Silence
I read a disparaging comment about a rather poorly-received album (which shall go unnamed) yesterday: "this album is so bad, my time would have been more meaningfully spent sitting in silence." That sentiment struck me because I immediately thought, "well, yes, because silence can be profoundly meaningful if used right."
And that got me thinking about silence, its nature, and how its used not only by the listener but the musician.
We all know silence can be used to great effect in music--the artistic pause and whatnot--but I wonder how other listeners use silence in their listening habits. For example, I limit myself to a certain amount of music in a day, and when I reach that limit, I spend the rest of the day in silence. I will also take one month out of the year and listen to nothing, to reboot my brain and spirit, as it were.
Silence is something that excites me, too, in avant music, especially when it's used in avant-garde jazz or avant-prog. I love how the musicians can use silence as part of the structure and how it can have its own "sound".
I'm not a deep thinker, and I'm just kind of rambling here, hoping to inject some more content into my journal, so what do you guys think about silence? Any thoughts or ideas? Any listening practices to share with us? And for you musicians, any ways you like to use silence in your compositions?
As my wife told me when I brought this topic up, "We live in a society full of noise, with sound at our fingertips, and it takes effort to come to understand silence as a positive 'thing', as a setting in its own right, rather than a mere absence or lack."
I'm especially interested in hearing Frownland's and innerspaceboy's thoughts on this topic, as I know they have clear, strong opinions on it.