LOUDNESS
Music has been ruined for me. The song “Say a Little Prayer” by Aretha Franklin was played and I got excited as it was the first song that I actually knew. As I sang along in my head, the concept of loudness was brought up. It was pointed out that Aretha was really belting out the song. When compared to Adele’s “Hello”, there was a hearable difference. “Hello from the OTHER SIDE” should be LOUDER than the other parts of the song, but it wasn’t. The song had been changed in the studio to have the same loudness, the same consistency throughout. If you compare the two fantastic singers, it’s clear that the two songs have been manipulated differently. In the video for “Hello”, Adele is visibly belting out the lyrics, but it isn’t heard in the final product. The entire song has been set to a certain maximum volume. “Say a Little Prayer” may have been edited in the studio, but the volume differential is present. Even without the background singers, it was obvious that Aretha varied her voice throughout the song by placing more emphasis on certain words and phrases as does Adele, but without the volume being manipulated. I began thinking about older songs that I enjoy since volume loudness was a relatively new phenomenon and it clicked. When I listen to “California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and Papas, I constantly have to change the volume of the song because the music wasn’t set the same maximum volume. After realizing that, I retracted my initial thoughts about volume manipulation being a bad thing. I see the pros and cons of both, but ultimately I enjoy (being the millennial that I am) having the volume set at the same loudness.