No place for orchestral music on the road

Music is my first love, but I don’t listen to music when I’m working, neither do I listen much to music while I’m driving. When I listen to music I prefer giving music my full attention. That’s true even when I listen to music while sleeping. I focus my attention on one instrument, block out the rest, and I’m soon asleep.

It’s a form of meditation.

When I’m at work focused — while writing this column, for example — I prefer working in silence. I’ve trained myself to write in all kinds of distracting circumstances by blocking out surrounding conversations and commotion. But given a choice I choose a quiet workplace. Working with background music my mind wanders to the music and away from my work.

Driving I prefer either silence or listening to spoken word conversations. When I do listen to music while driving — it’s rarely orchestral music.

Unless my radio volume is set to play back the majority of orchestral music uncomfortably loud, I can’t hear the pianissimo (very quiet) music sections. And I don’t want to spend time continually adjusting the music volume while driving.

So orchestral music is off my driving playlist.

When I was first studying classical music, listening to different composers and their works for large orchestras — it bothered me that I often couldn’t tell when one movement ended and another began.

I first noticed that phenomenon listening to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.” Right off the bat I loved the music. The first movement is “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship.” The final movement is about a wooden ship breaking up against a rock cliff.

I wanted to hear how Rimsky-Korsakov used the sound of musical instruments to describe a wooden ship breaking apart against rocks.

My ears were used to songs — pop, folk, jazz, country — with clear beginnings and endings. Orchestral music might transition seamlessly from one movement to the next; one movement picking up where the previous movement left off.

Listening to “Scheherazade’s” shipwreck through headphones I remember thinking, “Boy, this is a long movement.” I peeked at the turntable tone arm on the vinyl LP and the movement I thought I was still listening to ended minutes ago.

It was the listening equivalent to reading a book and discovering someone had torn out the last page.

With digital CDs and MP3s the problem of detecting movement changes was much, much worse. Listening to vinyl albums I could hear the slight hiss and click of the diamond turntable stylus passing over the blank space between movements.

Digital music has no hiss, no clicks. One movement ends, the next movement starts undetected. There’s not even a tone arm moving across a vinyl album to guide me.

In time, as I became more familiar with orchestral music, my need to listen studiously movement by movement ended. But familiarity with the music doesn’t change my main challenge with driving and listening to orchestral music. The drastic shifts in dynamics — very soft music to very loud music — don’t fit my preferred “set it and forget it” volume control for driving.

So these days I’m mostly driving in a quiet car, rarely with music, and sometimes while listening to a podcast.

This week I was listening to the recent episode of the “Cleared Hot” podcast, and the conversation was among the host and two guests. While the host and one guest sat close to the mic, the third guest sounded distant from the mic.

All was well until the distant guest said something in a whisper and I missed it. So I turned the volume up. When the host spoke again it was too loud, so I turned the volume down. But then the distant guest was whispering again.

Aaarrrggghhhh!

I turned off the podcast, drove on in silence, and thought about what I could write for this week’s column.

Scott K. Fish has served as a communications staffer for Maine Senate and House Republican caucuses, and was communications director for Senate President Kevin Raye. He founded and edited AsMaineGoes.com and served as director of communications/public relations for Maine’s Department of Corrections until 2015. He is now using his communications skills to serve clients in the private sector.