A John Mayer listening session this weekend will introduce you to the audio underlying the music
Pereira, a guitarist, is hosting the next listening session on John Mayer’s songs. Pic/Aishwarya Deodhar
If you are a die-hard John Mayer fan, a trip to Andheri this weekend might let you listen to the legend the way you never heard him before. On August 5, Headphone Zone is hosting a listening session, where you put on their headphones but, instead of losing yourself in the music, you awaken to every little aspect of it.
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“Anyone who cares about the way they listen to music is an audiophile,” says Ian Pereira, the team lead of the “Headphone Gurus” at Headphone Zone. The studio-cum-store hosts listening sessions every weekend, with the aim of bringing together seasoned audiophiles and music lovers to discuss aspects of audio that go beyond music. “We talk about the music, the thought process behind the song...things that are not out there in public, but facts and trivia which music nerds would want to know.”
The listening sessions at Headphone Zone involves using all your senses to deeply analyse the music. Pic/Anmol Shetty
In the two-hour listening session, participants are given their own headset, and are guided to analyse the audio, its construction, and how it filters through the headsets. The idea is to go beyond music and understand how sound is created, recorded, and transmitted across mediums.
The 12-year-old business in Andheri’s Laxmi Industrial Estate is a haven for audio geeks and collectors who want to buy specialized audio equipment. It was set up by Raghav Somani, who saw that there were no indigenous platforms dedicated to selling headphones.
Pereira, also a guitarist with the band Chasing Zenith, is hosting the next listening session on John Mayer’s songs, the proceeds of which will go to the Silent Olympiad, a two-day sporting event held annually in February for hearing-impaired children. “People are blown away when they hear the songs they’ve heard all their life, but in an entirely different way,” Pereira says.
The idea branched out of the Audiophile 101 sessions that Somani used to host online during the pandemic. Pereira remembers, “Every week in the office, we would do a Potluck Playlist session. Everyone picked one song they wanted to hear, but not before explaining why they picked it.”
By the end of the session, the staff at Headphone Zones not just had a great time, but also learned a little more about their own colleagues, based on their choice of songs. They began posting the sessions on their Facebook group, The Indian Audiophile Forum, a community of over 12,000 audiophiles across the country. Somani hosted the first public session in May 2020 on A R Rahman’s melodies.
WHAT: John Mayer listening session
WHEN: August 5, 4 PM onwards
WHERE: Headphone Zone, Andheri
PRICE: Rs 599
TO BOOK: bookmyshow.com
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