Background Music

We recently paid a visit to new hotel which has just opened near us in Sarasota. It costs around $300 to stay there, about half the Ritz Carlton rate and twice the rate you might pay to stay in hotels down the road. 

We were there to complain about the fact that the hotel was playing music from loudspeakers outside the main entrance to the hotel. In fact, the loudspeaker installers had made a mistake. It the wiring to one of the exterior speakers had been installed incorrectly so it was playing at a much higher volume than was planned thereby keeping residents awake just across the road. 

We were welcomed by the Manager and his Assistant and they explained the louder sounds during previous nights. They also added that they also played music inside the hotel as well as outside.

When I asked why they played music at all, they explained that “it is to improve the clients experience of staying in our hotel”. When they asked me in the entrance hall if I could hear the interior music, I had to admit that I could not hear any music at all because it was being masked by some very loud machine noises coming from behind the wall in the restaurant. The manager said he could not hear the machine noises. 

We were then shown round this “boutique hotel” as we called it. It attracts clients by saying, “ELEVATED MINDS DESERVE A HIGHER STANDARD OF HOTEL.” and I have to admit that the standard of design deserves that sort of statement. Even the cheapest rooms have small touches of design which distinguishes themselves above many others in which we have stayed around the world. After the Manager had shouted us drinks in the bar, we were definitely impressed by the standard of service. 

I hate this type of “background music”. I can live my life quite happily without it. The “background music” I hate most are those carols they play in supermarkets as Christmas approaches. I love these tunes so I feel I must join in and sing. This annoys me as this behaviour is obviously not appropriate for a supermarket. 

The real problem, as I explained to the Manager of our “boutique hotel” is that any experience as a musician leads you to listen to sounds more carefully than most people. Your brain hears musical sounds and often asks, “what melody is that?”, “Yuck, the harmony is all wrong”, ”I hate those GM sounds” and so on. It’s simply not necessarily  a pleasant “client experience” for a musician. 

I remember after lunch with a professional musician and a composer, we decided to listen carefully to all the sounds we encountered on the way to my studio. The route was along a fairly busy street across a very busy street then across a park to my studio in a large building by a fairly quiet road. 

We started along the road with no difficulty then, as we progressed towards the main road, our brains became engulfed with very unpleasant feelings. We crossed the main road at last and expected this unpleasant feeling to disappear as we crossed the park. It did not disappear. In fact it became worse as we began to discover all sorts of sounds which we had not noticed before. As we approached the university building, we almost broke into a run as the sounds seemed to engulf our whole brains. We had a small anechoic chamber next to my studio but gradually we managed to expunge the cacophony from our heads and continue with our work. 

I would not advise any musician to try this. Normally we all seem to manage to mask our brains from unwanted sound. I’m sure that even musicians can do it. 

For example, it is possible to fall asleep whilst listening to sound or even watching a film. Children can fall asleep while listening to their favourite story. Perhaps, concentrating on a story can mask the myriad of worries accumulated during the day. I find that I can often fall asleep listening to words but not whilst listening to music. 

I hate the noise in most “pubs” and bars. People start by talking fairly quietly but, as others also begin talking, they have to raise their voices to be heard by their friends. Eventually everybody has to shout to be heard. This could be minimised by using sound absorbing materials in the construction of restaurants and bars. Unfortunately, economy restricts the amount of money that can be spent on this aspect of a building. 

To our aid comes the “cocktail party effect” which enables our brains to hear our friends through the background cacophony. We usually need good hearing in both ears to best appreciate this effect as some degree of sound localisation seems to help. It is remarkable that it is possible at all to hear our friends in such a noisy environment. Personally, I find a noisy restaurant to be totally unacceptable although I presume that the “cocktail party effect” would help me to inform my friends to hear my “Let’s get out of here!” cries of anguish. Any “background music” would be of little help.

Sometimes silence can be “golden”.