RMAF 2011 – Optimal Times of Day for Music Genres at a Show

The first day or two of the show, when it became 3 or 4 o’clock, with just a few hours to go until closing at 6:00pm, I thought: “Everybody [including myself] is getting tired, we should play some nice loud rock and roll to wake people up!”

But on average people did not seem to react all that well to this.

Then It finally came time to have another thought: “Maybe people are burnt out, their ears are so blasted by loud unpleasant sounds, that ANYTHING loud is just too painful to bear”.

So, to test THIS theory, I played opera and jazz and country music at modest volumes instead.

People seemed to like this a lot more – their faces had a relaxed look as they turned around to leave and resume walking the gauntlet of exhibit rooms.

So, taking this model into account, that people come in with ears affected by the sound in other rooms, as well as by the time of day and blood sugar level, I came up with this tentative optimal schedule:

Morning ear wake-up: classical, new age, …

Morning pick-me-up: rock and roll

Before lunch blast off: heavy metal, techno

Post lunch digestive period: anything but heavy metal and techno

Nap time: gentle jazz and classical, opera and ‘audiophile music’

Closing wrap-up: quietly play gentle jazz and classical, opera and ‘audiophile music’

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And, if the show ran long enough, and for those unfortunate enough to venture into enough unpleasant rooms, then the mere drop on a pin! would cause the most hardy of audiophiles to flinch :-).

I am not sure the above schedule has all the bugs ironed out yet – but you get the idea, the idea that the groups of people coming into an exhibit room have by-and-large experienced the same thing all day, whereas at home, some of us had a bad day with the boss [Rock and Roll, Heavy Metal, Gangsta Rap], or a bad traffic day coming home [new age music, baroque, slow saxaphonish jazz], met a potentially significant other [Neal Young, Pink Floyd – or maybe that was just me :-)], … etc.