Filling the glass...

Like in a Zen "koan", a glass is a glass when it's "acting like a glass" - i.e. containing some wine... a music room should be filled with music to play as an unicum with gears, speakers and the listener.

My best concert experiences were sure coming from, say, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam or Alice Tully Hall or (old) Carnegie Hall in NYC or Sala dei Giganti in Padua, Italy - by chance all venues where I was like "inside" the music, like swimming in an amniotic fluid... not musicians shouting to a passive, frozen audience, but music as sweetest solid air, something to be "cut with a knife", as Jorge correctly pointed-out.

After carefully reading last Jorge and Roman's essays (see previous post), I found a sentence which made something to (loudly) click in my mind: music filling a room and cohesion among different ways in a multiamped speakers system: three, four or five ways which sounds like a single-speaker, where lows, mids and highs aren't important, anymore... all is so natural and effortless and easy to the ear and to the soul... something I so much appreciated at Klaus' place, last year in Germany... and in my studio, after recent fiddling;-)

When a system is "properly filling" a room, the system is no more a separated entity, assorted gears playing in a room, but the room, itself, is transformed in a brand-new environment... call it a "music-room" or whatever, BUT sure not "only" where the stereo is;-)

The trick is in the "filling" - i.e. music isn't shouting from too small speakers in a too large room, or vice-versa, BUT both speakers and room are pretty interacting as a properly sized/efficient/beefy/natural/tuned/you-name-it whole; it's a bandoneon-like concept;-) - i.e. a solo lute is filling a room in a different way than a jazz quartet or an orchestra... a super-careful volume-setting is - again and again something worthwile to be repeated and underlined - paramount to reach "right" and satisfying results.

Last (rainy) Sunday morning, during an extremely satisfying two hours-long listening at my studio, I was childish singing-along R.E.M.'s "UP!" disk... shamelessly, singing with full voice - I swear - with tears of joy in my eyes, my voice was soooo nicely blending with Michael Stipe's in "Diminished" and in other songs... yes, in my 32 square meters, tiny, but dedicated studio, me and Gotorama, Gotorama and myself and the studio itself, "we" were music and "in" music for loooong, loooong moments of pure bliss.

Nor my voice, neither my system were louder or unnatural vs. the other and vice-versa... no (apparent) distorsion on both parts... the blending of ALL parties was awesome, "perfect", meaning the joy and satisfaction was greatly surpassing any need of speculation, while listening.

It isn't exactly what happens while listening to live music?

Aren't words always needed "after" the music (concert, disc, etc.)?

Electronic, voice, room... only words, empty words... 't-was Music, at its best.

Is it what we're for, isn't it?!?