Silent disco

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Silent disco party in New York on April 8, 2016 QuietClubbing Gatsby Party 4.08.16.jpg
Silent disco party in New York on April 8, 2016
Silent disco party in Warsaw on April 3, 2024 Kampania wyborcza w Warszawie 2024 33.jpg
Silent disco party in Warsaw on April 3, 2024
Silent disco party in Warsaw on April 3, 2024 Kampania wyborcza w Warszawie 2024 32.jpg
Silent disco party in Warsaw on April 3, 2024

A silent disco or silent rave is an event where people dance to music listened to on wireless headphones. [1] Rather than using a speaker system, music is broadcast via a radio transmitter with the signal being picked up by wireless headphone receivers worn by the participants. Those without the headphones hear no music.

Contents

In the earliest days of silent discos, before 2005, music was transmitted on a single channel. Later a second and a third channel were introduced, transmitting different music.[ citation needed ]

Silent discos are popular at music festivals as they allow dancing to continue past noise curfews. Similar events are "mobile clubbing" gatherings, where a group of people dance to the music on their personal music players.[ citation needed ]

A series of silent discos taking place in cathedrals and historic buildings around the UK and Europe was organised in 2024. [2] [3]

History

A silent house party in San Francisco Silent house party san francisco.jpg
A silent house party in San Francisco

An early reference in fiction is Astro boy's 1967 Japanese science fiction story The Summer of 1993, where the titular character attends a party where everyone wears headphones. [4]

The concept was used by eco-activists in the early 1990s, utilizing headphones at outdoor parties to minimize noise pollution and disturbance to the local wildlife. [5]

In 1994, the Glastonbury Festival linked its on-site radio station to the video screen sited next to the Main Stage, allowing festival goers to watch late night World Cup football and music videos on the giant screen after the sound curfew by using their own portable radios. The idea was the brainchild of the project manager from Proquip, who supplied the giant screen, and engineers from Moles Recording Studio in Bath, Somerset, who were working with Radio Avalon.[ citation needed ]

A 1920 "radiophone dance" held by an Atlanta social club: participants danced wearing earphones to music transmitted from a band across town. Club holds radio dance wearing earphones 1920.jpg
A 1920 "radiophone dance" held by an Atlanta social club: participants danced wearing earphones to music transmitted from a band across town.

In May 2000, BBC Live Music held a "silent gig" at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, where the audience listened to a band, Rocketgoldstar, and various DJs through headphones. [6]

In May 2002, artist Meg Duguid hosted Dance with me... a silent dance party at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago where she created an outdoor club installation complete with velvet ropes and glow rope in which a DJ spun a transmission to wireless headsets that audience members put on and danced to. [7] [8] Duguid threw a second dance party at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago the following year, entitled Dueling DJs where two DJS simultaneously spun two separate musical transmissions various wireless headsets that audience members put on and danced to. This performance was repeated the following year (2004) at the Chicago Cultural Center. [9]

The term "silent disco" has been in existence since at least 2005 with Bonnaroo Music Festival advertising such an event that year with DJ's Motion Potion, Quickie Mart and DJ medi4 and Koss headphones. [10] The Oxford Dictionary Online added the term "silent disco" to their website in February 2011. [1] As interest increased, more companies organize parties and provide events with wireless headphones. Some companies have offered home kits. [11]

A series of silent discos taking place in cathedrals and historic buildings around the UK and Europe was organised in 2024; the event at Canterbury Cathedral, a religious building dating originally from 597, sold out within an hour, but caused controversy among people who considered that it belittled the sanctity of the house of prayer. [2] [3]

United States

HUSHconcerts (previously, Silent Frisco) was the first company to produce a multi-city Silent Disco tour in 2008 with Silent Soundclash [12] kicking off at Winter Music Conference in Miami, followed by Atlanta, Athens, Savannah, Wilmington NC, Charlottesville Va, Baltimore, New York City, Syracuse, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. During this tour, the company became the first to produce American silent discos on a beach (Miami Beach) and a boat (the Rocksoff Cruise in New York Harbor). [13]

Silent discos increased in popularity, and were depicted in television shows including NBC's Brooklyn Nine-Nine, season 2, episode 5 "The Mole"; Netflix's Atypical season 1, episode 8 "The Silencing Properties of Snow", and FX's comedy series "Dave" with American rapper Lil Dicky.

Silent concert

A Flaming Lips poster promoting "The World's First Headphone Concerts" Flaming Lips - headphone concert poster.png
A Flaming Lips poster promoting "The World's First Headphone Concerts"

A silent concert (or headphones concert) is a live music performance where the audience, in the same venue as the performing artist, listens to the music through headphones. [14] The idea originated in 1997 when Erik Minkkinen, [15] [16] an electronic artist [17] [18] from Paris, streamed a live concert from his closet over the internet to three listeners in Japan. [19] The concept led to a decentralized organization known as le placard ("the Cupboard"), [20] which allowed anybody to establish a streaming or listening room. [19]

The first headphone concert taking place in front of a live audience took place March 17, 1999, at Trees in Dallas, Texas. The American psychedelic band The Flaming Lips used an FM signal generator at the venue and handed out mini FM radio receivers and headphones to each member of the audience. A normal speaker system was also used so the sound could also be felt. This continued on their "International Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue" tour with mixed results, with technical problems including dead batteries and intoxicated audience members having trouble tuning to the correct frequency. [21] Another headphone concert was performed in the Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff in April 2000 by Rocketgoldstar. [6]

Later headphone concerts used specially designed wireless 3-channel headphones, better in-house custom made transmitters and no speakers or any live PA in the venue. Major events hosting headphone concerts included the 2005 Glastonbury Festival, 2010 Shift Festival in Switzerland, [22] the 2011-12 Van's Warp Tours across North America, Sensoria 2012 in Sheffield, UK, the 2012 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee and the Hoxeyville Music Fest in Michigan. [23] In 2012, Kid Koala performed a "Space Cadet Headphone Concert tour" around the world. [24]

A variant of the headphone concert involves live bands competing for the audience, who are able to choose which band's frequency to receive. In August 2008, the first silent Battle of the Bands was held at The Barfly music venue in Cardiff. [25] The event featured bands going directly head-to-head, with a stage at each end of the venue, allowing gig-goers to choose which group they wished to listen to.

In 2013, Metallica performed live in Antarctica utilizing headphones instead of traditional concert amplification, due to concerns about harming the environment. [26]

Silent theatre

Theatre and performance companies are using silent disco technology as well. In 2009, with the help of SilentArena Ltd, Feral Productions began using an experimental approach – a mixture of narrative-led performance, sound art and guided exhibit. Their first performance, The Gingerbread House, took the audience from The Courtyard, Hereford on a journey through a multi-storey car park in the centre of Hereford. In 2010, their second show, Locked (Rapunzel’s Lament), took place in a children’s playground, also in Hereford. Silent theatre techniques are now being used by companies in Liverpool, Birmingham and Glasgow. [27] [28]

In 2015 Lincoln Center staged a production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show utilizing Quiet Events Headphones, [29] where an audience wearing headphones could switch between the audio for the live performance and the soundtrack of the film version being projected behind it. [30] During the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, in compliance with CDC guidelines, music events and theatre came to a halt. In the city of Scranton, however, the Scranton Fringe Festival found they could still follow through with their performances from behind the glass of empty store fronts by utilizing a local business, Silent Sound System, which allowed patrons to view safely from the sidewalks with the use of silent disco headphones. This event was dubbed "Fringe Under Glass." [31] The Scranton Fringe Festival and Silent Sound System worked together previously to create a silent disco event and fundraiser in the Scranton Cultural Center, one of the city's oldest buildings. The "Fringe Silent Disco" was the most attended Scranton Fringe Festival event of 2019. [32]

Silent street shows

Street performers have used the concept as a solution to overcome bans on amplification and loudspeakers on the street. In 2016, Irish band Until April began using this for their shows on the street while touring in Germany and Switzerland. [33]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disc jockey</span> Person who plays recorded music for an audience

A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs, club DJs, mobile DJs, and turntablists. Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.

House is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by a repetitive four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 115–130 beats per minute. It was created by DJs and music producers from Chicago's underground club culture and evolved slowly in the early/mid 1980s as DJs began altering disco songs to give them a more mechanical beat. By early 1988, House became mainstream and supplanted the typical 80s music beat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rave</span> Dance party

A rave is a dance party at a warehouse, club, or other public or private venue, typically featuring performances by DJs playing electronic dance music. The style is most associated with the early 1990s dance music scene when DJs played at illegal events in musical styles dominated by electronic dance music from a wide range of sub-genres, including drum and bass, dubstep, trap, break, happy hardcore, trance, techno, hardcore, house, and alternative dance. Occasionally live musicians have been known to perform at raves, in addition to other types of performance artists such as go-go dancers and fire dancers. The music is amplified with a large, powerful sound reinforcement system, typically with large subwoofers to produce a deep bass sound. The music is often accompanied by laser light shows, projected coloured images, visual effects and fog machines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The String Cheese Incident</span> American jam band

The String Cheese Incident (SCI) is an American jam band from Crested Butte and Telluride, Colorado, formed in 1993. The band is composed of Michael Kang, Michael Travis, Bill Nershi, Kyle Hollingsworth, and Keith Moseley, and, since 2004, Jason Hann.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disco Biscuits</span> American jam band

The Disco Biscuits are an American jam band from Philadelphia. The band consists of Allen Aucoin (drums), Marc "Brownie" Brownstein, Jon "The Barber" Gutwillig, and Aron Magner. The band incorporates elements from a variety of musical genres with a base of electronic and rock. Their style has been described as trance fusion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Umphrey's McGee</span> American jam band

Umphrey's McGee, sometimes stylized as UM, is an American rock band originally from South Bend, Indiana. The band experiments with many musical styles, including rock, metal, funk, jazz, blues, reggae, electronic, bluegrass, country, and folk. They have toured regularly and released several albums. Since 2002, they have been the headlining act and organizers of Summer Camp Music Festival, which is held annually in Three Sisters Park in Chillicothe, Illinois.

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Chromeo is a Canadian electro-funk duo from Montreal, formed in 2002 by musicians David "Dave 1" Macklovitch and Patrick "P-Thugg" Gemayel. Their sound draws from soul music, dance music, rock, synth-pop, disco and funk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DJ mixer</span> Type of audio mixing console

A DJ mixer is a type of audio mixing console used by disc jockeys (DJs) to control and manipulate multiple audio signals. Some DJs use the mixer to make seamless transitions from one song to another when they are playing records at a dance club. Hip hop DJs and turntablists use the DJ mixer to play record players like a musical instrument and create new sounds. DJs in the disco, house music, electronic dance music and other dance-oriented genres use the mixer to make smooth transitions between different sound recordings as they are playing. The sources are typically record turntables, compact cassettes, CDJs, or DJ software on a laptop. DJ mixers allow the DJ to use headphones to preview the next song before playing it to the audience. Most low- to mid-priced DJ mixers can only accommodate two turntables or CD players, but some mixers can accommodate up to six turntables or CD players. DJs and turntablists in hip hop music and nu metal use DJ mixers to create beats, loops and so-called scratching sound effects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jazz-funk</span> Subgenre of jazz music

Jazz-funk is a subgenre of jazz music characterized by a strong back beat, electrified sounds, and analog synthesizers. The integration of funk, soul, and R&B music and styles into jazz resulted in the creation of a genre that ranges from pure jazz improvisation to soul, funk or disco with jazz arrangements, jazz riffs, jazz solos, and sometimes soul vocals. Jazz-funk was popular in United States and United Kingdom. Similar genres include soul jazz, jazz fusion and acid jazz.

Electronic dance music (EDM), also referred to as club music, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. It is generally produced for playback by DJs who create seamless selections of tracks, called a DJ mix, by segueing from one recording to another. EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA. Since its inception EDM has expanded to include a wide range of subgenres.

A DJ mix or DJ mixset is a sequence of musical tracks typically mixed together to appear as one continuous track. DJ mixes are usually performed using a DJ mixer and multiple sounds sources, such as turntables, CD players, digital audio players or computer sound cards, sometimes with the addition of samplers and effects units, although it is possible to create one using sound editing software.

Nu-disco is a 21st-century dance music genre associated with a renewed interest in the late 1970s disco, synthesizer-heavy 1980s European dance music styles, and early 1990s electronic dance music. The genre was popular in the early 2000s, and experienced a mild resurgence in the 2010s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2010 Bonnaroo Music Festival</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compact Disco</span> Hungarian electronic music band

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References

  1. 1 2 "silent disco - Definition of silent disco in English by Oxford Dictionaries". Oxford Dictionaries - English. Archived from the original on May 8, 2011.
  2. 1 2 Ofori, Morgan (9 February 2024). "'Profane' or 'innocent'? Row over Canterbury Cathedral silent disco". The Guardian.
  3. 1 2 Sherwood, Harriet (2024-02-19). "Celebration or desecration? England's cathedrals open doors to silent discos". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  4. ↑ Tezuka, Osamu; Schodt, Frederik L. (2002). Astro Boy . Dark Horse Comics. p.  2. ISBN   9781569717905. 1967 astroboy the summer of 1993.
  5. ↑ "What is a Silent Disco?". MDLBEAST. December 26, 2023. Retrieved July 10, 2024.
  6. 1 2 "BBC News - ENTERTAINMENT - BBC Music Live events unfold". news.bbc.co.uk.
  7. ↑ Molzahn, Laura (20 June 2002). "Summer Solstice Celebration". Chicago Reader. Archived from the original on 13 April 2017. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
  8. ↑ "Dance with me..." megduguid.com.
  9. ↑ "Dueling DJs @ Cultural Center". Gapers Block: Slow Down Archive. Archived from the original on 13 April 2017. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
  10. ↑ Rothman, Robin A. (June 13, 2005). "Boogie Nights: 'Silent disco' is making itself heard". MTV . Archived from the original on December 26, 2014. Retrieved June 13, 2005.
  11. ↑ Johnston, Ian (6 September 2009). "Silent disco craze spreads". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 7 June 2010.
  12. ↑ Ojumu, Akin (2008-06-14). "Meltdown: Silent disco, big noise". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077. Archived from the original on 2016-06-03. Retrieved 2017-01-24.
  13. ↑ "Silent Soundclash, RANA, Eric Krasno & Chapter 2 Among Cruises on Rocks Off Calendar". www.jambands.com. 2 April 2010. Archived from the original on 2017-02-02. Retrieved 2017-01-24.
  14. ↑ "[:]plug[:] (2005)". deletist.info. 2005-08-31. Archived from the original on 2005-09-24. Retrieved 2016-08-23.
  15. ↑ fr:Sister Iodine
  16. ↑ "the placard headphone festival". leplacard.org. 2005-08-31. Archived from the original on 2005-10-26. Retrieved 2005-10-26.
  17. ↑ "Erik Minkkinen". V2_Institute for the Unstable Media.
  18. ↑ "Erik Minkkinen". Discogs. Archived from the original on 2016-10-09. Retrieved 2016-08-23.
  19. 1 2 Axline, Keith (2005-08-31). "Fest Rocks With BYO Headphones". Wired.com entertainment music news. wired magazine. Archived from the original on 2016-08-23. Retrieved 2016-08-23.
  20. ↑ "Google Translate". translate.google.com. Archived from the original on 2018-01-26. Retrieved 2016-08-23.
  21. ↑ Booker, Scott. "Partly Accurate Flaming Lips News". Archived News Relating To The Flaming Lips. Archived from the original on 2007-03-29. Retrieved 2013-02-20.
  22. ↑ Spirgi, Dominique. "2010 Shift Festival english program". 2010 Shift Festival website. Shift Electronic Arts Festival Postfach CH-4023 Basel Switzerland. Archived from the original on 2013-12-24. Retrieved 2009-01-10.
  23. ↑ Brimer, Adam. "Bonnaroo Silent Disco Day 1". knox news. Knoxnews.com. Retrieved Dec 10, 2012.
  24. ↑ Mlynar, Phillip (2012-04-05). "Live: Kid Koala's Space Cadet Headphone Experience Crashes In Brooklyn - New York - Music - Sound of the City". Village Voice . Retrieved 2013-02-21.
  25. ↑ "Silent Gig featuring Kutosis/Muscle Club and others @ Barfly : Wed 13th August". Joy Collective. Archived from the original on 2012-03-11. Retrieved 2008-08-08.
  26. ↑ "Metallica become first band to play on seven continents with Antarctica gig". 11 December 2013.
  27. ↑ "The Gingerbread House breaks dramatic boundaries in Hereford". 2 November 2009.
  28. ↑ "Feral Productions' hoping for another fairytale ending at The Courtyard in Hereford". 13 September 2010. Archived from the original on 2014-03-31.
  29. ↑ "Quiet Theater". Quiet Events. Retrieved 3 April 2016.
  30. ↑ Itzkoff, Dave (2015-08-09). "'Rocky Horror' at Lincoln Center, With Headphones". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2015-09-25.
  31. ↑ "Fringe Festival adapts to coronavirus restrictions, held 'Under Glass'". 27 September 2020.
  32. ↑ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine : "Scranton Fringe Silent Disco with Silent Sound System". YouTube . 16 October 2020.
  33. ↑ "Galway duo find novel way to overcome amplifier bans on continental Europe". Archived from the original on 2016-07-20. Retrieved 2016-07-21.
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