FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH with Blake Melnick

Entrainment & The Power of Sound - Part 2 with Tom Powers

March 17, 2023 Blake Melnick Season 4 Episode 11
FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH with Blake Melnick
Entrainment & The Power of Sound - Part 2 with Tom Powers
FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH with Blake Melnick
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Show Notes Transcript

This week on #ForWhatitsWorthwithBlakeMelnick and our #ManyFacesofInnovation series, is part 2 of #EntrainmentandPowerofSound, with my guest @TomPowers. 

In part one, Tom explained the Theory of Entrainment and his “aha!” moment when he realized that something in music had changed post 1995.

We had inadvertently lost the natural  interpersonal musical entrainment, which occurs between artists and their music and their audience as a result of the mass adoption of digital technology. Tom's prior experience as a recording engineer came into play as he began to advance his hypothesis.

Could we bring back entrainment using the very technology that was responsible for its demise? And in doing so, also create new possibilities and opportunities to apply what he was learning to advance knowledge in other fields of endeavour… For what it's worth.

Entrainment & the Power of Sound Blog post

The music for this episode, "Bible Thumpin' Sundays" is written and performed by our current artist in residence, #DouglasCameron and the Louisiana Snowblowers.

You can find out more about Douglas by visiting our show blog and by listening to our episode, #TheOldGuitar

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Entrainment & The Power of Sound - Part 2 

[00:00:00] Blake Melnick: Well, welcome to this week's episode of For What It's Worth, I'm your host, Blake Melnick, and this is part two of “Entrainment and the Power of Sound” with my guest Tom Powers. In part one, Tom explained the theory of entrainment and his “aha!” moment when he realized that something in music had changed post 1995.

[00:00:57] That we had inadvertently lost the natural [00:01:00] interpersonal musical entrainment, which occurs between artists and their music and their audience as a result of the mass adoption of digital technology. Tom's prior experience as a recording engineer came into play as he began to advance his hypothesis.

[00:01:15] Could we bring back entrainment using the very technology that was responsible for its demise? And in doing so, also create new possibilities and opportunities to apply what he was learning to advance knowledge in other fields of endeavor… For what it's worth.

[00:01:38] it's interesting, it's almost like you're taking the best of both worlds. Accepting that we do have this modern technology and there's some benefits to it, but you're also saying 

[00:01:46] the pendulum swung way too far to the right, so to speak. , and now you're kind of bringing it back, to center. So I want to talk about, how this affects number one, and I'm focused on the artist, how this affects the artist when [00:02:00] they're recording with you in a studio where you're applying this. How does it affect their ability, to record positively or negatively? 

[00:02:09] Tom Powers: So if I had a group that was recording, for example, we would still use the modern method, right? So, I resurrected that whole bring the studio to the artist thing because now you can do it with a laptop and a couple interfaces rather than, 800 pounds of gear. So what we'll do is we'll go and I'll set up a couple room mics, track the entire band.

[00:02:31] Let's say they're gonna do three songs. Track the entire band playing all three songs with just two room mics, right? So we're getting that feel right. Everybody's got that vibe right? ala, old techniques, so everybody's playing off each other. Okay, good. I like this. Now we're gonna set up the drum set and we're gonna mic that thing.

[00:02:52] We're gonna close mic it. We're gonna room mic it. He's gonna hear it in his headphones. He's playing to that original track they just recorded. That's his, that's a [00:03:00] scratch track, right? And he's now playing along to it, it's literally like playing along to the radio. So he is recreating that vibe that was originally created and then when he does all his three songs, then the bass player, then the guitar player, then the vocalist and the singers, you get the idea. At that point, I'm like, okay, this is great. And I actually recorded into the four bus system, so my templates that I'm bringing in are pre-recorded i. So when the artists are listening back, I hit that play button and they're hearing stuff in the back of the room. The middle of the room, in the front of the room, and they're actually going, “yeah that sounds amazing” Right? And it almost mixes itself at some point, you know, with just fader and panning and some volume. It does about 85% of the mix all on its own, which ends up taking less time for me.

[00:03:48] Takes less processing time, less plugins, songs that used to take two and three days to mix, you can do inside of two to three hours and have a better product. I find that the artists become much [00:04:00] more engaged in the recording process when this happens.

[00:04:02] Blake Melnick: I would think so. Because they can almost hear what the end result's going to be.

[00:04:06] And they're playing to the sound that they want or they're singing to it, if you're doing multi-tracks and that kind of thing. So what they're hearing, it actually inspires them, perhaps to sing in a slightly different way  more motivated, more emotion in their voice and so on and so forth.

[00:04:21] And that's fascinating. And I'm just for our audience's sake, I did go to Ben Hunter and I said, Ben, send me two tracks. Send me a track that you recorded originally, cuz I knew Tom that you were remixing a lot of his old material using this four bus system. And I said, send this to me.

[00:04:36] I wanna listen to your original recording and the recording through the four bus system, and I'm gonna listen to it in a bunch of different ways, knowing of course that programs like iTunes does compress when you upload , but I still wanted to see if I could hear it.

[00:04:49] I had them playing through iTunes. I loaded it into Garage Band, I had them playing there. I had both tracks in there, final Cut too, so I could sort of toggle back and forth between the two [00:05:00] tracks. And I have to say the difference was obvious and quite remarkable. . The original track sounded kind of muddy, right?

[00:05:08] I couldn't really hear it -  just a blending of sound. . Whereas once I listened to that song recorded and I think it was the song Sunshine, when I listened to that song, Sunshine. Recorded through the four bus system. I could pick out the individual chords notes, the separations, and it made a huge difference.

[00:05:26] So, you know, for our audience's sake, this actually does work and I've heard the difference and I love the point, and I think we talked about it in the pre-call. Tom, I love the point that you made when you said that when the artist hears it, after you've produced it in the four bus system, it does something to them.

[00:05:43] Let's talk a little bit about that.

[00:05:44] Tom Powers: Let's take the Sunshine example. So what you heard were the exact same source tracks, right? So I didn't rerecord it. I took the tracks that you heard from the first one and remixed it through the four bus method. So it's the same source and the output as you [00:06:00] is radically different.

[00:06:00] So I had sent it out to Ben, Ben lives over in, LA over in Hollywood. And, I had sent him a copy of it, via like a Google Drive and he is like, well, I'm not in front of my system right now, but I'll listen to it on earbuds or headphones. he is driving down the Sunset Strip, right? 

[00:06:20] so actually his girlfriend's driving. He was listening in the passenger seat and I start getting messages back like, I have never heard anything like this. This makes me want to get up on stage right now. 

[00:06:31] And, at that point I'd known Ben for a little while . The whole Covid thing, you know, took a little wind out of his sails as an artist, as a performer, like it has many others. And, and coming back, he was trying to figure out, you know, where am I gonna go? What am I gonna do? Should I get into engineering? Should I still do music stuff?

[00:06:47] You know, which direction should I go? And it was really interesting to watch him listen to Sunshine, which he'd had for ages.It's not a new song, but he heard it in a different way and he's [00:07:00] like, oh my gosh, this makes me want to get back out again. And it almost like it lit a fire. I was like, this is really interesting. 

[00:07:07] Now if I can inspire an artist who's heard that song a hundred different times, you know, not only when he tracked it, but every time since then, if he can hear that song in a different way and have a different effect,  man, we're onto something here. I trained another artist in it, a guy who's an engineer and an artist, a guy named Michael Paz out of, Nashville, right? 

[00:07:29] Absolutely Fantastic guy trained him on how to do Four Bus and his most recent song, that he put out “What's Wrong, What's Right” he actually composed it into Four Bus. So as he was writing it, and he said, he said the production was, he's like, it was amazing. It was like literally placing pieces on the stage as I wrote the song. 

[00:07:51] And he goes, “by far, I'm my best production ever” In fact, the nice thing is, in the midst of doing this as a capstone thesis project, you have to prove [00:08:00] yourself over and over and over again. So not only, is the method documented and how to do it is created into a video series, there are artists and engineer peer reviews that come with it, of people that said, yes, I've tried it.

[00:08:12] Here are the results. You know, people like yourself. I can hear the difference between A and B. 

[00:08:18] Yeah. And it's not subtle

[00:08:19] Blake Melnick: So I love this, I love the fact that not only are you recreating the lost entrainment, as a result of digitization, but it's also inspiring the artist, to get out there and want to perform, to want to write and create music differently.

[00:08:35] It's a new paradigm. You've created a shift here where all of a sudden recording a record requires more thought. And as in your example that you just gave a, now that I know this system exists and I know what it can sound like.

[00:08:50] It actually inspires how I imagine recording this music and how I want to record it. Rather than just turning that over [00:09:00] to, the recording studios or the recording engineer and letting them figure it out. You actually can come in with an idea saying, I want it to sound like this. I want, you know, the guitar to feel like it's this, the bass to be coming from this direction.

[00:09:13] It creates a whole new level of creativity for the artist. I think that's fascinating. 

[00:09:18] Tom Powers: Yep. , it's absolutely astounding what kind of feedback I've been getting back in the last few months, as the artists start to weigh in. It's just not my, little delusion and fantasy over here. The thing actually works, and if I can infect the artist that way, I said, you know what? If it affects you this way, and you're the one that's closest to this, and probably the most critical, what's it gonna do to your listeners? Because with the rise of social media, a lot of people are living via proxy, right?

[00:09:48] Sure. We have these social media influencers. We're watching people sitting on the beach in Bali drinking mimosas, right? And they're making a million bucks doing that while you're just sitting there watching them. And I'm like, well, [00:10:00] why is that? You know, people are looking for that experience. They're looking for something that they can't be. Right. Right. I think there's a certain, allure to the very, realistic video games where you can do things that you really couldn't do. In regular society it's kind of, living out a fantasy, if you will.

[00:10:18] mm-hmm. People are living vicariously through social media and their smartphones.. Well that's very interesting So it made me think about when we were younger, right? I mean, you and I are around the same vintage. or sport in the same gray hair. , uh, platinum blonde we used to, we Exactly Right. Salt and pepper.

[00:10:36] Yeah. We used to listen to these albums , and the entrainment was happening in the background and we were like, oh my gosh, this is great.

[00:10:42] .And we would read Rolling Stone interviews and we would watch the artist interviews on M T V or whatever you saw them on, and you started to feel like you knew them Mm-hmm. , But it was a very one ray relationship. I mean, the artist had no idea who you were, all right? They had no clue who you were from Adam. But [00:11:00] to us, that's why it was so important and so cool if we could get backstage, right? Cuz there was an opportunity at that point for a two-way relationship, no matter how short it was. Fast forward to today, what would happen if you had an artist that put out music going through the four Bus method that created the entrainment, right?

[00:11:20] So we got that, that feeling of, oh God, I'm syncing up in the music. I feel what you're writing here. I feel what you're playing. And now marry that into this social media presence. Where now I can say, okay, I wanna see Ben Hunter, recording a track or, you know, backstage before he goes out on the show.

[00:11:38] Or this is what it looks like from stage. Or, this is what that song meant to me and this is what I wrote it about. And it becomes conversational. And now I can interact with that artist. I can ask him, “Hey, what do you think about this?” And Ben comes back and says, “this is what I think about it”

[00:11:54] Oh by the way, happy birthday, Tom, because I saw that it showed up. And thanks for following my stuff.[00:12:00] You turn fans into rabid followers. 

[00:12:03] Blake Melnick: I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad, but I get the idea. it might not 

[00:12:06] Tom Powers: be good or bad 

[00:12:07] there's a group called Gaelic Storm out there. Right. Fantastic Irish group.

[00:12:11] And everybody's seen them, but nobody really knows who they Mm-hmm. , um, remember the movie Titanic? Okay. 

[00:12:17] Blake Melnick: I didn't see it, but so when, you know Oh, okay. I know the story. I knew the ending, so I didn't watch the movie. 

[00:12:24] Tom Powers: There's a portion in that movie where, the two main characters, Rose and Jack go down to Third Deck, and there's an Irish band playing that they're dancing to, and they're drinking beer.

[00:12:34] That band is Gaelic Storm and Gaelic Storm has been around, since that movie. Fantastic group, but they're the first ones that I saw that sort of leveraged this whole communicate over, Facebook and get your audience into the feeling of what it's like to be on the road. They play like 200 shows a year.

[00:12:54] And, there was one point I'd thrown a message up there, and Steve Twigger, the guitarist came back and said, “yeah, I do that in Drop D and here's [00:13:00] why” And he starts giving me all the information on the song. I was like, this is amazing, right? And to this day, one of my favorite groups.

[00:13:06] Why? Because there's that back and forth, right? Sure. Right? Sure. So now if you marry that with entrainment, it's the best of both worlds, right?

[00:13:16] Blake Melnick: Yeah. You make an interesting point there. And there have been a number of bands, as you say, that have emerged through the YouTube medium, not through the traditional pathways. We have a band, Canadian band, called Walk Off the Earth.

[00:13:27] They began as a YouTube band, and they are fantastic. They started, from YouTube, that's where they began their music career.

[00:13:35] Yeah. Doing cover tunes. Yeah. Doing cover tunes. And better than any of the originals . 

[00:13:41] Tom Powers: Right. I think, I think the first one I ever saw them was where they're all playing the same guitar and, the bearded guy that never spoke who unfortunately passed away, they had this unique presence about them, And I believe the dark hair gentleman and the blonde lady are married and a family now. Mm-hmm. . Yep. Um, and you started to know about the [00:14:00] band, , right, right. Walk off the Earth. That's a fantastic example of leveraging that two-way,

[00:14:04] Yeah. Because when, when, when the gentleman with the beard passed away, I kind of went, oh man, that, sucks.

[00:14:09] I didn't know the guy. , but I felt real bad about it. I can kind of feel like what they're going through. Cuz they were very open about, the loss. And it was interesting cuz not only was the music incredible, and a lot of what they put out on YouTube was all recorded in a single room.

[00:14:25] Again, I think they stumbled across the entrainment idea and the thing took off. yep. So were they the prototype of this model - maybe

[00:14:34] and you know, and I just gotta figure out the why's and how to recreate Right. 

[00:14:39] Blake Melnick: You know, all of this has far-reaching implications. It's quite staggering. So I want to talk a little bit about that. As you say, entrainment has been around for a long time. There's lots of people using entrainment with physical therapy, music therapy, cognitive therapy. In terms of the music industry or the entertainment industry, what are the implications to what you're developing [00:15:00] here, Tom?

[00:15:01] Tom Powers: To be honest with you, I don't know how far this thing's gonna go. I hesitate to dream too small. Right, at some point Les Paul went, you know, an acoustic guitar isn't enough

[00:15:13] Blake Melnick: That's right. 

[00:15:14] Tom Powers: and if he would've just said, Hey, this is kind of great, and showed it to t four of his buddies, Leo Fender would've probably been working in a mill somewhere , but, he didn't and I don't wanna sound egotistical or fully yourself or anything like that, but the capability to bring back that vintage sound and control it, right?

[00:15:33] There are plugins and hardware that you can kind of get around this. A lot of the IR reverb tries to push this kind of thing back in, but you can't control it, right? In the four bus system, I am actually picking the specific instruments I want to bounce off the ceiling and direct, 

[00:15:48] so at that point, I'm sort of the artist as well. So nothing out there really exists that does this. And I said, well, imagine if everybody did it this way, [00:16:00] what would music sound like now? Right. Could you imagine what, I mean, Adele was huge, right? Adele's music was amazing, 

[00:16:12] Blake Melnick: absolutely. 

[00:16:12] Tom Powers: but from the production side, I listened to it and because they made it so loud, it didn't really have a lot of depth.

[00:16:18] Right? It was very, very wide, but it didn't suck you in. But an Adele concert is just off the charts, right? Well , what would happen if Adele's music was mixed this way?

[00:16:27] Holy cow. Right, right. there are tracks out there of some classic albums. Billy Jean is out there. The original tracks from Michael Jackson are floating around out there.

[00:16:36] And, some David Crosby stuff is out there. And I've actually run those through four bus to see what the difference was.

[00:16:44] obviously it's not my music and I can't release it, but I'll tell you this, it sounds absolutely astounding, this is crazy what would happen if you took an engineer, and used this as a framework or as a [00:17:00] springboard for him.

[00:17:01] What Les Paul invented is not what PRS makes today. So my ceiling can be the floor for whoever's gonna take it to the next level, Right. 

[00:17:11] Blake Melnick: , yeah, that's good. that's the way it should be. You've gotta make ideas available to the world because there's other people out there that can take those ideas and build on them and advance them.

[00:17:21] And we all benefit from that. So, I agree with you. I have a lot of friends in the music business and one of the topics that's come up a number of times in conversation is this whole idea, And again, because of the advent of advanced technology, ai, and augmented reality that the industry's looking very seriously at, 

[00:17:39] those, moments in time, if you want to call them that. The concerts that took place for musicians that are no longer with us, and recreating that. And to me it seems like this system you've developed would be ideally suited to that. If I think back on the concerts I've seen, and I bet almost anybody you ask can [00:18:00] remember their favorite shows they've seen; where they were, what the environment was like around them at the time in

[00:18:06] almost in incredible detail. I know I can. I remember when I went to see Bob Marley in 1979 at Maple Leaf Gardens and what that was like, the whole visceral experience of that. If you wanted to bring that back or you wanted to recreate that concert in that venue in Maple Leaf Gardens, with that same sound of 1979, you could do that.

[00:18:28] Tom Powers: Yeah. The fundamental framework of what we have for four bus could easily be piped into that, if you knew the dimensions of, the stage and you know how high it was and where you want the listener to be. Yeah. All that's easily done. And again, my ceiling would be somebody else's floor cuz they could then go in and write software that would turn that into surround sound and they could then take the reflections that we've chosen and “now I'm gonna bounce it to here and then I'll put it over here and then put it behind you” So the capabilities of not only what you're describing, but even the virtual reality realm, [00:19:00] is fantastic.  In my little limited realm of space, I've created this and its unintended consequence was that it created a near immersive environment in a stereo field.

[00:19:12] It wasn't fully immersive, we don't have four speakers all around me, but it was pretty close and especially on headphones or earbuds. And you listen to 'em, , you heard the exact same output that I'm putting out. It's no different than any of the other songs.

[00:19:27] So you heard it on Sunshine and , that one's actually mixed to sound like you are literally standing in the front of the state. 

[00:19:33] Blake Melnick: Mm-hmm. . Well, it's amazing. And I think about podcasting too, and the growth in this industry, and this has huge implications for the podcasting market as well.

[00:19:43] Sure. Because you want this for the same reasons. You want to draw your lister into the experience as if they're sitting in the same room, and one of the downsides about running a podcast during Covid is of course you're doing everything over Zoom as we're doing it now. And you lose sound quality and there's a [00:20:00] distance, that's created between you and your guests and to a certain degree with your audience.

[00:20:04] But if you were sitting face to face, it's different. It does sound a lot better. So the ability to sort of recreate, still leveraging the modern technology because of course it allows you and I to talk and me to reach out to you down in the States and have this conversation, as opposed to me jumping on an airplane and flying down there, which, is cost prohibitive, but I think it, it has big implications for that.

[00:20:25] So I was gonna ask you about something. I would love to be able to do something for our listeners so that they can really hear the difference as I have. We have another show, another series called “Pass the Jam” and this is the series that Ben was part of.

[00:20:38] So basically Oh, sure. Yeah. The way it works is, you know, I've interviewed each of these artists and they give me a number of their tracks. We play them on the shows, intros and outros, and then we pass the jam, almost like the telephone game. So we bring on another artist and I bring those two artists together and they talk to one another and they go deep into the art and [00:21:00] craft of song writing, musicality, instrumentation, and all of that kind of stuff.

[00:21:04] and one artist passes the jam onto the next one. And so on. My vision when I created the series was that somewhere at the end was to have a culminating event, which would bring all these artists together, to play live. But there are logistical issues with, with all of that . But what I would love to do as maybe as an alternative or, as an accompanying piece and be able to say, okay, I have all these songs from all of these people.

[00:21:30] They've all listened to one another's songs. So we've created a sense of, I think, artistic community here with this series. And that's the whole idea. It's really a series by musicians geared towards other musicians, and of course, to introduce new music, emerging artists to the world and that kind of thing.

[00:21:47] And also connecting experienced musicians, with less experienced musicians so they can learn from one another. But it would be great to be able to do something in the end of this. And how could we do this? Could we [00:22:00] bring the artists together, virtually or at least their songs? Could we recreate it as if they were all playing together live on stage?

[00:22:08] Tom Powers: Sure. Yeah. , what you're describing there would be like, okay, let's, let's take Ben and let's take,, it began with Ben. Yeah. Yeah. It really began with it. It's all his fault . Um, 

[00:22:18] it is all his fault. Blame Ben . 

[00:22:22] So let's say we took him and, three other artists and I took the tracks of their songs and I ran them through the four bus systems, but I ran them through with the identical settings. right? They would all sound like they're in the same room That's really cool. So yeah, , you could easily do that.

[00:22:38] In fact, on my side, there wouldn't be a lot of work to do because I'd have one master template, just fire everybody through it. Right. obviously you have some EQ work and things like that, but you know, as far as what the room was and the verb and the timing and all the reflections, if I made that all the same, yeah, it would sound like all three or four year artists are standing next to each other. 

[00:22:56] Blake Melnick: Wow. Yeah. There's a few more than three or four, but[00:23:00] , you've just got my head spinning here about all the possibilities. I just think this is absolutely incredible.

[00:23:06] So what's next for you? I mean, you're defending your thesis shortly and then Yes. And then what? 

[00:23:13] Tom Powers: Well, that's a good question. , you know, it's, Yeah. the thesis and the capstone project that goes with it is actually creation of, about six or seven hours worth of how do you do this, Right.

[00:23:25] Videos. So by the time I'm done with this thing, , it'll be a full video series that people could, subscribe to , and learn how to do that themselves. whether they're an artist or whether they're an engineer.

[00:23:36] That's got a marketable ability to it.

[00:23:38] Mm-hmm. , the flip side of it is, I still do it for my clients and get more and more people to say, I really like this sound. right. The vast majority, every time I've mixed one, they go this, I've never heard anything like this. This is absolutely amazing.

[00:23:53] I've only had maybe one or two artists who went, nah, I want the, I want this other sound Right. Great man. I mean, not, it's not [00:24:00] gonna fit everybody, you know? Right. That's, that's important. yeah. It's not, , it's not the magic bullet, but, it was funny because, my brother who's a renowned live engineer, Trevor Powers, he's been front of house for Aretha Franklin and done work all over the country.

[00:24:14] He did a recording , of a high school jazz band in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and sent it to me for mix and mastering, but he hadn't heard this method yet. So I mixed this jazz band and sent it back to him, and he didn't respond. I was like, okay. And my brother has no filter., you know, he's just like, if it's awful, he'll tell you.

[00:24:36] Right? I was like, okay. So either, he loved it or he absolutely hates it and he doesn't wanna talk to me ever again. And he sent it to his client came back, loved it. And he came up here for a graduation party or something like that. And I asked him, what'd you think? And he goes, well, here's a problem.

[00:24:54] He's like, I love you and I hate you. I listened to these songs multiple times because I didn't know [00:25:00] what I was hearing, I couldn't place why it sounded so interesting.. So I had to listen to these high school jazz band songs multiple times. , and he goes, it was absolutely astonishing.

[00:25:11] And I showed him how I did it and he goes, could this be used in a live environment? 

Blake Melnick: Yeah, I was gonna ask that question, . 

[00:25:18] Tom Powers: he runs an advanced Waves OV one system. And you could do this with any of the Allen and Heat E Lies, anything that you could bust out and, and process would be able to do this.

[00:25:28] He's like, can you use this in a live environment? And I'm like, yeah, you can. The four bus was designed for recording, but could you imagine what would happen if you mixed this thing in a live environment with depth? We have tried it and it does work, and it creates a sound like you wouldn't believe, man. Right, 

[00:25:44] Effectively at that point, you get almost a stadium sound in a small club and people are like, what is this? This is great. But is it the holy grail? No. It does have some downfalls. It's definitely a digital process, right?

[00:25:56] Because of the amount of processing that's going on, if you are an [00:26:00] all analog studio, you have to have a lot of gear, or do a lot of bouncing. So it's gonna slow you down. if you're in the EDM genre, since I'm creating a listening environment, it means I have time to reverbs and time delays and things like that.

[00:26:13] If they're in the EDM environment. And my samples have reverbs on them, well, now you're sending something with a reverb through a reverb and so when you get into the EDM realm, it works, but you may have to play with some of the samples. You have to gate some of 'em off and chop 'em a little bit.

[00:26:28] It's purpose really is to create an immersive environment that people can connect with, really, is it? And if that's the music that you're creating, great. If your music is designed to be at negative three Loves and just screaming loud, the 4 bus probably ain't gonna do too much for you, because you've squashed all the life out of it in the first place.

[00:26:47] But if you're like 95% of the musicians out there where you want to make a song that people connect with and they feel the emotions and they feel what you felt when you wrote it or when you recorded [00:27:00] it, That's just something you may wanna look at.

[00:27:02] Blake Melnick: Those are great final words, Tom. I'm absolutely fascinated with what you're doing. I know our listeners will be as well. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show to talk about your research and how you're applying it in the music industry. , I think what we've talked about will resonate with a lot of people.

[00:27:19] And as I mentioned earlier, we've had a lot of musicians on the show as part of our past the Jam series, and I'm interested in following up with you to see how we can give our listeners the experience of hearing music produced through your four bus system. Perhaps you'll consider doing a culminating episode of Past the Jam.

[00:27:37] Tom Powers: I'd love it. Sounds great. Let's do it. What are you doing next week,

[00:27:39] Blake Melnick: this concludes this week's episode of for what it's Worth called Entrainment and the Power of Sound, part two with my guest Tom Powers. 

[00:27:48] Man, it's been a crazy month and I have to apologize to our listeners for the extended gaps between episodes.

[00:27:55] I've been traveling, researching stories, doing interviews and [00:28:00] recordings in Kimberly, BC and Key West Florida. Make sure you check out our show Facebook podcast page. For what it's worth, the podcast series. There are some great clips from my time at Little Feet Camp, and this is all a preview for an up and coming episode called The Long Strange Trip.

[00:28:19] In other news, our new show T’s are out, so get 'em while they're hot. You'll be able to see a sample and purchase them through a link in the show notes and on our Facebook show page. And join us next week for an episode of the Space in Between …For What it's Worth.

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