What you're tuned to. What you're tuning out.
Episode 001: The Loudness War
Imagine you're in a recording studio in 1975.
Analog tape. Physical mixing board. Human hands on faders.
To record music, you played it. It was captured on tape.
What you played is what you got. Imperfections and all.
The drummer played slightly behind the beat. That's what created the groove.
The singer's voice cracked on the high note. That's what created the emotion.
The guitarist hit a wrong note and kept going. That's what created the character.
Then digital recording arrived.
Infinite takes. Perfect editing. Auto-Tune. Unlimited tracks.
Everything became possible.
Which made nothing feel necessary.
In the 1990s, producers discovered: Louder music grabs attention.
So they compressed the audio. Made everything... the same volume.
Everyone had to compete.
Compress more. Louder. Louder. Louder.
By the 2000s:
Music was technically the loudest it had ever been.
Emotionally the flattest it had ever felt.
1977. Los Angeles. Fleetwood Mac books Sound City Studios.
Engineer Ken Caillat hears the drums in the room.
They sound huge. Naturally compressed. Ambient. Powerful.
But wrong. By the rules.
He could have fixed it. Dampened the room. Made it 'correct.'
Instead, he leaned into it.
40 million copies sold.
The drum sound became iconic.
Tom Petty heard it. Booked the same studio.
Then Nirvana. Then hundreds of others.
Sound City became legendary.
Not because the room was perfect.
Because the room had character.
Modern music production loves loops.
But here's what matters: The break.
1969. A drummer named Gregory Coleman played a 7-second solo.
It's called the Amen Break.
It became the most sampled drum break in history.
Why? Because it had perfect tension and release.
Perfect interruption and return.
The break made the loop meaningful.
Your daily loop:
Wake → Check phone → Work → Scroll → Sleep → Repeat
Where's the break?
Donald Fagen. Walter Becker. Steely Dan.
Legendary perfectionists.
They recorded one guitar solo 50+ times.
Hired the best jazz session musicians in the world.
Spent months on single albums.
1977: Aja.
It still sounds better than most music recorded today.
How? They knew exactly what they were perfecting toward.
You're optimizing your life.
Morning routine: Optimized.
Inbox zero: Achieved.
Habits tracked: Complete.
But optimized toward what?
Something interesting happened.
In 2020, vinyl sales surpassed CDs for the first time since 1986.
Vinyl is objectively worse technology:
Scratches, pops, can't skip tracks, costs more.
So why choose it?
People were choosing:
Friction • Commitment • Presence • Imperfection • Ritual
People are hungry for constraints.
Hungry for imperfection.
Hungry for something real.
The loudness war ended when someone turned down the volume.
Not because they gave up.
But because they remembered what music sounded like.
You came in listening to a loop at maximum volume.
You leave understanding the patterns.
The music is still playing.
But now you know it's a loop.
And loops can be broken.
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THE FREQUENCY • Episode 001: The Loudness War
© FORTEEN 2026 • FORTEEN MIND LABS
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