Ben Rusch

This is album number 18, the third instrumental album.

With one exception, the first piece, a piano-only album.

Conceptually, there are four parts.

Hence also the name of the album.

And

if you are wondering why your hearing is still fresh and chipper and does not get fatigued while listening to the previews it is because the album has a much higher dynamic range than the vast majority of pop music. In accordance with the guidelines set out by the Pleasurize Music Foundation, the album overall has an official dynamic range of DR12. More on that further below.

Part I: tracks 1 through 6 are perhaps best described as neoclassical piano music

Part II: tracks 7 through 12 are all-over-the-place piano music, some of which is improvised, some of which is composed properly

Part III: tracks 13 through 27 are in the general vicinity of easy listening, ambient, minimalist and soundtrack music

Part IV: tracks 28 and 29 are two very tame bluesy pieces

And here are a few full-length clips for you

The Cool Fugue (from Part I)	Ice melting fast (from Part II)
Two birds gliding across rolling hills and green meadows (from Part II)	Prelude in D minor for three pianos (from Part I)
Edge of Sanity (from Part I)	Chopin and Kapustin waltzing (from Part I)
Pearls falling from a necklace (from Part II)	It's going to be ok, you can sleep now (from Part III)
Ice melting at a leisurely pace (from Part III)	Riding on a horizontal lightning bolt (from Part II)

And a few previews

Tiger with tail on fire chases after antelope (from Part II)	Blues (from Part IV)
Blues with a (B) minor twist (from Part IV)	Small old clock with a regal personality (from Part III)
Ice melting slowly (from Part III)	Pensive Tristan (from Part III)
Sehnsucht (from Part III)	Standing Stable (from Part III)
Slight doubt and patience (from Part III)	Stroking black keys (from Part III)

You can get it directly from me, or from the Vandala Concepts store, for free.

And now for something completely different: This album is a pacifist in the loudness war

Huh?

For a number of reasons, the dynamic range (in simplistic terms, the difference in volume between the loudest moments in a piece of music and the average volume) of music recordings, particularly in the pop music neck of the woods, has dramatically decreased over the years - a phenomenon also referred to as the "loudness war". That is what the blue logo further up on the page is about.

I recently had the unique honour and privilege of speaking to one of the world's leading lights on the subject, Mr Friedemann Tischmeyer, President of the Pleasurize Music Foundation (PMF), a global umbrella organization which represents specific interests of music listeners on the one hand, as well as the interests of music industry participants such as musicians, composers, sound engineers, record companies and broadcasters on the other hand. Mr Tischmeyer kindly contributed the following explanations to my website, and I would like to thank him very much:

Hi Ben and hi to everyone reading this,

Ben and I had an interesting dialogue about the loss of dynamic compression in contemporary pop music and the need to keep creating awareness of the issues that are associated with it. Since the technical terms themselves can seem slightly abstract and irrelevant to you as listeners, I just wanted to add a word or two on what the loss of dynamic range means specifically for your experience of music. There are essentially two main concerns:

Firstly, a lack of dynamic range, at a minimum, fatigues your hearing. The experience of listening to music has a number of psycho-acoustic facets to it, of which volume is one. In music with a low dynamic range, the differences in objective volume are removed so that the music, in terms of its sound engineering, will have to compensate for that lack of impact by having a higher dynamic compression. To give you an example, in highly compressed music, there is no such thing as a crescendo since objectively, all sound hits you at exactly the same volume. If there was a natural ebb and flow in the music, it's gone.

As a result, the ears (technically, the hair cells in the Cochlea, inside your inner ear) are left without periods of micro-relaxation because they are constantly under fire. It follows that the cumulative stress on the hearing is much higher. You can compare it to holding a hot air dryer directly in your face, which is bound to become increasingly uncomfortable the longer you do it. One upshot of this is simply a form of listener fatigue - when you get a sudden sense of wanting to switch off the music and give your ears a rest.

Problematically, the effects of the lack of recreation go beyond mere fatigue. We have reason to believe that excessive compression in music is in fact one of the most significant reasons for the high increase in the development of hearing impairments and we are currently supporting several academic studies which examine precisely that causal relationship.

Secondly, music with a higher dynamic range just sounds better. Many contemporary releases are mercilessly over-compressed, a situation that turns off even the biggest music fans among you. Having mentioned psychoacoustic aspect of listening to music earlier: Differences in volume not only allow your ear to distinguish between loud and soft, but it also to distinguish between different sounds. Once the audio is compressed, you cannot get that sonic breadth back somehow, it's gone. The result from your perspective as listener is, quite simply, a worse-sounding record. To quote Steely Dan: "God is in the details and there are no details anymore".

In view of the considerations I've set out above, the aim of the Foundation is to encourage recording artists and sound engineers, for instance, to deliver that natural and dynamic sound on new album releases, and to encourage you as music listeners to show your support.

Friedemann Tischmeyer

Now, I am aware that in championing the cause, I am opening myself up to charges of the highest hypocrisy, but I will readily admit that I am a selective participant in the loudness war, in that on non-instrumental albums, I select a number of songs per album which will need to be pitched in some way, or submitted to radio stations without FM compression so that it's necessary for the pieces to be more compressed, simply because they aren't listened to in the same way that you will listen to them when you have the whole album in front of you.

So then?

I am making amends in creating loudness peace, and I have made this album the completely neutral Switzerland of instrumental albums. Each song on this album has been measured with the TT DR Offline Meter Software supplied by the Pleasurize Music Foundation. The "4" album accordingly has an official DR value of DR12, which means it compares rather favourably with contemporary pop music, for instance, where a typical dynamic range would be at DR4 or even less. Ultimately, I hope to be brave enough to increase it to a level of DR14 (the ultimate goal that the foundation seeks to impress upon the recording industry). For the time being, I had to strike a compromise between preserving your hearing and existing listening conventions, but it's a first step, with hopefully, more to come.

AURALLEPSY!

"4" - an instrumental album

And now for something completely different: This album is a pacifist in the loudness war