Salad needs headroom

Just yesterday I made dinner for my neighbors.

Because the weather has been hotter than a Las Vegas confessional, I made a kicked-up summer salmon salad.

1. Assemble sliced arugula, romaine, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, olives, bell pepper
2. Toss with cilantro dressing
3. Pan fry salmon in lemon, garlic, and olive oil
4. Mix with salad at serving time
5. Slice and toast baguette on the side to absorb any extra goodness

The meal came together great, but I realized something as I was finishing up prep.

All these fantastic ingredients had left me no room to mix the salad properly.

Now, I had a serving bowl big enough to hold the finished salad. But as anyone whose ever tossed a good salad knows, you need some extra room to magically mix the ingredients evenly with the dressing.

I managed. But I was unhappy with how the salad had been mixed.

Hose and distortion

In the world of audio, when you combine a bunch of sounds, the loudness of those things adds together. This is (part of) why 100 screaming geese sounds louder than 1 screaming goose.

How’s that for a segue? It’ll make sense in a minute, I promise.

When we represent sound using electrical signal, we have a certain amount of capacity to handle the flow of sound. You can think of this like water traveling through a rubber hose, where the sound is the water and the electrical space we have for it is the hose.

Too little signal, and you can’t hear squat. There’s not enough water pressure to push the water out.

Too much signal, and you get distortion. There’s so much water flowing through the hose that it deforms the rubber.

The iconic sounds of blues, rock, and the heaviest Djent emanating from your nearest Del Taco storeroom rely on distortion, pushing the limits of the signal chain in a sometimes-controlled, always-crunchy way.

And you can only get distortion if you go beyond the space you have allocated for your sound. To keep with our water-in-the-hose metaphor:

1. The water is the audio signal
2. The hose’s volume is the space you have for signal to pass without deforming

There’s a term for the difference between the amount of signal (water) you have and the space you’ve set aside for it (hose). This term is headroom.

In audio, particularly in music, if you want a sound to stay clean as you add more to it you need to make sure you have enough headroom. Music and sounds that want clarity like to have some headroom so the signal can stay clean — so it doesn’t deform.

If you’ve ever heard a crystal clear orchestra recording, or a crispy vocal recording, someone has done a GREAT job of making sure there was just enough headroom when it mattered.

If you want a sound to distort, you want to get rid of your headroom. Good and gone. Shove 1000 screaming geese through the smallest garden hose you can find (please don’t actually do this).

So how does this relate to me tossing my friends’ salad?

Salad needs headroom

Just like a hose with too many screaming geese in it, my mixing bowl had too much salad in it.

In principle, this isn’t a problem. Could I have distorted the ingredients — the sounds — that make a salad sing? Sure. But it probably wouldn’t look like a salad at the end of it. Maybe a pulverized smoothie, or crushed leaves ready to be steeped or turned into stock.

I wanted this salad to cut through with a cool clarity… but didn’t have the headroom to do it.

The whole reason I’d chosen to make a kicked-up salad was the recent heatwave. My diet, daily routine, and sleep schedule had all deformed because of it. Me and my friends had been living in a state of distortion from temperatures that went way beyond our normal capacity.

I love music that goes from heavy and loud to quiet and calm. It gives contrast… dynamics. The heat was loud, the salad was meant to be laid back and relaxed. And to make a great salad that lets each ingredient breathe, you need extra room in the bowl to combine everything evenly. Not some packed in, sweaty mosh.

And that’s kinda like life, isn’t it?

If you want a party to heave, pack it to the gills. If you want it to stay chilled, let em’ stretch out.

Blood pressure spikes in bumper to bumper traffic more than it does when everyone’s rolling with a bit of cushion.

Sex in the back seat is the torrent, in the sheets it’s the tide.

It feels strange to ponder some fundamental truth based on a thrown together, half-successful meal for me and my friends. Then again, we are what we eat.

So, now I know and you do too. Great salad needs headroom.