vibe," but I
>>was hoping for something more constructive. I mentioned fatigue
>>earlier, I think this is a part of it, in terms of listening fatigue.
>>I have read that the highest audible frequencies can bring on fatigue

Hmmm...speaking as a recording guy I can listen to the same thing (and have
many times) about 1.2 million times. But taking a brake for a while is good to
recharge (sit in low noise room) my brain and rest my ears. I can watch a good
movie many times but a bad movie or show I don't like, forget it.

[Ryan]

It's different when it's for work. Liesurly listening is different
than that.

I'm surprised more people don't have thoughts on this here. It would
seem a beneficial thing for an audio engineer to know, to me.