The Sound of Music - Proposals
Proposal
Less loud music hours this year but no silent Burn. (comment)
Data gathered:
- responses on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/kiezburn/permalink/2563311093915170/
- Census results
Impact on location:
none. We cannot have ANY electronic music at Freiland if we want to have it on the same date. We could make sound if we move the date.
Background information
As most of you probably know, I started a thread on Facebook in order to gauge opinions among burners as to the idea of having Kiezburn at the same venue, same date but with stronger sound restrictions to counter the number of complaints from neighbours.
While I admit the thread was by no means exhaustive, there did seem to be a lot of support for a quieter burn. From my point of view, two interesting issues arose:
1) The neighbours are not the only ones who have issues with consistent loud electronic music. A lot of burners also seemed to be in favour of a quieter burn.
2) A quieter burn does not necessarily mean a reduction in sound levels or permitted volume, but more a reduction in the number of hours where loud music can be played.
As a result of this, I’m making two proposals:
1) Instead of a sound curfew, have set hours where loud music CAN be played, but leave the permitted decibel levels the same. Something along the lines of 5pm to midnight/1am on weekdays, and 3am/4am on weekends. Maybe with no restrictions on the last night (exact hours would depend on negotiations with the Amt, obviously). If music volume is the same, neighbours are less likely to complain about loud music at say 11pm on Friday night than they would at 3am Wednesday morning when they have to be up for work in four or five hours . Let’s be honest – that would piss most people off!
2) Strict enforcement of the rules. If the music has to be off at 1am, then – maybe with a grace period of 5-10 mins, if needs to be off at that time. While burners know an extra quarter of an hour or so isn’t a problem and will be patient, the neighbours won’t. If we’re still going 15-30 mins after knock-off time, they could well get the idea that we’re lying to them and still intending to crack on until 6am. If they make a call at 1.20 when we’ve said we’ll stop at 1am, it’s not going to look good.
Burners know about the concept of “Playa Time”, the neighbours don’t!
I fully accept that the thread on Facebook isn’t representative - a lot of the sound camps were ironically silent on the issue! And I know it’s going to cause issues for them, such as less DJ slots or shorter sets. But this is going on the info and viewpoints I’ve encountered from said thread and from talking to people.
Furthermore - and this is me talking personally, to be fair - I’d encourage the idea of shorter music times even if Kiezburn did go to a new location. The sheer volume (in terms of number of hours) of music is causing problems and needs to be addressed. It’s not just for health reasons, but to people who want to hear things like birds chirping or Mother Nature “omming” at 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Personally, as a visual artist, I find it hard to concentrate and to paint in these conditions, which is why I’ve stayed away. There’s no point in me going if I can’t contribute, and I’m not the only one. Presently, I feel that with the current levels, Kiezburn runs the risk of ceasing to be recognisable as a burn and becoming just another techno/psytrance festival.
Anyway, thanks for reading, look forward to the input 😊
TL,DR:
Less hours rather than lower volume; let’s be nice and inclusive to our fellow burners as well as civically responsible to our neighbours. :)
Jeff Spirlock Tue 21 Jan 2020 9:53AM
If there where decent quality headphones for a silent disco I love being having options for what I listen to regardless of my location. Being able to hang out at any camp and choose what DJ to listen to is amazing. My friends run a silent disco for burns and I love when they just run a playlist on one channel to give some variety to the electronic dominated sound scape.
Paul aka Khromo Sun 19 Jan 2020 8:47PM
Vlad - this sounds a bit cynical - it's someone else's fault for complaning? And then you go on to verbally buse them?
Joking or not - this is not Bunrer spirit.
And this is before we get to the issue you continuously ignore: the effects the music has on other burners. Are their complains "bullshit" also, because they do not take legal action?
Vlad Mon 20 Jan 2020 6:00PM
It was an extreme example of possible other frustrations typical for a region which might produce a complaint which in other circumstance might get avoided.
Jeff Spirlock Tue 21 Jan 2020 12:30PM
Yes. Landscape is going to be the biggest factor of the issues you listed. Ideally guidelines would be set to regulate the approved systems so the other 4 issues aside from landscape you addressed would be minimally impactful.
The venue/landscape is going to be key. If the area is very flat with minimal tree cover and has residents within 1-2 kilometers it could still be problematic. I could foresee neighbors complaining even though we are far below legal limits. I've gone to neighbors houses that have called the police on festivals I've worked ( there were only a few so we checked all their properties) and although you could hear a faint noise in the distance it was so quiet I was amazed they cared. I can't imagine they could hear it inside their house only outside. We had a permit for 80db which is at their property line, we were under 40. Even without a noise variance permit we were under the 55db limit for the municipality. The police are required to make contact at that point but they just wanted to speak to who is in charge and see the permit (even though he admitted he pulled my permit before he even came out). We have had issues with permits for fire performances as well (they only are granted 1 WEEK prior to the event) so I got the fire marshall, parks department on my side then approached the city council. Lots of leg work but they were very supportive as long as we did all the legwork to prove the neighbors were being over the top.
We use mounting brackets to angle our highs/mids slightly toward the ground. If we had an incline to work with that would be amazing. If we aimed up hill the noise would be much more contained. Bass waves are going to fall apart fast when they hit that progressive incline. Implementing dual stacks vs mono stack using directionality and a processor we could use the stacks to cancel each other out. It would be less loud in one direction but it would severely limit the other three directions.
Randy Pence Tue 21 Jan 2020 8:03PM
Considering that CJ measured a lower value than our written limit approved by the amt, you could pay someone to formally do all the things we are doing by informally and the police would still come by because some tiny town doesn't care about some random small festival taking place once a year.
CJ Yetman Tue 21 Jan 2020 3:38PM
Measured from multiple places, multiple times
Jeff Spirlock Tue 21 Jan 2020 5:29PM
I'm not saying wattage is definitive. My point was with high quality gear (why should we encourage people to bring shit sound that hurts peoples hearing when there is good quality available) there is no need for these large wattage amplifiers. It's excessive. If people don't like it they shouldn't buy garbage sound gear.
Alina, also known as Universe Tue 21 Jan 2020 7:13PM
LOVE THIS @smallmovez ! Collaboration is sexy AF and having less money spent on sound VS art is a biiiig turn on :heart: ;)
CJ Yetman Tue 21 Jan 2020 3:41PM
"108 dB at the speaker" what's the point of a dance floor style sound camp if the speaker isn't putting out >=108db? ;-) Most estimates say about 120db for a "concert", and I don't think they're talking about at the speaker grill, but I could be wrong.
CJ Yetman · Sat 18 Jan 2020 12:19PM
I haven't spoke to the Amt or Freiland personally, but my impression from what Jan has said is that we have not pissed them off so much. Rather, they see the complaints as a real problem (which they reasonably should), and they seek to find a solution. I think any willingness at all to have us back, which there seems to be, is a strong indication that neither Freiland nor the Amt are pissed at us. If anything, it seems like they've become more willing over time rather than less, as at the end of last year's event it seemed unlikely. There is a post-mortem about the noise complaints in the KB19 Google Drive somewhere.