Under the Piano

This is a track from the live recording of Margaret and Thor’s Under the Piano session during the Valentine’s weekend of 2010.

Under the Piano is a multi-sensory musical experience. Imagine yourself nestled in the luxury of silk comforters and cushions with artwork, a multitude of candles, and aromatherapy if you choose. Imagine the powerful sound vibrations of improvised piano music permeating, enveloping and resonating through your body. This is indeed an experience that engages all the senses – a whole new context in which to experience music.

In part 1 and part 2 of “I can’t hear you! Headphones & Earbuds” I discussed the pleasures and the problems with listening to music on iPhones or MP3 players in public places.

Even after all the alarming news I shared about listening to MP3 Players, you may still want to continue enjoying listening to your MP3 player. You can. Here some recommendations for how you can listen AND eliminate the dangers to your hearing.

Remedies

Replace your earbuds with headphones that encase your entire ear, ANC headphones, or in-ear-canal headphones. These all filter out or cancel out much more environmental noise. As a result of that you can reduce the volume required to hear even soft music. Headphones with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) actually measure external noise and then immediately feed an inverse sound signal that effectively cancels out the external noise. These allow you to reduce volume significantly and still hear the full dynamic range of music. The best known example of this is Bose’s Noise Cancelling Headphones. I have not tried the better quality in-ear-canal headphones. I had a cheaper pair but found they did not fit well and felt strange. I much prefer the ANC approach from my limited experience.

iPods have a “Volume Limiter” feature. Setting it to a lower level will help. Unfortunately, different earbuds and headphones have different output levels, so choosing a limit is quite subjective. A good rule of thumb is that if you can’t hear your own voice clearly when listening to a louder passage of music on your iPod it’s too loud.

Reduce the amount of time and the frequency that you listen to music with headphones.

For a more in depth study of hearing protection technologies for music listened to with MP3 players and from external noise see this

http://www.macworld.com/article/60274/2007/10/hearingprotection.html

I often travel on public transit and it is no longer unusual to observe half the people on a busy bus “plugged in” to there iPhones, iPods and MP3 players. I’m frequently one of them and I love being able to carry a magical world of my favourite beautiful music or an audiobook with me as I travel. Traveling can become a time of relaxation, enjoyment and learning rather than a time wasted. I used to try reading but then noticed I would miss my stop occasionally. Listening to something seems a perfect solution to making good use of travel time.

I also like that I can enjoy listening to what I prefer without impinging on others. It’s like you can take your own private sound-space with you no matter where you are.

With the increasing noise pollution in urban environments, turning on your iPod can be a great way to partially mask or filter out unpleasant stressful sounds. It’s also been proven that working in an open plan office reduces productivity by 66% * and that wearing headphones and listening to calming music or nature sounds will increase your productivity to optimal levels again.

So those are some of the good things about headphones or earbuds.

What about the bad things? I’ll discuss those in part 2 of “I can’t hear you! Headphones & Earbuds”

* As referenced in “Sound Business” by Julian Treasure.

Photo by Jamie Mellor

Actually, “What is the difference between Noise and Sound?, is a flawed question. Noise IS sound. Sound is the broad overarching realm in which noise lives. However, in everyday language and communication we do use these two terms and they have very different meanings and associations. When we talk about sounds we like, we typically say “That sounds nice” or “I like the sound of that”. When we speak of sounds we dislike we say things like “I hate that noise” or “What an awful noise”. Sound tends to be that which is wanted or that which we are focused on while noise is almost always that which we do not want and is often something that interferes with what we are focused on.

Things get complicated when you realise that context and past associations have an impact on whether a sound is perceived as noise or not. A noise can become a pleasant sound when it becomes the focus of your attention. Say you are working in a coffee shop and the music is too loud – it occurs as noise because it interferes with your concentration. On the other hand, if you were sitting in the coffee shop and you were simply listening to the music and you liked that music, it would then occur as a pleasant sound for you. But, if you had very specific tastes in music and you decided you didn’t like the sound of the music, you might be tempted to categorise it as Noise. This is where the age old generation gap often shows up. Remember being a teenager and some of the things your parents said about the music you loved?

One thing urban dwellers can agree on is that there is too much Noise in our lives. So it is curious  that we persist on choosing to build a world that pays no attention to it. We design living and business environments that amplify noise and we choose equipment that adds even more noise to the environment. There is now solid evidence to show the detrimental effects noise has on our well-being, peace of mind and business profitability. I think it’s time to start making some noise about noise. However, my first choice would always be to promote beautiful sounds rather than to add more noise to the mix.

Photo by Martyn Gorman

Meditation in a Storm by Craig Addy

I recently shared this piece of music online. I have been working on the piece for some time now. The foundation of the music happened in a moment of inspiration. The inspiration arose out of a setback. On March 10, I had been on Vancouver Island visiting my parents and came home early that Thursday to be ready for an Under the Piano session that evening.

I do a fair bit of preparation before clients come as I like to create a welcoming and beautiful space in which they can experience an Under the Piano session. As they lie under my piano my clients enjoy a visual, tactile and aromatic experience as well as an auditory experience. There are lush cushions and silky sheets, a myriad of candles, original art on the walls and the option of aroma therapy included in the powerful experience of being massaged and cocooned by the vibrations produced by my piano and the auditory journey created by my music.

The client did not show. Disappointment.

But I was ready and primed for creation: the candles were all lit. A magical ambience had been created. In the meantime, a wind storm had been brewing outside. My apartment “expresses” itself when a storm comes along. The windows rattle and howl as the wind buffets the building. Despite this, at about 7:30 pm I turned on the recorder and created some music. My experience was meditative and I was powerfully in the moment despite the howling and rattling of my windows. Even though the music rose to a loud climax, I thought it only appropriate to call it a “Meditation in a Storm”.

Synchronicity.

As I was soon to discover, there was a much bigger “storm” than the one outside my apartment. After recording the music, I transferred it to my computer and spent about 4 hours playing with the creation. Normally, I do not edit my recordings, but I became curious to see what I could do to remove the wind noises in the background. It took awhile because I had never attempted this before. I was finally complete a few minutes before midnight. I walked to my local 24 hour supermarket to get a snack. As I waited in the line at the till, I looked up at the big screen TV to see the horrific devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami that had just hit Japan. The earthquake had hit Japan at 5:46pm, March 11: with the time difference, this is almost exactly when I had completed the piece I had so unwittingly and so aptly named Meditation in a Storm.

Unconsciously, was I was creating my meditation in answer to a much bigger and drastic event that was happening in the world. As I later added the orchestrations to this piano piece, my intention and thoughts have often been with the people in Japan. I dedicate Meditation in a Storm to the people of Japan, who have demonstrated such incredible presence of mind, partnership and compassion in the face of this disaster.

About the photo:

Noise! Noise! Noise!

I’ve recently been complaining about Noise: complaining a lot. You could say that my complaining is its own kind of noise. You’ll hear more complaints about noise from me but you’ll hear about things I love too. I’m not committed to complaining. My complaints are created with the intention of waking you and myself up to the noise pollution that is impacting our lives everyday. It is the first step: to acknowledge and be clear about what’s so about noise in our environment.

What lies beneath my complaints is a deep and passionate commitment to a world that sounds beautiful. Imagine what life would be like if urban dwellers could hear birds, wind and water more than traffic and machinery. But there is plenty to celebrate now. As I study the writings and presentations of the amazing work by Julian Treasure and his Sound Agency I have awakened to a whole new realm of sound. I’ve always cared about sound but have focused all my energies on how it presents itself in the realm of music. Now I get to play in the toy store of sound that surrounds me in everyday life as well.

I’m excited to explore and share sounds and music I find beautiful or intriguing. What are some of your favourite sounds? I discovered this amazing sound when reading Treasure’s book Sound Business. I never stopped to consider that a black hole makes a sound. Listen to this cool sound sample of a black hole that Treasure made available online. He explains that these are the sounds of X-rays escaping from Black Hole GRS 1915 + 15

2 Black hole by thesoundagency

In Get Your Daily Jolt of Noise… I shared about my growing awareness of the horrible sound environments in the majority of coffee shops in urban environments. I invited you to stop tolerating noisy coffee shops and start requesting turning the volume down – not just on the music, but on the machinery and equipment too. Close the doors and stop the din of traffic from outside contributing to the echo chamber that most coffee shops are.

Perhaps the next question is “Why do we tolerate all this noise?” It’s because you’re brilliant. We all are. Our brains are masters at filtering out unwanted sounds. We need to do this in order to focus on what’s important to us. If we could not filter out unwanted sound we’d go nuts. Can you imagine having an important conversation with a friend if you could not help but pay equal attention to all the other conversations, noises, and music that was occurring around you? Long, long ago, we had to filter out little more than nature sounds like wind, water and rain. Now we must filter out much more noise. It’s got to the point where our brilliance at ignoring unwanted sound is our poison. All this louder noise is stressing our bodies. The constant clangor of urban life is causing our bodies to release our fight or flight hormones – adrenalin and cortisol. These are meant for emergencies, not to be part of a continuous diet.

We put up with it and I think things are reaching a breaking point. I’m pointing out noise to people and they are telling me how they are now becoming aware of it. This is the first step.

To hear the powerful difference  paying attention to noise can make, listen to these 2 sound samples of the same coffee shop that Julian Treasure provides links to in his book Sound Business. The only difference between the 2 examples is that in the second, Treasure’s company The Sound Agency altered the ceiling to absorb sound.

M&S cafe before and after by thesoundagency

Shawn Bearman, of Radical Ideas,  is a coach I have been working with. She encouraged me to incorporate a concept she calls The Dharma Added Effect into my business. I’m very excited about this. Shawn expresses how it works best and has given me permission to quote the following content. I am actually a fortunate recipient of The Dharma Added Effect myself. This is how I am able to work with Shawn at this time. I look forward to contributing my hours to the community.

THE DHARMA ADDED EFFECT

What if every business was more concerned with the difference it made rather than how much money it had at the end of the year?  What if Making THE Difference went viral?  Business can make THE difference that limits the individual.

When Buy 1 Get 1 Free meets
Pay It Forward something amazing happens…
Grow your business out of making a difference

The Dharma Added Effect is an opportunity for people to make the difference that they are committed to by doing what they love to do.

How The Dharma Added Effect works:

• For every paying client, Radical Ideas takes on 1 client that pays in hours
• This Paying in Hours Client makes a difference in the community
• The total amount owed is divided by the last hourly wage they received
• This then becomes the number of hours owed
• We then allocate those hours to people in need in the community.

To date we have had:

• People’s  houses  painted
• Yard work done
• Animals taken care of
• Shopping for the elderly

The future depends on everyone’s desire to reach beyond his/her immediate sphere of influence to help someone else on our planet.  The difference between Karma and Dharma according to answers.com:

Karma is the law of cause and effect. Many people think that Karma means that if you are mean to others, you will suffer bad luck in the future. This is a gross simplification of the way Karma effects our lives, but it is sufficient for a short answer.

Dharma refers to the underlying order of the cosmos, and is often used to mean “the way”or “the path”, meaning the right way to live and study to achieve lasting happiness.

The Dharma Added Effect is Exponentially Reciprocal.  It is a new realm of possibility for business everywhere!  The possibility of Business Causing transformation and community everywhere!

Under the Piano is applying the Dharma Added Effect in the following way.

Each client who books an Under the Piano session or purchases a gift certificate will receive an additional complimentary gift certificate for an Under the Piano session to give to someone who is ill or someone who does not have the financial means to enjoy an Under the Piano session.

What about you? Are you called to incorporate The Dharma Added Effect into your business?

…at pretty much any coffee shop.

I love coffee shops. I work alone much of the day and appreciate the opportunity to get out of my apartment and be amongst people. I also love fine coffee. Vancouver is a coffee lovers paradise. So coffee shops are the perfect place for me.

I wish.

Unfortunately I have a love/hate relationship with pretty much all coffee shops: even my favourite local joint. I love getting my first jolt of caffeine early in the day. I don’t love getting the accompanying jolt of ghastly noise that always seems to come with it.

The noise jolt is received as one of, or a combination of, the following sounds: street noises, espresso machines, blenders, the merciless banging of espresso machine coffee filters, chairs scraping on floors, clanging of dishes, excessively loud refrigeration units, baristas shouting out orders, inappropriate music and inappropriately loud music. It all adds up to a stress inducing adrenaline and cortisol pushing experience.

It does not have to be that way. It is that way because we ALL tolerate it. Because we tolerate it, coffee shop owners don’t even think to do something about it when they design their shops. The result is stylish and practical echo chambers that amplify every noise that is being generated into noise hell. Stylish looks like high ceilings with exposed pipes and air conditioning, concrete or tile floors (easy to clean), floor to ceiling windows, wood and metal chairs and tables, concrete or plaster walls with glossy, sleek and beautiful looking espresso machines and refrigeration units adding to the noise fray. What’s absent is anything that can absorb sound.

For our own well being we can’t afford to keep tolerating this noise.

It has been scientifically established that a healthy background noise level (in decibels ( dB)) during the day is 55 dB*. Most urban outdoor environments are now chiming in at background noise levels of 80 to 90 dB. Continuous exposure to 80 dB has been shown to cause damage to hearing. 80 dB is the equivalent of shouting or a busy city street. In Europe, 85 dB is the level at which businesses are required to “provide” hearing protection to employees and 90 dB is the level at which employees are “required” to wear hearing protection.**

This past week I visited 4 neighborhood coffee shops during “slow” times. They all measured in with a background noise level of 70 to 80 dB. Sometimes they were louder inside than outside on the adjoining busy street on which they are situated. I’m not quite ready to stand by any of my noise measurements as I am using a little application I downloaded to my iPhone to measure the sound levels. I need to determine how accurate it is.

Now begins my quest for a peaceful and relaxing coffee shop in the city.

I’m calling my exploration the Coffee Shop Survival Guide.

Do you have a favourite “Quiet” coffee shop in the heart of the city?

* World Health Organisation published guidline maxima for daytime noise exposure (from Julian Treasure’s Sound Business)

** Data reported in Julian Treasure’s Sound Business