Friday, September 08, 2006

Good Music Design

I am starting a new series of spaces that I have experienced that have especially good or especially bad music design - either by accident or design. If you are reading this and want to add your experience of good or bad music design please post a comment!

1. CCA Restaurant, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.
I know they play CDs that are selected by the staff, but in my experience the music affords a certain elegance and escapism to a great space. Although quite a difficult space acoustically, with high ceilings and hard surfaces everywhere, they tend to play music at a suitable volume and of suitable style that helps create a perfect ambience for the clientele. Typical music I have heard here include Vashti Bunyan's latest album 'Lookingafter' and Susumu Yokota's classic Sakura album. The usual problems of using CDs creates the problem of pauses between albums, not much variation and a potentially random music selection, but in my experience the CCA is a fitting example of good music design.