There’s a bunch of songs that send me directly back to warehouses in LA circa 1995. I used to go to Insomniac, F.A.M.I.L.Y., and a few other regular gigs.
There’s something about a lot of dance music, acid breaks, and house… that you just can’t comprehend by listening to it anywhere but in front of a stack of speakers. Some tracks that you hear on the radio or bumping out of a car next to you… you can’t judge them on that listening medium. The other thing about dance music is that it’s constructed to be part of a larger mix. It’s usually built specifically to have a very tight structure so that it will flow in and out of other tracks easily. I think a lot of people don’t really understand that. They hear a track on itunes or blasting on the street somewhere and just wonder what it is about that music that people like so much…
It’s a tactile thing. Most of the good tracks I can think of just need the power of a stack of speakers pushing the bass to the top of your awareness to be experienced properly.
And a deep tribal memory of sorts. Loud bass is like a beacon back to your old brain. It’s the pound of the tribal drum dictating a rhythm. It’s beyond our time. It’s the genetic memory from people who lived in your family line a long long long long time ago.
It’s also a younger memory of your time in the womb, catchin’ Mom’s heartbeat. Think about the bass of a stack of speakers. Some people are alarmed by that feeling. I think it’s because it’s familiar but unsettling because of an inability to identify why it’s familiar.
My man Derek drops a science bomb with this:
Bass is the ’section’ of the sound spectrum with real power. It makes the speaker move more than the higher frequencies…so much that you can see it. More importantly, you
can feel it. You feel it in your ear…you feel it against your chest…hell, it’ll even rattle your nutsack! Stand next to a bass bin at a club and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking
about. Bass is so powerful that it makes club nights for deaf people possible (No, I’m not kidding. They do exist). There’s also the feeling you get, mentally, when you hear
bass. In many memorable songs, the bassline is what gives it feeling…emotion…that extra umph that makes you close your eyes, pump your fist, and holla like you know you
got to.
Take a few examples:
‘Money’ - Pink Floyd (editor note: listen)
‘Bassline’ - Mantronix
‘Billie Jean’ - Michael Jackson (sorry…but it helps my point) (ed: listen)
‘LFO’ - LFO
‘Get Up’ - James Brown (ed: listen)
Ya feel me? And I didn’t even mention what an 808 kick drum will do to ya!
-D.
Amen! Heeeere you go: turn it up!
My brother Deeje says:
My thoughts are similar to Derek¹s:
Most sound you feel with your eardrums, but bass you feel with your whole
body. Also, when I hear good loud bass, it puts my size into perspective
compared to the universe.
Peace
deeje
ah yes, good point…
My coworker Fred and I had a conversation on 2005/05/13 regarding bass.. His thoughts were that maybe the uncomfortable feeling some people get when exposed to loud bass is one of being out of control. My immediate reaction was to plug my ears to simulate what control we have over loud sound. You can block out treble to some degree, but you can’t block out the bass. Your ears can be protected from trebel, but your body is going to feel the bass, with you liking it or not. Maybe some people just don’t like being out of control of what they feel.
(this is a work in progress)
be safe… the persuit of bass is a noble one, but don’t kill your sense of hearing in the process. earplugs are your friend. They’re cheap, and they help block out the higher frequencies that do the most damage. Get your bass on, just be smart.
