Published: Tuesday, January 3, 2012

You ever come home from the club and the next day you are horse from yelling over the music to your friends all night? Well, if you’re more tired from yelling than dancing the Silent Disco is where you want to be.

The phenomena isn’t new, [...]]]> By: eurthisnthat.com

Published: Tuesday, January 3, 2012

You ever come home from the club and the next day you are horse from yelling over the music to your friends all night? Well, if you’re more tired from yelling than dancing the Silent Disco is where you want to be.

The phenomena isn’t new, but it is new to us. According to MSNBC, the idea started in Europe over keeping the peace. The noise ordinances were being broken by the volume of some parties, so they decided to cut the noise with wireless headphones. The headphones are wired to three channels and the result is both entertaining and satisfying for all.

Imagine walking past such a sight and seeing everyone breaking out with their best moves on the dance floor in complete silence. You can already imagine how much fun that is for onlookers. The yelling is obliterated by simply taking off your headset and speaking in a normal tone to your friend. A total win win situation.

Jet Blue even gave a Silent Disco in their terminal. I can’t wait to be invited to the silent disco. But, I think I’ll just hold my headphones in my hand most of the night. The onlookers make out big in this one. Check out the story here.

View article on tampabay.com eurthisnthat.com

Published: Thursday, December 1, 2011

Excerpts:

•  ”Skerik’s skronkaphonics were a promiscuous presence all weekend. Freekbass and Skerik in the Silent Disco dished out diverse insanity and disturbed cacophony mid-afternoon.”

•  ”A parade of innovative scientists blessed Bear Creek, from the big stages to the silent disco to deep in [...]]]> By: B. Getz for jambase.com

Published: Thursday, December 1, 2011

Excerpts:

•  ”Skerik’s skronkaphonics were a promiscuous presence all weekend. Freekbass and Skerik in the Silent Disco dished out diverse insanity and disturbed cacophony mid-afternoon.”

•  ”A parade of innovative scientists blessed Bear Creek, from the big stages to the silent disco to deep in the woods.”

View full review and photos on jambase.com

Published: Thursday, November 24 2011

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Published: Thursday, November 24 2011

‘Silent Disco’ craze comes to Ybor

TAMPA – It may sound like any night at the Ritz, but if you look closely, you’ll see something very different. Everyone’s in headphones and you can stop the music yourself.

“It’s just like going to a [...]]]> By: Jeremy Campbell for myfoxtampabay.com

Published: Thursday, November 24 2011

‘Silent Disco’ craze comes to Ybor

TAMPA – It may sound like any night at the Ritz, but if you look closely, you’ll see something very different. Everyone’s in headphones and you can stop the music yourself.

“It’s just like going to a club, but then you take off the headphones and you’re like, hey, it’s dead silent and you see people dancing to nothing,” said Mitch Heirholzer.

Wireless headphones are the must-have accessory at the Silent Disco. They’re included with the cover charge, and they’re the lifeline of the show.

“Max out the headphones. Let’s get this party started,” said Rob Robinson.

Silent Disco is all about the headset. You take it off and the music stops. It’s quiet. You put it back on and the beat goes on.

“Once you put the headphones on, you definitely feel a good connection with everything that’s going on,” explained DJ Wick-It the Instigator.

Like all good parties, the Silent Disco was born underground, off the radar, as an auditory speak-easy of sorts in Europe.

“The story goes that these guys were throwing a party in a wildlife refuge and they were allowed to do it except they couldn’t make noise after 9, so they bought 20 wireless headphones and held their very first Silent Disco,” said promoter Ryan Dowd.

It really is silent on the dance floor.

“It’s pretty awesome all the people dancing to no music outside the headphones. I like weird and awkward so [it's not weird] for me. But yeah, it’s kind of weird,” said Jessica Collard.

Also it’s kind of multi-media. Some shows feature three DJs at once. Each blasts on a different channel, offering a choice for the iPhone generation.

“People want to go to a club or a live show and say I don’t want to listen to that music right now and change it on their headset live and listen to something totally different,” said Dowd.

Or you can just talk.

“It’s nice; you can actually carry out a conversation,” said Kelli Crangi.

“It’s hard to figure out how to interact with people because normally you just hear the music blasting, you bump up to somebody,” Heirholzer said.

The Silent Disco is now on tour with stops everywhere from Atlanta to Maui to the Bonnaroo Music Festival.

View article and video on myfoxtampabay.com

Published: Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Hands down, the best festival I attended in 2011. The music was great, the people were nice, the weather was chilly and Suwannee is beautiful. There’s not much more I can say beside the obvious: I loved Bear Creek.

Between the rock n’ [...]]]> By: Sarah Harper for knightnews.com

Published: Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Hands down, the best festival I attended in 2011. The music was great, the people were nice, the weather was chilly and Suwannee is beautiful. There’s not much more I can say beside the obvious: I loved Bear Creek.

Between the rock n’ roll, funk, electro jams and silent disco, each musical act was a unique experience within itself. From my Thursday afternoon arrival to my late Sunday night departure, the music never stopped playing; it was a party from sunrise to sunrise and I was completely engulfed in the Bear Creek funk. I grilled, I camped, I danced and I discovered new favorite bands. I was front row at headliner, Trey Anastasio’s Band and experienced some of the best shows of my concert history at Zack Deputy and Big Gigantic on Saturday, all while making new friends and dancing next to like-minded individuals dressed in absurd animal costumes. And to add a cherry on top to this already delicious dessert, every Bear Creeker pretty much received somewhat of a new wardrobe (t-shirts, sunglasses, koozies, stickers, etc.) from the music-sharing site, Grooveshark—thanks guys! Beside freezing from the below 30-degree evening weather and returning incredibly sleep deprived, not one genuine complaint can really stem from this hippie-style weekend—Bear Creek was phenomenal, and to say it ‘brought the funk’ wouldn’t do the festival enough justice.

As I now return back to reality—studying for tests and preparing for Thanksgiving break, I can’t help but look forward to my next Spirit of the Suwannee musical venture—Wanee, anyone?

View article on knightnews.com

Published: Monday, November 21, 2011

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Published: Saturday, November 19, 2011

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Published: Friday, November 11, 2011

View photos on theritzybor.smugmug.com

Published: Tuesday, November 8, 2011

On Halloween, JetBlue hosted a silent disco at its JFK terminal, inviting crew members and passengers alike to don headphones synched up to a live DJ’s turntables and dance away the stresses of air travel. Costumed revelers danced as passengers who weren’t wearing specialized headphones got [...]]]> By: huffingtonpost.com

Published: Tuesday, November 8, 2011

On Halloween, JetBlue hosted a silent disco at its JFK terminal, inviting crew members and passengers alike to don headphones synched up to a live DJ’s turntables and dance away the stresses of air travel. Costumed revelers danced as passengers who weren’t wearing specialized headphones got a good story for when they made it home.

It was the second time the airline has encouraged passengers to dance through the halls of its shiny terminal, which also plays host to an on-going and well-received concert series.

For the hour-long Halloween bash, music tended to the standards, says a JetBlue spokeswoman, describing the playlist as “current Top 40 hits, dance classics like Twist ‘n Shout and lots of Michael Jackson!”

View article and slideshow on huffingtonpost.com

Published: Monday, November 7, 2011

If a beat drops in a club, but there are no speakers, does it make a sound?

It does if you’re wearing headphones.

That’s the concept behind silent discos, a surreal new type of rave that has popped up at huge music festivals [...]]]> By: Jay Cridlin for tampabay.com

Published: Monday, November 7, 2011

If a beat drops in a club, but there are no speakers, does it make a sound?

It does if you’re wearing headphones.

That’s the concept behind silent discos, a surreal new type of rave that has popped up at huge music festivals in Europe and America over the past decade. Hundreds of revelers are given wireless headphones, with music by one or more DJs pumped in on multiple channels. If you remove your headset, the effect is eerie — hundreds of revelers singing and shuffling to the music, with nary a note to be heard. It sounds crazy, but in cases where noise restrictions would otherwise limit the party — rooftop parties, college campuses, after-hours raves — it makes perfect sense.

Memphis-based Silent Events Inc. stages between 80 and 100 silent discos per year in the United States, including what may be the first one in Tampa, on Nov. 10 at the Ritz Ybor. (Tickets are $16; click here for info.) The next day, the company will bring more than 1,000 headsets to its biggest disco yet at the Bear Creek Music and Art Festival in Live Oak.

We caught up with Silent Events owner Ryan Dowd for a primer on how silent discos work.

Who came up with the idea of silent discos?

It started in Europe, and that’s where the name comes from — they call clubs discotheques. Evidently, there were some people throwing a music gathering at a wildlife refuge, and they couldn’t have amplified music after 9 o’clock. The story goes that they bought 20 or 30 wireless headphones and whoever wanted to stay up could stay up. It was a small gathering, but that’s kind of what spawned it.

The experience of listening to music is different when you have headphones on, isn’t it? It’s like you’re in your own little world.

Oh, absolutely. Laying in your bed, listening to The Song Remains the Same by Led Zeppelin, or Dark Side of the Moon — it sounded like you were there in the room with them, or you were at that concert. Something about not hearing any other sounds except that music, you’re able to kind of get entranced and lost in it. I’m with you — there’s something kind of intimate about that.

That brings up the notion that it’s antisocial. A lot of people are like, “Oh, since it’s so intimate, and it’s just you and the headphones, it’s antisocial.” But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. You’re able to slide off your headphones and literally, in the middle of the dance floor, 10 feet from the DJ, talk to a friend, using an inside voice. You’re not screaming, going “WHAT?” It actually ends up being a lot of people talking.

Do DJs have to re-learn how to DJ for these events?

It’s not so much that they have to re-learn, as we take them out of their comfort zone. They’re used to having a monitor below them or next to them with the music blaring. That’s the only thing we take away. They monitor themselves using our headphones. So sometimes, the only change that a DJ has to learn is, sometimes he’s going to have our headphones on, listening to what the crowd is listening to, and sometimes he’s going to have to slide an ear off and cue his upcoming track with his headphones, that he would normally do during a normal event.

In terms of getting feedback, when a DJ drops just the smallest note or song or piece, it’s instantly picked up by the room. Nothing is lost. DJs will sometimes take off their headphones just to take a break, and listen to people singing along with the track, and look at me, like, This is awesome. And the other thing is, people forget that the headphones are on. So you forget how loud you’re being.When people try to speak to their friend next to them, they end up screaming or shouting. So you get, “OH MY GOSH, THIS IS THE BEST SONG EVER!” Those verbal outbursts would be completely lost in a club setting.

What kind of music are we talking about?

All of it. You see a lot of guys showing up with a Macbook with piles and piles of music on it, and drawing from that. The average guy you’d get for an average gig pretty much has a pre-set playlist. We play literally every demographic of music. We’ve even done a live band. I would say house, trance, dubstep is really big now. The music that I think works the best for silent discos is mash-ups, where you play two songs that you’re familiar with, but you shape them and mold them together. We’ve found that when people have headphones on, they forget they’re on, and they’re singing along with these songs. It kind of turns into a karaoke vibe, with 300 people singing Baby Got Back.

Is this something you could have done five years ago? Because electronic music has gone crazy in the last year or two, with Ultra, Electric Daisy Carnival, the Identity Festival. It’s gotten to the point where there’s a pretty big-name DJ coming to town here almost every week.

It did work five years ago, because we did it. But I don’t know that it would have worked in a club setting. We did a 17-city tour last year, from Miami up to New York. I don’t know that you could have done that. Electronica music, for me — because I worked in the southern jam-band circuit five, seven years ago — it’s kind of replaced the jam scene of the late ’90s, of everyone going to see Phish and Panic. Now everyone’s going to see Bassnectar and Pretty Lights.

It does seem like there’s some connection beteween jam music and electronic music, like kids are shifting from one to the other. It’s often the same kind of music fans, who would have gone to the early days of Bonnaroo, and are now going to Electric Daisy Carnival.

I think people like music that you get lost in, for that 10 minutes of “I don’t know what song this is.” Electronica music does that a little bit, especially some of the bands, like the Sector 9s of the world, the moes, the P-Grooves. There’s times where even their audience — who knows every note they play, every song they play — they’ll go off into space, into the improv-jazz-freestyle. I think people like that. And electronica still kind of does that. If a DJs playing a track that he created, and you don’t know what’s next, that’s why. When they’re creating a new song in front of you, that’s what brings people in.

View article on tampabay.com