I could say so much more from my own noisy experience, but I am on a path on which I am determined not to know anything with others except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

I tuned out of pop culture and the bs that surrounds it a long time ago, and as far as music goes, if you can't perform your music (or your church service) in my living room, then I don't need to listen....

I recommend it....

As far as the pros and cons of amplification are concerned, I believe I can speak directly to this with some authority, as I am one of the few "classical" guitarists that has taken amplification from a necessary evil to an art in and of itself. And, trust me, I get plenty of flak for it from the traditionalists. But, my approach to using digital effects and recording studio class sound systems live has been to recreate the chills I get when I hear the voice of God described as, "the sound of many waters," which I imagine to be a very reverberant sound with an impossibly broad stereo field and infinitude of stage depth: The sine qua non of total sonic immersion. Those who understand what I'm doing are admittedly few, but the satisfaction I get when someone compliments the virtual acoustic environments I program as, "impossibly huge!" or the like is worth more to me than all the tea in China. I do play acoustically before Church services though, as I believe that is more fitting.

Great points about environmental music pollution. Even though I'm a musician, I spend most of every day in silence: That way musical experiences become more important, and my mind wanders off less during them. Being a "pray continually" kind of Christian, musical background noise doesn't sever my tie with the Almighty, however.

Don't even get me started about how readily available recorded music has lessened the value of live performances. Before recordings, all musical experiences were major events. Now, not so much. Unfortunately.

Neither sound nor silence can be identified as categorically good or categorically bad -- rather, each is a good in some particular contexts, while bad in others.

This article has been on my mind since I read it a few weeks back. My not-yet-two-year old claps and dances along to Bluegrass (digital music, thank you cable) and within the last couple of months has added, yes, Johnny Cash to his musical delights. And yet he hears nothing, not music anyway, if I turn on a 'pop' song. No clapping, no dancing-- should I be experimenting this way? No matter, I had thought it was 'proof' that music was in our genes but that explanation is at least partial cover for the reality of the corruption in my ears and mind.

I am prone to freneticism (I made that up) myself. Part of the old WASP influence, "idle hands are the devil's workshop." I suppose there's nothing wrong in being busy at work, but the point I take from Dr. Wolf, is busyness (even for good purpose) is no substitute for the openness to the Lord found in quietness.

Try it yourself. Turn on any "pop" FM radio station, or any AM talk station, and let me know if you can isolate any stretch in the space of an hour where you "hear" even two consecutive seconds of silence.

Yes, I know, advertisers want every second they can get, and the DJs are under pressure to get as many songs on in an hour as possible (is there anything more irritating than the way an FM station will chop a six-minute song into two to three minutes, or listening to one of these DJ asses running their mouths through an entire instrumental lead-in or outro to a song, as well as cutting off the ending so that you can listen to them run their stupid holes?), but if you turn this stuff off for a while, and then try listening to it, say, a few weeks later, I can almost guarantee that within five minutes, you'll shut it off, and from that point on, you'll find something else to do.