It's Not The Song, It's How You Sing It

I was in an audio earthquake a couple of weeks ago. You’ve probably been in one, too. An audio earthquake is caused by a car overloaded with woofers and tweeters and every size of speaker in between with the car stereo cranked up to full volume. You don’t hear them come up so much as feel them. There’s a pulsing in the air that gets more intense as the car comes closer. They like to stop next to me at red lights and rattle everything on my vehicle with the ‘whump, whump, whump’ sound they emit. The tools in the back of my van bounce around, my seat shakes and the dust on the dashboard dances. I don’t like my dashboard dust to dance for any one but me and I usually save that for the radio station that plays ‘60’s music.

These audio earthquakes were getting to be more frequent and I thought it was time to do something drastic. I spent a Saturday putting woofers and tweeters in my van, wired them to my CD player and went looking for an audio earthquaker. I didn’t have to go far. One pulled up beside me at a light and between the whump’s I put a CD in the player and turned the volume up.

Besides ‘60’s music I like bagpipes and I have a CD of the Royal Scottish Bagpipe Band blowing in all their glory. I used the automatic levers to put the windows down and adjusted the volume to a couple of decibels below what it takes to shatter glass. I won’t describe bagpipe music since most everyone’s heard it but I will say that have it come up loudly and unexpectedly help you to understand why the English used to wet themselves back when and why they incorporated bagpipers into their army as soon as they could work out a deal with the Scots. The Audio Earthquaker who pulled up next to me didn’t seem to be having much more luck than the Middle Age English. He whipped his head at me, eyes popped open and his jaw dropped. He nearly missed the light changing to green.

My first selection was Scotland the Brave and I charged alongside the Earthquaker to the next light. We stopped there together while the bagpipe band finished and then went into a rousing rendition of Loch Lomond. The Earthquaker and I did two more lights together with this song. At the fourth light the band started playing Amazing Grace. Something in the song must have touched the Earthquaker because he started praying for me to stop. He seemed penitent so I said, “I will if you will.” I turned the volume down on my CD and heard . . . silence. I stayed with the guy for a few more lights to make sure there wouldn’t be a relapse then went on to look for more earthquakers.

I made four converts to quiet rides that Saturday and a few more since then. The system seems to be working well. I think on Monday I’m going to try it during rush hour to see if bagpipes can soothe people to be more polite on the freeway.