Venue vs. Music: How music and architecture relate

David Byrne of Talking Heads speaks about the way architecture has helped to shape music.  This Ted.com video How Architecture Helped Music Evolve shows David speaking about acoustics of a room, reverberation, room size, shape and materials of buildings that give them a distinct acoustic property.  David does ask the question do musicians write music with a certain type of venue in mind?

He talks about his own experiences playing venues like CBGB that has a very loud and interactive audience.  The crowds seem to be more energetic, talkative, meaning the band has to play much louder to be heard of the rowdy crowd.  Later on in his career his band played larger venue like Carnegie Hall, which is much nicer but much harder venue to play than smaller venues.  The reason being that the larger venues have more reverberation and it’s harder to keep a beat especially on drums with all the bouncing of sound. 

This video at first sight didn’t appear to fit in exactly with my business plans but watching the entire video gave me ideas to give to future clients.  For many musicians they don’t think of long-term effects of what they are presently writing.  Where will your music be played?  Who will be playing your music?  What kind of mix do you want for a master (even though that is largely decided by the engineers)?  All of these questions have to be asked now when writing music because there is much more involved with our growing technology and ways in which we explore music.  I would ask the same questions of any client under my wing but most importantly musicians.  Having a long-term plan and vision for the creative process is how I will build my relationship with clients.  David Byrne in a very roundabout way helped me see that. 

The answer to David’s initial question is yes and no.  I think every musician has a particular kind of venue in mind when writing a piece of music.  Whether that ideal venue is a conscious or subconscious decision is something completely different.  For someone like Mozart, with the delicate music he wrote for chamber settings it is apparent that he knew his audience, venue and acoustics before he even set down to compose.  A band like the Talking Heads might not have been as aware of what size venue they were writing for.  It seems that musicians over time have used technology as it relates to their audience and venue when appropriate.  For example Chet Baker’s “My Funny Valentine” was almost whispered to us through microphone, which was cutting edge at the time.  He would never have been able to create this same effect without a microphone and a particular venue live.  I would like for my artists to have the same vision for their music and future technological advances as well as architectural changes that will continue to shape music.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/david_byrne_how_architecture_helped_music_evolve.html