Overdoing It Has Been Overdone

Reflections on the Age of Excess

A confession: When you spend most of your waking hours listening to music, you tend to get overstimulated pretty easily. This is compounded by the fact that the entire creative world is working to overstimulate us constantly—and understandably so. 

Never before has so much been possible in our field. Creative technology is more affordable and the learning curve less steep than ever before. Modern artists have sounds at their fingertips that musicians fifty years ago would never have dreamed of (oh, and we have everything they did too, but better). In essence, anything you want to do sonically, you can. But should you?

In an entertaining exercise at the Music Lab earlier this month, I resolved not to speak a word for the first hour of our Open Lab session. Our students filed in, and I greeted them all wordlessly. Very quickly, the topic of why I wasn’t speaking became the talk of the town—a great deal of laughter and discussion ensued amongst the kids. When we arrived at the hour mark, I told them simply, “the absence of something is often more interesting than its presence.” 

Does that mean I shouldn’t ever talk? Of course not. We can continue to make music as we currently do; however, we need to also be making music like we aren’t. We need better spaces—both online and in-person—for music that doesn’t overwhelm us. The joy of simplicity needs to be regained, perhaps reimagined for an audience with a shorter attention span than ever in recorded history (but that’s a discussion for another time).

As you go about your week, I encourage you to observe the ways in which our society barrages our senses. Ask yourself, would this song be just as good, or even better, if less was going on? Would our lives in general be better with less going on?

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