brettworks

(Photo: Speaker array for Janet Cardiff’s “Forty-Part Motet”)

Getting the volume right is adjusting your monitors or headphones so the music sounds lifelike, realistically filling the room or headspace in which you’re working. Dialing in this sound level suspends your disbelief about the virtual nature of your musical tools and loudspeakers’ mediations. Not too loud, not too soft: at the right volume, the sample becomes a real instrument, the reverb becomes the concert hall, the field recording manifests the singers in the chapel. The right volume helps the composer meaningfully interact with her sounds, shaping how she plays with them. Not too loud, not too soft: get the volume right by balancing electronically-produced sounds with the acoustic life of where you are so nothing sounds out of place or feels fake. In sum, music at its right volume is palpably physical, making you believe its presence.