The first time I heard of Silent Disco I thought it was stupid and I would never get on board. That was before I tried it.
Like many of the things I've decided to hate first, try later (driving cars, green tea, black coffee, farming and regular exercise to name but a few), I eventually discovered that it's actually quite good. Go me.
I loved how you could go from Room One to Room Two to outside, just by pressing a button or taking the headphones off. Well convenient.
That was in 2008 and Silent Disco hasn't really developed at all. What I find galling now is that the people playing the songs don't seem to have really embraced the medium that Silent Disco has spawned.
Every silent disco I've been to has been a battle of red LED Vs green LED, the DJs play classics (read - RINSED TO FUCK) tunes that the crowd knows all the words to (because they've heard them a zillion times - 'how I hate boring DJs' is another story).
What you get at Silent Disco is something like this
Shouty silence disco folks
(which if you can't be bothered to watch it is a tent full of noisy tweens putting their hands up to The Chili Peppers or going Wooo Hoo to Blur's lesser played (pfffft) hit Song 2, or saying Yeeeah to Nirvana's Come As You Are (heard it have you?) or anything by Bob Marley, The Prodigy or Dolly Parton... (seriously have they not made any good songs since '95 or is that just the last time you fuckjobs went record shopping? YEEEESH).
So in my multi-times going to silent discos and listening to these apes banging out choruses it occured to me that here these DJs have a huge, loud, living orchestra, why aren't they collaborating to make the crowd create an entirely new song out of the shouting and the listening and the enjoying?
It's what good DJs do anyway, mixing up shit that already exists into new shit, why not go 3D with that? Why not go biological mofos?
HEY SILENT DISCO DJs - DO LIKE THIS GUY DOES AND MAKE SOMETHING MAGIC.
bobby mcferrin hacks your brain
Go on, you don't even have to tell anyone it was my idea and I will start liking Silent Disco again....
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1 comments:
Im sorry to hear that you hate part of what we do but id like to point out that we have been working hard to develop the format for a couple of years. To answer a few of your points, 3D silent discos are fairly common place although personally this is not a format I enjoy.
In 2008 we created an event where bands played live against each other in silence (Silent Gig), we have experimented with binaural audio and run events using classical and other interesting music choices.
however the "standard" silent disco is extremely popular and as its not something people do every day, so our DJ's get inundated with requests for the popular sing alongs you no longer enjoy. While we try to cater to everyone’s musical tastes ultimately we live in a society where the majority rules. I’d suggest looking for Silent Discos in Arts venues, these are normally where boundaries are pushed and new ideas tested.
With regards Bobby McFerrin's demonstration I dont see how this could be enhanced by our technology? but we're always open to new and interesting ideas.
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