Greenbanks, West Virginia, is an unlikely place for refuges to stream into. But none the less, in they pour. More of a trickle, than a torrent; for in this city is United States National Radio Quiet Zone where in 1958 the US federal government set up a place for research into the universe using a radio telescope. Today, this quiet zone, radio noise causes interference with the telescope. Any electromagnetic wave might disrupt the ear of the researchers so to live there they have to sing away their rights to such technology. Today it is a home for people suffering from electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Basically, they can feel those invisible waves from the electromagnetic spectrum that come from Electromagnetic fields (EMFs), things like WIFI and cell phones and many other sources. Worse, for the sufferers, is that there is no way to show that their condition actually exists, let alone how it is caused or a cure, to any scientific certainty. We think this might not only be a problem for humans but for all mammals especially those who use sonar to navigate likes whales, or bats to hunt. But so far, we cannot diagnose it or treat except in the avoidance of such sources of EMF. The symptoms are things like headaches, stress, and anxiety; up to much more serious illnesses have been reported. Science, at first, dismissed this as merely hysteria. Yet more and more cases come forward with the same or similar symptoms, it was not merely so easy to dismiss. Or to claim it was “All in your head.” Nor is there any cure, the physical remove of certain EMF sources such as living in Greenbacks’ is about all they can do when they are so afflicted.
For my own experience with this began about 5 years ago with the digitally re-mastered Beatles. I love the Beatles so I thought this is going to be great. Except after listening to 3-4 song, I felt nauseated: The feelings expressed not the sickness itself. I also cannot stand modern radio or most modern songs; with few exceptions; those exceptions being the real singers like Adele whose voice will sometimes break as she sings, showing that it is indeed her doing the music not a computer. Computers do not make such mistakes. There are two types of music today, or at least for my purposes I will divide music into two groups. Those singers, who I will call analog, that people who use their own voice to make magic of music happen and those who used a computer to do so. To wit; years ago they would take 30-40 takes in order to get the singer to sing that song just that right way; the “Oh so perfect” take. Today they get them to sing it once and say next song. The music is then entered into a computer for washing to make the song hit all the right notes in perfect harmony. Except humans are not perfect. If you use a measure tool on the human voice as they sing one single note, you would see the voice of the singer wobble in the electronic display because the singer’s voice is not perfect. You would not hear a difference but there is one to the measuring tool. However, when a computer does it, sing one single note, they make the note come out perfect, same tone and pitch, for as long as they want to or need to. Watching it in the electromagnetic spectrum, you do not see peaks and valleys; you see a straight line for the music is playing the perfect note. You might think this was a good thing. It is not. Since we human, as frail creatures, such a perfect note would induce real vomit, headaches and other such reactions due to it being so unnatural when we expect to hear something that is so natural like singing. Because it is too pure, too unnatural, programs like Autotune had to be programmed their musical output to insert the final product with flaws in it so that the human ear does not reject the music but can listen without it sounding too strange. It still comes off as robotic if overly washed.
Sadly the result is some people are hyper sensitive to music, wither it be for the misophonia or phonophobia, dislike of sound in general or hypersensitive hearing (of specific frequencies) such that Autotones uses to make their music work. I know not what or how, but listening to the digital music formats of songs, drive me insane. Like the newly re-mastered Beatles, such wonderful songs turned out to be a vomit comet. Been many years and I still have not managed to listen to but a handful of the songs. I will stick with my analog copies. They do not cause me anxiety, stress, anger and headaches. I can tolerate this music to some degree, usually in the 2-3 hours range but then after like a crest that builds up it breaks over and floods the valley below. Modern music, digital music, might one day have great singers like days of yore, but sadly I will never know. For in their quest to be perfect, they have simply turned what beauty they may have had into mere painful noise that drives me up the wall. Too perfect, this frankenmusic is merely a lazy form of singing for singers who are bad. They cannot sing but fool the public into thinking they are singers. This has now spilled out of the recording studio into the concert hall. So even “Live” is not just a digital rendition of the digital rendition from a digital source. Too many digitals for me.
Signed by the man seeking refuges in his old time rock and roll, yelling at the local teens; “You kids get off my grass!”
Here are some links to articles on this subject.
https://bodyecology.com/articles/little-known-dangers-of-emf.php
https://www.emf-experts.com/emf-quiet-zones.html
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2010/08/31/129562500/pop-off-can-songs-be-too-fresh-too-clean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_correction#Criticism
https://www.bphope.com/when-noise-annoys-coping-with-hypersensitive-hearing/
http://www.hyperacusis.net/what-is-it/4-types-of-sound-sensitivity/
Post script: A song was playing on the radio. Some guy was singing a Christmas song. So i asked a buddy, is that guy just singing his own song or is he singing along. Turns out he was singing the same song as on the radio. I could not hear the words and i could not recognize the song playing because all i could hear was the base and what I can only describe as noise. Everyone else could hear music from the radio. All i heard was a pile of nothing that made any sense to me.
poetoftruth 