December 2021

The following is an ongoing attempt to consolidate my philosophies and understanding on what it means to share music with people on a dancefloor, and what it takes to make the most of it. My hope here is to move mind and body.

Many of these ideas are conglomerated from my experiences in the London hifi dance party scene at Beauty and the Beat, All Our Friends and Lucky Cloud. In part they are philosophies of David Mancuso carried forward, lessons learnt at Audio Gold, wisdom from Ben Shallcross and from my interests in the healing power of psychedelics and the neuroscience of mental health. I feel it is by no means complete and undoubtedly inaccurate along the way, it is however an overview of some concepts you may find interesting.

My recommendations for relevant books would be to start with Love Saves The Day by Tim Lawrence and How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan, both page turners.

I would also like to thank my attorney for his ongoing advice, proof reading skills and probing conversation.

The writing is accompanied by music to encourage dance, released in a series of sets available on Mixcloud or downloadable as 96kHz/24bit WAV for those who wish to listen in higher fidelity.

If you know anyone who might be interested please share this with them. It’s approximately a 25 minute read.

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Much love to all and thank you for showing an interest.

Enjoy,

Josh

Metaphysics of a hifi dancefloor

Energy is never lost – it is neither created or destroyed – it simply changes state.

From artist to practise to record to dj to dancer, this law of thermodynamics can be applied directly to the recording of music and its translation into our lives. Moreover, the emotional energy required as well as the physical is captured during the process, to be stored and subsequently received by those who listen.

When a piece of music is created, beginning with ideas from one or amongst several musicians, a certain feeling is turned into notes and eventually, with the collective talent of all creatives involved, a recording is made and a record produced. The energy cycle starts with the kinetic mechanical production of sound, into electrical signals which are transposed into waveforms and pressed into physical form on vinyl.

This piece of vinyl, to my mind, now becomes an energy time capsule. Using this object we can go full circle; the music stored there can be reproduced, from transposed waveform into electrical signals and eventually back into sound waves to be heard by the listener. Not only can the sum of the original emotion be felt again but that energy can be shared amongst many in a single moment.

There are few things in this world that can unite humans in the way music does. By nature we are individuals; our minds are all unique, our emotions are formed and expressed based on our experiences and none of us can truly know another’s feelings. As a species we have used music to connect with one another from our beginnings, it is a form of communication without language. In many African cultures there are traditional songs for all occasions; be it work or marriage, birth or storytelling. Music is interwoven into the fabric of life and passed down from generation to generation. It is an integral part of all our lives and speaks to us on an alternative level, transcending the specific meaning that words bring. It evokes emotion from within us, from a deeper, more primal plane. When we listen we feel, and when we listen together we have this opportunity to feel together. The burial traditions of the Nyakyusa people from Tanzania initially focus on wailing but then require the participants dance and flirt at the funeral, using music to confront death with an affirmation of life.

By sharing a space and immersing ourselves in music we create an environment where a group of individuals can collectively travel on the same emotional journey. This is a truly magical phenomenon, a way of deepening our understanding for one another. As each person rides the same wave we become closer, bonds are formed and love flourishes in the wake of shared experience.

It is important to explore the distinctions between watching a performance, participating in live music or sharing recorded music. Watching a concert for example might be considered passive engagement, whilst playing an instrument or dance might be considered active engagement. Seeing music in concert is a powerful thing, involving our sight as well as hearing, with the stage centering our focus on the performer(s), which can lead to wonderfully profound and meditative states of mind. Active engagement could be seen differently; as a conversation of emotion and collaboration beyond language. Playing music with others connects us directly to the other players and dance offers a way for everyone to participate in that conversation irrespective of their proficiency with an instrument. Most of the oldest forms of music involve ritual and dance, with emphasis on participation from whole communities in worship, celebration and ceremony. Connecting people through rhythm and movement. Which can be linked to numerous societal and wellbeing advantages. We now have the option to converse in this context of dance using recorded music, actively engaging without the players present. 

Listening to recorded music on a dancefloor, we receive the energy input into the song through hearing alone, which creates a unique reaction, and perhaps enables us to share the experience more intimately from listener to listener when compared with, say, passive engagement at a concert. Without our attention drawn to the performer(s) our other senses are free to connect with the people around us instead. Perhaps listening to recorded music in a ritualistic manner is akin to the tribal roots of music’s origins and the benefits associated with community. Using rhythm to encourage movement and self expression, bringing us together through dance in a modern style.  

Considering the energy cycle; we have this technology which allows us to reproduce any recorded composition, be it entirely human made or computer aided. The music and its emotional essence is there for us to enjoy at any given moment. Joined by the act of listening on a dance floor, those sound waves are turned back into electrical signals inside our ears and sent down the auditory nerve arriving at our collective consciousness. Expressing ourselves to the sounds of the music, each person now inputs their own energy into the cycle. Engaging and immersing themselves in the music, the addition of each individual’s feelings along the same trajectory creates an atmosphere greater than the sum of its parts. The effort and emotion put into making the record in the first place has been received and amplified, creating that euphoric dancefloor experience, that palpable atmosphere which becomes so tangible. 

Our hearing is incredibly sensitive, with the average healthy human ear being able to hear 10 octaves from 20hz-20kHz. A very wide range in comparison to light, where we see less than one octave on the electromagnetic spectrum.  

The mantra ‘PLUR’ (standing for Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect) encapsulates the emotions which make up the dancefloor atmosphere. Music offers a particularly powerful way of extending our emotions; by sharing the same environment with others in dance we are able to reach towards a primary state of consciousness. 

What we know as adult waking consciousness is partly the development of our neural networks into rigid and functional pathways over time. As a means of preserving energy, this constrained consciousness defines our reality and our self-awareness, providing our “sense of self” or ego. Primary consciousness is associated with decreased coupling between certain brain networks and increased complexity and criticality in the brain. The dance phenomena draws us out of this “sense of self” and into the music. The resulting entropic (disordered) mind is temporarily dissolved of its ego and free to interpret the senses without preconception.

In a nutshell, the collapse of the highly organised activity within the brain allows access to an altered state of mind, one where our senses are not subject to learned experience. Emotion can be felt and expressed as an entity beyond self-awareness, enabling access to a shared consciousness or a higher state of being amongst the atmosphere in a room. A de-subjectified state of euphoria. There becomes no fixed boundaries at all between the brain, the body and the environment. Cognition could be redefined as a system in which brain, body and world play equal parts.

It has been shown that achieving this primary state can alleviate the symptoms of depression, anxiety and addiction. Meditation and psychedelics are the primary focus of research into this area. There are profound clinical results to show that a single high dose of LSD or psilocybin can induce this state of consciousness with lasting effects. Whilst the dancefloor cannot compare in magnitude, it is my belief there is an opportunity to achieve the same results on a smaller scale. By wiping the mind’s lines of communication clean, we can think and feel with fresh eyes, as it were – a reset. The result of this temporary dissolution of ego can be an awakening of love and respect for oneself and others, being at one with the music, the crowd, and the world. For many, a revelatory experience can occur; the understanding that we are part of this universe together, that humanity is bigger than “I”. This merging into one collective body is often associated with worship; dancing is simply another form of going to church and has many of the same if not more benefits.

Inclusivity of individuals on a well curated dancefloor is an example of the results; when connected through music in a positive environment people are instinctively encouraged to be open minded, to both the music being played and the crowd they are part of. Coming together to enjoy the same experience helps people to accept one another for who they are irrespective of age, race, sex, gender, ability, religion, background or sexual preference. This safe space can be immensely powerful for all, but particularly for anyone feeling marginalised in society.

This energy of love and compassion, induced through the music, is reflected back into the room. The dancers keep the room “alive”, feeding the atmosphere and maintaining accessibility to this primary state of consciousness for all. Having a primary state experience has a deep influence on us. Our brains are so plastic that the erasing of highly organised thought processes can have permanent results: we may reassess what is important to us, how we behave towards ourselves or how we treat others. We may rewrite the pathways with more positivity in the context of our own experience. 

One could therefore conclude that regular “worship” and participation in a dancefloor can have a substantially positive effect on mental wellbeing. 

Of course, the conditions in which the whole cycle takes place have dramatic effects on the outcome. The higher the quality of the whole process, the more we can get out of it. When care and attention to detail in every step becomes an intention the magic can really happen.

The influence of each host or dancer has an impact on the crowd. With foundations in love, care and acceptance the responsibility to uphold a safe environment becomes shared amongst all who participate. Under the wrong influences however a dancefloor can also be harmful, without the guidance of a positive community there is potential for exclusion and negative consequences. Dance environments in the media can often be portrayed alongside irresponsible drug use for example. Mainstream club culture is often driven by profit with little care for people or setting, in turn allowing behaviours such as sexism and misogyny to become prevalent, completely destroying the essence of shared music. By promoting an open and welcoming culture people will naturally look after one another and carry those attributes of inclusivity into their everyday lives.

High fidelity sound on the dancefloor is a major enabler of this environment. Whereby the aim is to reproduce the music as accurately as the artist intended. Therefore careful consideration must be given to the signal path from recording through to loudspeaker, from soundwave to soundwave. At its beginning, we have the artist capturing each element of the music, then the acoustics of the environment, microphones, pre-amps, studio equipment and mixing will all dictate the quality of the sound. At this point equipment may be used to deliberately distort and alter the original signal for desired effect. Once a final piece is accomplished, in the form of a master recording, then surely the goal should be to play it back to a dancefloor as true as can be? In playback, the shorter the signal path, the cleaner the signal, as each step in the reproduction of the sound adds distortion away from the master recording. Whilst it is impossible to remove this level of distortion completely, high fidelity results can be achieved by using equipment with distortion characteristics that compliment the desired environment. 

There is a strong argument here that maintaining an analogue signal throughout produces better results. Keeping a waveform whole, as opposed to sampling it into numeric values,  maintains purity. Recording to tape provides natural restrictions as tape can only be re-recorded so many times on a limited number of tracks, but to many enthusiasts, the overall process remains more ‘human’. Although the human ear cannot detect the differences between a high quality digital signal and an analogue one, there is a certain je ne sais quoi to a pure analogue pathway. Converting a soundwave into 1’s and 0’s and back again results in something being lost, albeit inaudible, the essence of the music is degraded. If the recording must be digital, then at least a conversion back to analogue at the vinyl stage can minimise any further impact. There is a 3D element to a soundwave pressed into vinyl which cannot be so easily reproduced digitally on the dancefloor.

So the variables involved in playback are these: a piece of vinyl, pickup (or stylus and cartridge), turntable, phono amplification, pre amplification, power amplification, cabling and loudspeakers. The elements of a stereo hifi system. In order to reach the potential of the recording on the dancefloor, to provide the environment which enables people to become lost in music, a high fidelity system (hifi), opposed to a public address system (PA), must be used and set up in such a way as to encapsulate the dancefloor within it. This hifi equipment is designed to deliver a clear, broad and detailed sound at close range, unlike a PA system which is designed with power in mind to throw sound over long distances. By using hifi and arranging it so that there are speakers in at least four corners facing inwards, the focal point of sound and subsequently the room becomes the dancefloor. One’s senses are focused on the dancers instead of the source of the music. 

Quality of the components is key. A system is only as good as its weakest link, therefore each element must be considered holistically. A stylus is used to read the soundwave on a record; the closer the shape of this stylus to the original cutter which produced the master disc, the more accurately it can read the wave to be reproduced back into an electrical signal by the cartridge. The tonearm which holds the cartridge even influences the sound. The cartridge emits a low voltage signal to be amplified three times before reaching our ears. Phono > Pre > Power. Each stage of amplification has an impact: the dark magic of a phono stage brings this low voltage signal up, a pre amplifier provides an opportunity for human interaction whereby two input signals (records) can be merged together, frequencies can be manipulated and volume can be controlled, and finally a power amplifier hears this signal and copies it on a scale large enough to drive the speakers. 

Loudspeakers have the difficult job of converting that signal from a current into its different frequencies with enough accuracy for us to hear it clearly. Speakers work by converting electrical energy into mechanical energy. The mechanical energy compresses air and converts the motion into sound energy. When an electric current (waveform) is sent through a coil of wire, it induces a magnetic field. By passing a current through a voice coil which is attached to a cone, it creates an electric field. This interacts with the magnetic field of a stationary magnet, subsequently attracting or repelling the coil (and cone). The back and forth motion of the cone creates pressure waves in the air that we perceive as sound. This is the same technology that captures sound in a microphone, and produces the current in a phono cartridge. 

The ultimate test of fidelity for a speaker is how similar the waveform in the air (the pressure wave) is to the electronic signal (the sound recording) that was sent into the amplifier. It is not possible for the speaker to achieve this with one cone, as the cone must move very quickly to produce small high frequency waves and it must push a lot of air to produce larger low frequency waves. Therefore it is necessary to split the signal into frequency bands (a crossover) and use different sized cones (speakers) to move separate waves, which then re-converge (hopefully) into the original waveform at the listener. Ideally this would be into four; sub, low, mid and high ranges. More frequency separation equals lower distortion and  higher clarity of music. To top it off, there are actually two simultaneous waveforms being reproduced from the word go, one for the left and one for the right, creating a stereo effect. Application of stereo allows the recording engineer to create a ‘sound image’ by placing each element of the music in a different position within the left/right constraints. 

From musician to record to listener there is a lot going on – it’s a big system. Hence the need for as little interference as possible. Done properly, all this can result in a mind boggling sense of the music appearing from within the mind, as it can be extremely difficult to pinpoint the source of the sound. The gateway to a primary state of consciousness. 

Alongside the soundsystem, the importance of the physical environment should not be overlooked. Lights and decoration are essential components, as they set the tone of the room. Colour holds a vital role in curating the ambiance, soft, warm and welcoming lighting helps people to relax, enabling them to loosen their grip and involve themselves in the dancefloor. Food to sustain people, good quality drinks and friendly staff are all important in achieving the fundamental aim of a natural, organic environment without rules.

With all the components in place, the role of the musical host is to steer the ship. Using the soundsystem as their instrument it is their responsibility to programme music that has the magic to draw listeners out of themselves and into the environment. Music that lends itself to the high fidelity nature; not just ‘good music’, but music that has the passion for detail at its core; well recorded, limited analogue processes and high quality pressings. It’s not just the tune itself which matters but how it sounds in the context of the system. Recorded music is now a well so deep that you can never reach the bottom; by playing records instead of listening to a band it is possible to hear completely different sounds from across the globe spun together one after the other. There is an unspoken bond of trust between the host and the dancers, a line of communication that exists within the atmosphere of the room. The dancefloor provides energy in reaction to the music, the host guides that energy along a trajectory, reacting to the movement of the dancers. This symbiosis results in a unique unfolding journey of emotion through music. A host is as much of a storyteller as they are researcher, finding the music and weaving it together in such a way as to elevate or alleviate the energy of a room over time, deepening the involvement of the dancers and taking them on an adventure where they have influence over what happens next. Time becomes obsolete, and riding out these journeys together enables people to be closer to one another – the shared experience forming a sense of community. 

If the sum of the experience is the whole package; dancers, lights, records, hosts, sound etc. then the same rules that apply to audio apply to the evening as a whole – each element is as important as the other. Care and attention to detail must be given at every step. A soundsystem is synonymous with community in its totality.

Studies have shown that participation in ritual and social gathering can greatly benefit our individual and collective wellbeing. As many people move further away from traditional religions and communal living, the advantages of spiritual practice, our deeper understanding of nature and unconscious connections to one another are not as readily accessible. In the present day, each of us may pursue interests to the n’th degree as we wish; it is worth considering how becoming part of a community focused around such interests may bring us the same wellbeing, sense of belonging and shared belief as traditional worship. Perhaps it is not the focus on the divine which is important, but the ritual which brings us together. By meeting regularly as a community, these benefits become clear. The people involved develop a sense of belonging as they build friendships around a common interest. It is known that maintaining good relationships can have a powerful positive impact on our health and our happiness, the same goes for people who engage with spiritual or religious practises – perhaps the two are historically entwined? To involve oneself in a community provides essential support and inspiration amidst the modern day curse of ‘busy’.

It stands to reason that the wellbeing benefits of immersing ourselves in music, dance and people are significant. Identifying with such positive shared experiences can influence our personality. Creativity can flourish when one’s soul is content. The afterglow of these experiences are love, joy and compassion. They can provide a framework towards a healthy life, energising people and inspiring them, instilling values of acceptance and self worth. Helping humanity to be as one with the world, encouraging us to live full lives in the name of community, rather than ‘progress’. 

To belong amongst people of a similar mindset can be a great teacher. To be completely present for an evening helps to ground us, not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. To be part of something which brings you joy in the moment and which connects you to people can help to develop a sense of identity affiliated with that experience. The ethos of play is at the very heart of these ideas and to be immersed in play during these experiences sends ripples into everyday life.

Living should not be about striving for the next level, working for the promotion or owning the desirable object. It should be about finding those connections which resonate with your identity, sharing yourself with others and giving time to what they share with you.

A dancefloor has no ambition or agenda. It is there to support any who embrace it without judgement, to provide the freedom to be oneself, the confidence to let go and a community to become a part of. Its message is love for all humanity.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

JB

Head to the next blog post to hear the accompanying music.