Oh, dear. Two blogs in one day. Probably more people will be interested in the one that appears below. It's too bad that I published this one second, so it comes first on the display.
excerpts from my posts on Bad Grobanites:
1. On text communication
Oh, I just wanted to talk a bit about the dangers of pure text communication.
Psychologists tell us that 90% of communication is non-verbal: facial expressions, gestures, tones of voice, timing, eye contact, etc.
When we communicate only by text, we are missing 90% of what we would normally get from a face to face conversation. It is really easy to misinterpret what others say, because we can't see them. It's easy to think something is serious when it's intended to be funny. It's easy to think someone is being mean, when really, if they were talking, their tone of voice and their facial expression would convey something much nicer. Some people say really dramatic words in a quiet dead pan, so that they convey much less drama in person, but sound like they're having a regular hissy fit in writing.
One of my friends calls e-mail "evil mail," for this reason.
I've found that people who are very attractive have particular problems over the phone and in writing. Usually, they are met with acceptance in person, because they look so great. Then, when they're only communicating in writing or over the phone, suddenly they're on a much more equal footing with everyone else and they can't figure out why people don't accept them.
2. On listening to music
With respect to the difference between live sound and recorded sound, i just wanted to chime in here.
I certainly noticed a huge difference when I went to that Times Talk event last February.
That even was held in a small auditorium holding no more than two to three hundred people.
The amplification was excessive, to say the least. I almost had to put in ear plugs when Josh started singing. Then there was the odd effect that the room was small enough that Josh didn't really need amplification. He has a strong voice. After the amplified sound ceased, one could still hear his unamplified voice reverberating acoustically.
It was a peculiar effect, to say the least. I wanted to wring the necks of the audio engineers.
Then, though, I went to listen to the recorded video. The recorded sound was totally different. His voice was turned down so that the volume was moderate. He sounded like he was singing reasonably quietly. The reverberations in the room were completely eliminated.
The recorded result was a pleasant sound, but lacking Josh's real power. On the other hand, the live sound was garbled by the conflict between the acoustic sounds and the amplified sounds.
I heard that same type of conflict somewhat when I was listening in the Allen Room, while the recorded sound lacked that conflict and blurring.
Therefore it is certainly true that the recorded sound is going to be very different from the live sound. On the other hand, I don't see how a recorded sound could be off key if the live sound was on key.
I also had the experience July 2 at the Hollywood Bowl that I didn't think Josh sounded very good. His tone wasn't as rich as usual and some of the higher notes sounded very strained indeed. I also thought he looked pale, sweaty, and miserable.
I had several friends in the audience listening at the same concert. I talked to two of them. One of them agreed with me that he didn't sound good. She described her response as "distraught" and she was beside herself with worry about what might be wrong with Josh. The other one said he looked and sounded "wonderful," an impression I found baffling.
People listening to the same concert could easily come back with vastly different impressions of what happened. That shouldn't be a surprise really.
There's that famous experiment that they've done with college psychology classes where they have someone come to the front of the room before class starts in a gorilla suit and do some things. Afterwards, they ask the class to write down what they saw. The accounts are quite divergent, with all sorts of differences in what people saw, including what different impressions type of animal suit the person had been wearing. Like maybe they thought it was a bear instead of a gorilla, and what not.
Some people do have more sensitive ears than others. It has been said of David Foster, for instance, that he can hear a butterfly flapping its wings in a hurricane. Other people can't hear what he hears, though certainly they can hear the results, as he's been very successful as a producer.
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