Sunday, May 09, 2010

What's The Matter with That One-Man-Band?

A few months back, I had the "pleasure" of attending a simcha where the entertainment was provided by a one-man-band and singer. (For my Yiddish readers, that's a von-men-bend un zinger"). The musician is one of the long-time "names" in that end of the business. I was actually interested to see how he approached playing a large yeshivish wedding. That is, I was interested until he started playing. Natch, the music was painfully loud. In addition to the volume issue, there was a larger issue. That is, the music just didn't sound good. Specifically, it sounded as though the music was EQed to be as shrill and annoying as possible. And then it occurred to me that he had EQed the music to compensate for high frequency hearing loss he's likely suffered from years of playing waaay to loud at parties. The music probably sounded great to him, because his hearing has been so damaged by years of high volume playing.