Blog1 min read
Music for a thunderstorm
The sound outside is already music. The trick is to play with it, not against it.
A thunderstorm is one of the few weather conditions where the sound outside is already music. The trick is to play with it, not against it. Most music turns a storm into background noise; the right music turns the storm into a part of the track.
Long ambient pieces handle this well. Low piano. Drones that share a frequency band with the rain. Anything bright or busy gets fragmented by the thunder — you hear half a phrase and then a crack — and the music starts to feel like a poor accompanist.
The reading room is good if you want to be at the window with a book. The wellness room is good if you want to be on a sofa with the lights low. The sleep room is good if the storm is going to last all evening and you're tired anyway. None of them are about drowning the storm out.
There's a kind of person who will tell you that music doesn't belong during a storm — that the rain is enough. They're right, sometimes. Other times, the music does a small thing the rain can't, which is hold the room together while the storm wanders around outside.