The worst part of going shopping or eating out, at least for me, is the soulless music that plays as background music in most of these hangouts. I always used to wonder who<\/i> on earth buys those Brian Silas piano renditions of popular Hindi songs or eighties “classics”, tripe like Lionel Ritchie and George Michael. But the more I go to malls and eat-spots and any commercial outlets that play piped music, the more convinced I am that the “bad instrumental covers” section of the music store flourishes entirely because of these places. The same way that all these “College Classics”-type compilations seem to be bought by lazy pub DJs who can just play one of these albums from beginning to end and go smoke with his pals. So I make it a point to mention, in one of those rare occasions when feedback forms are available, to explicitly point out that the music was terrible.<\/p>\n
“How bad can it be?”, you ask.”After all, nobody is really too concerned about what music is playing when one is at shopping, or eating out, yes?” Hmm, maybe you’re right, but I, in my delusionary state of mind ( “I-am-right-and-you-are-not-so-I-shall-be-excessively-verbose”) shall put forward the theory that good music always<\/i> helps individuals do things well, definitely better than when they are listening to terrible music. Now hold on, before you call this a nonsensical theory, let me point out that workers becoming more productive when they listen to proper music was a patented observation made in 1922 by Major General George Squier, and that gentleman went on to create a company called The Muzak Corporation. Later on, of course, “muzak” became a much-vilified term, a synonym for bland, soulless music, but Major Squier’s intentions were noble, I must say. <\/p>\n
So I am thinking about an alternative career for myself – a sonic texture designer. Someone who decides what music an establishment can, and should, play. A playlist, probably a mix-CD at regular intervals of time with well-researched, good<\/i> music. Something that ensures that people associate the experience of being at that place with the song that was playing when they were there. It’s definitely not as live as deejaying gets, where there is the constant crowd feedback, but at least it’s better than listening to tepid crap on public speaker systems. If people can hire interior designers to jazz up the physical surroundings, they can sure hire a sonic architect to enliven one’s aural environment. <\/p>\n
I frighten myself with my rational thinking these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The worst part of going shopping or eating out, at least for me, is the soulless music that plays as background music in most of these hangouts. I always used to wonder who on earth buys those Brian Silas piano renditions of popular Hindi songs or eighties “classics”, tripe like Lionel Ritchie and George Michael. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}