How important is silence to you?

[tory]

Everyone loves music. But do you factor in an absolute lack of music sometimes in your life?

Music is everywhere. You can take it anywhere and play anything you want within reason. It is now acceptable to a certain extent to play music at work in office environments for example. Music is on TV relentlessly - it is rare now for documentaries not to have some sort of incidental music somewhere. 

I always play music in the car (increasingly my way of listening to albums) and have my headphones as a matter of habit on me when going somewhere on public transport. 

But I do also think about silence - no music or sound - more and more. Music can be pollution and to not have anything to listen to can be refreshing. Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote a great book about his stay in a French monastery where there was virtually no sound at all - monks were required to be silent apart from readings. We are obviously social animals and communicate by sound, but I wonder whether at least at some point in our daily habits there is something of value in being quiet (apart from sleeping obvs)...

[oh oooh]

My music-listening habits are like my eating habits these days. They're both things that bring great pleasure and they happen only for relatively short periods during the day - and that seems right. 90% of the time I'm not doing either.

I love silence and it's really important to me. It's always there late in the day, it's when I do work or create things. Time to focus. I suppose silence is a rare event in many people's lives, especially if they have kids - they're making noise a lot of the time. But if you've a choice, and you choose to have music playing all or nearly all of the time - that's something I really can't relate to.

[loveless]

I'm more hooked on silence than I am on music. The layout of our household has necessitated my office/desk being adjacent to the kitchen which is easily the noisiest room in the place. And I hate it.

Right now, I've woken up an hour or so earlier than my family and have made the choice to get up and savor the quiet house.

My music listening habits were bound to change over time. There was assuredly something compulsive about "peak listening years", where I'd have music going around the clock - I'm perfectly happy now to have a bit of quiet in the home, in the car, etc. If I get the luxury of an empty house. I'm rarely compelled to fill it with sound.

[Inspector Norse]

I have two small kids: silence is to be treasured.

There is something very calming and reassuring about it. Even when you’re playing music or watching a film, say, the silence afterwards can be very soothing.

[Inspector Norse]

Some significant and deep kinds of silence:

Silence in nature: where do you find it? Fo you seek it out?

Silence in film: some directors make great use of it, don’t they? Who, and how?

[loveless]

Jan 13, 2019 13:06:47 GMT Inspector Norse said:

There is something very calming and reassuring about it. Even when you’re playing music or watching a film, say, the silence afterwards can be very soothing.

I've noticed in my own creative endeavors, that there has been an instinctive impulse to program the equivalent of "a side break" into digital formats - in the days of the LP (or even cassette), you'd get a crucial moment of peace while you flipped even the most densely sequenced record over. I must have missed it, demanded it...cause I've always simulated it in formats to which it was not automatically organic.

[cha7ice]

Silence is good. Silence is importance.
The stillness during a cold windless winter day or night. I love it.
Also how one breaks the silence is important. The other day whilst working outside one of the kids switched on a local radio station breaking a cold still day's silence with some prime roots reggae, so unexpected, so tasty.

[Charlie O.]

Jan 13, 2019 13:15:01 GMT loveless said:

that there has been an instinctive impulse to program the equivalent of "a side break" into digital formats - in the days of the LP (or even cassette), you'd get a crucial moment of peace while you flipped even the most densely sequenced record over. I must have missed it, demanded it...cause I've always simulated it in formats to which it was not automatically organic.

I do this as well - even customarily putting 15 seconds of silence at the end of a CD-R (because I'm likely to be playing it in the car). LPs were (are?) usually sequenced with the enforced side break in mind, so it seems right to honor the artist's/producer's intent with a digital "side break". (I figured I was the only one nerdy enough to do this. Silly me!)

As for the larger question, yes, silence is dear to me in general, and increasingly so.

[loveless]

You notice increasingly with the types of records that receive some annual deluxe reissue, that the old model of appending the album with another 20 minutes or so of crammed in bonus materials has largely given way to a gentler practice of appending all the extra shit onto a separate disc (or discs).

I love it - you can (once again) listen to some great album, and it ends just the way it did 30, 40, 50 years ago.

I remember about 15/20 years ago - I'd made a CDR copy of one record or another (I think it was Odyssey and Oracle) for a friend (and this would be him hearing it for the first time) - later he asked me" What about the bonus tracks?", and my reply was "I wanted you to enjoy the album as a work with a very sacrosanct beginning, middle and end."

[Reasonable good Nick]

Jan 13, 2019 11:01:55 GMT oh oooh said:

My music-listening habits are like my eating habits these days. They're both things that bring great pleasure and they happen only for relatively short periods during the day - and that seems right. 90% of the time I'm not doing either.

I love silence and it's really important to me. It's always there late in the day, it's when I do work or create things. Time to focus. I suppose silence is a rare event in many people's lives, especially if they have kids - they're making noise a lot of the time. But if you've a choice, and you choose to have music playing all or nearly all of the time - that's something I really can't relate to.

I concur with all of this. I do tend to have the radio on at home a lot, if I'm doing the dishes or something like that, or reading for pleasure, but it's almost always Radio 4, unless there's something on it that really irks me. Most music radio gets on my nerves these days - though I do enjoy Gideon Coe's late night show on Radio 6.

When I'm working, whether it's job stuff or writing/research for my MA, I generally prefer silence. The most I'll have on in terms of music is something ambient and unobtrusive, maybe some Eno, Max Richter, Stars of the Lid, that sort of thing.

At work I'm in an open plan office, and I find it hard to concentrate. Even if there isn't much noise sometimes, there's still always someone wandering around, faffing about, making endless cups of tea etc. It's OK if you're just answering emails and doing low level stuff, but trying to research and write a report is difficult.

I treasure the times I'm overseas for my job, when I can have a few hours to myself in my hotel room to work in peace.

[NarBud]

Jan 13, 2019 13:46:50 GMT cha7ice said:

Silence is good. Silence is importance.
The stillness during a cold windless winter day or night. I love it.
Also how one breaks the silence is important. The other day whilst working outside one of the kids switched on a local radio station breaking a cold still day's silence with some prime roots reggae, so unexpected, so tasty.

Yes!

In much different time and place, back when cover bands were a lucrative business, a friend and I built PAs/soundsystems, and would blast Tubby, Pablo, Heptones, etc across the fields and farmland where we worked, rolling fields, rolling dubs.

[nolamike]

Jan 13, 2019 14:00:57 GMT loveless said:

You notice increasingly with the types of records that receive some annual deluxe reissue, that the old model of appending the album with another 20 minutes or so of crammed in bonus materials has largely given way to a gentler practice of appending all the extra shit onto a separate disc (or discs).

I love it - you can (once again) listen to some great album, and it ends just the way it did 30, 40, 50 years ago.

I remember about 15/20 years ago - I'd made a CDR copy of one record or another (I think it was Odyssey and Oracle) for a friend (and this would be him hearing it for the first time) - later he asked me" What about the bonus tracks?", and my reply was "I wanted you to enjoy the album as a work with a very sacrosanct beginning, middle and end."

Oh, very much, yes.

[steve69]

I struggle with silence. Can't work or read without some tunes in the background.