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Noise, tonality and whatever?
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bachus



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PostPosted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 8:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

seraph wrote:
well...if you are too open-minded your brains will fall out
Shocked


Not to worry, This happened to me some time ago and no one even noticed.

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flowersniffer7



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PostPosted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bachus wrote:
flowersniffer7 wrote:
... Its all about the perception and those who are open minded enough don't use such words to base their judgement on, they listen and say I like, or I dislike and thats it...


If one is both open minded enough and has some self awareness one might add descriptive (not judgmental explanations) e.g. "I did not like it because there are a lot of bagpipes used in the piece and I dislike bagpipes."


This is true... However the point is really that any connotation towards likeing or disliking is subjective and the point I was trying to make is that is that giving an entire "genre," of music a label of good/bad will be completely your relative opinion on the matter and not really based on "facts." Even in the case of "I don't like bagpipes..." you are judging the sound of bagpipes...
Not saying judging is necessarily a bad process, because it is one we will all inevitably do with every sound we hear, but thats precisely what we do when we classify music.

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bachus



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PostPosted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 4:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

flowersniffer7 wrote:
Even in the case of "I don't like bagpipes..." you are judging the sound of bagpipes...
Absolutely. My suggestion does not change it from a subjective judgement to an objective analysis. It just gives additional useful information to the reader. I had a friend who really liked bagpipes. He would have likely taken the example as a positive assessment of the music.

Really meant as no more than a related digression. I think it has more relevance to criticism than the issue you raise. Thus I digress...sigh... Rolling Eyes

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bachus



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PostPosted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 4:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Antimon wrote:

I'm a bit out of my depth, since english isn't my natural language, but at the same time it's a bit enlightening when you try to translate and realize that it works differently in other languages.
/Stefan


Uh.. I think you do better at it than I, and it's my native tongue. You are straight forward and clear, I tend to be metaphorical to the point of incoherence, or dare I say...noise?

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seraph
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 5:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bachus wrote:
I tend to be metaphorical to the point of incoherence, or dare I say...noise?

keep up the good...noise Cool

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renevanderwouden



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PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Noise is the opposite of harmony ? At least I thought this is the case.
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elektro80
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

renevanderwouden wrote:
Noise is the opposite of harmony ? At least I thought this is the case.


Well... I don´t think it works that way.

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renevanderwouden



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PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I thought so. Very Happy

At the other hand, noise can be harmonized too.

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elektro80
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Indeed.. well..
I once walked unknowingly into the roundingoff of a very gay Liberace lookalike contest in a pub in... was it Umeå, Sweden? One of those cities.. anyways.. pink noise.. Laughing

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renevanderwouden



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PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Or just put a portable Minidisc on your back with tape and then go do some cycling in a city-town.

Then at home put the sounds in a sampler, and start to compose. Can be really inspiring.

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elektro80
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

That new cute little Zoom thingie with stereo mics and whatnot! Cool
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play



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PostPosted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 1:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

elektro80 wrote:
yup.. true. Actually I wrote a piece of music once which picks up on this effect.. well.. my idea was exploring if memory will play you a trick or two.. The piece is called "Blinded By Memory" and is basically about if the perception of structures, events and microdetail will be perceived differently by the audience based on previous experiences. I got the idea based on a visual experience. The full title is "Blinded by Memory - The City That Never Was".



:shock: I suddenly realized using a concept like this for a piece of music is pretty geeky. Hmm.. seems like I have misplaced my pocket protector somewhere...


Not geeky at all. It's totally cool. It's the basic idea behind whole genres of repetive music like hard techno. Lots of people just hear "dum-dum-dum-dum" and think only ravers on drugs could find it interesting but when you open your ear a bit you find the experience of the sound changes over time even though the actual sound just repeats. It's not really ground breaking to say that our moods affect our perception but it is interesting to exploit that effect to create music that encourages self-reflection or a "tuning-in" to our own experience. Quite different than the view of music as a narrative.
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play



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PostPosted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 1:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

elektro80 wrote:
Indeed.. well..
I once walked unknowingly into the roundingoff of a very gay Liberace lookalike contest in a pub in... was it Umeå, Sweden? One of those cities.. anyways.. pink noise.. :lol:


pink noise from wikipedia:
Quote:

Pink noise, also known as 1/f noise, is a signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density is proportional to the reciprocal of the frequency. The name arises from being intermediate between white noise (1/f0) and red noise (1/f2, more commonly known Brown or Brownian noise).


And I've attached a 5 second sample ;)


pink.wav
 Description:
pink noise

Download
 Filename:  pink.wav
 Filesize:  1.68 MB
 Downloaded:  1004 Time(s)

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elektro80
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 2:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Laughing

hugs

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 6:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

play wrote:
Not geeky at all. It's totally cool. It's the basic idea behind whole genres of repetive music like hard techno. Lots of people just hear "dum-dum-dum-dum" and think only ravers on drugs could find it interesting but when you open your ear a bit you find the experience of the sound changes over time even though the actual sound just repeats.


Very true. My approach is not unique at all. That being said, I do think it is interesting to explore components like melody and phrases as well as interacting polyphonic lines. Thinking about silly stuff like how short or how long can a melodic phrase be, can a melody be played implicitly but still never be heard, is it possible to shift phrasing which is perceived as tonal melody into rythmic patterns alone.. you know.. I find this interesting. Whenever I have written something based on some old formulae I´ve learned way back I tend to feel the music is not mine but someone elses. Silly I know, but life is too short for writing someone elses music.

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play



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PostPosted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 11:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

well then, I grant you your geekines :) Another fun thing to explore is the limit of what sounds can be used melodically.

There is some great stuff in this vein put out by the perlon label (http://www.perlon.net/). Their stuff ranges from goofy/lush to extremely minimalistic but with a lot of depth.
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elektro80
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 8:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

play wrote:
Another fun thing to explore is the limit of what sounds can be used melodically.


I don´t think there are any real limits here. It is not hard to construct gestures and patterns out of sounds that aren´t strictly tonal. Related is of course the fact that schemes for repetetion/structuring of melodic sections can be messed with a lot. And then there is interaction between layers of voices.

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 11:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I didn't mean to imply so much that there is a limit, although I think there are limits within the individual language of a particular piece. I guess I'm refering to the use of percussive or highly complex-timbred sounds to create melodies that sort of grow inside the listener's mind. Not so much messing with the pitch of a sound as exploiting the relationship between melody and rythm to create melodic lines that exist as a by product of rythmic variations. This effect is usually intensified through repetition. Creating loops that do this effectively is, for me, a process of pushing against the limits of what a sound can mean through layering and repetition. (sort of like what you're saying)
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kijjaz



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 5:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

for me, noise is what i forgot to listen to .. in the past.
but i might forget to listen to them now and in the future hahahahaa.

sometimes there are also something in life i didn't pay attention to in the past.
and i might forget about them now and in the future also -_-"..
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lebenspuls



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PostPosted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 1:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

elektro80 wrote:
play wrote:
Another fun thing to explore is the limit of what sounds can be used melodically.


I don´t think there are any real limits here. It is not hard to construct gestures and patterns out of sounds that aren´t strictly tonal. Related is of course the fact that schemes for repetetion/structuring of melodic sections can be messed with a lot. And then there is interaction between layers of voices.


Just found this interesting discussion and want to share some experiences...
I would go even a step further. If you listen to pure white or pink noise for a longer time and relax as deep as possible you will start to "hear" structures. I do this sometimes in workshops and it amazes me what people start to "hear". Another exercise I formed for myself is:
I created a patch in Max/MSP which generates pure sine-waves from a pure random function and listened to it every day for a few minutes. Interesting how different the "atmosphere" of these small "generative improvisation" appears to me every time.
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Antimon



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PostPosted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 2:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

lebenspuls wrote:
elektro80 wrote:
play wrote:
Another fun thing to explore is the limit of what sounds can be used melodically.


I don´t think there are any real limits here. It is not hard to construct gestures and patterns out of sounds that aren´t strictly tonal. Related is of course the fact that schemes for repetetion/structuring of melodic sections can be messed with a lot. And then there is interaction between layers of voices.


Just found this interesting discussion and want to share some experiences...
I would go even a step further. If you listen to pure white or pink noise for a longer time and relax as deep as possible you will start to "hear" structures. I do this sometimes in workshops and it amazes me what people start to "hear". Another exercise I formed for myself is:
I created a patch in Max/MSP which generates pure sine-waves from a pure random function and listened to it every day for a few minutes. Interesting how different the "atmosphere" of these small "generative improvisation" appears to me every time.


Yes - this is an interesting approach. I believe that different people experience music in individual ways that may differ on a deep level. A bit like people often have a hard time agreeing on what colours look like (I like to call the surface of the Trivial Pursuit board green, but many disagree with me, calling it blue). Even though we develop a language for music and sounds ("warm", "full", "glitchy" etc), there can be a lot of misunderstandings about it - opinion A not obviously not more valid than opinion B. This becomes more apparent when dealing with music that deviates from well-established rules.

/Stefan

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simioliolio



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PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 8:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

yeah totally, humans are complicated. its a good job really, otherwise things would be well dull.

ive just read this entire thread and found it very interesting to hear all the different opinions and historic references. the book "audio culture" http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Culture-Readings-Modern-Music/dp/0826416152 has got some fantastic discussions and explanations involving all popular contributors to the concept of noise, not to mention aother fields of musical philosophy. it really changes the way you think about music, especially about noise, as it identifies a large number of artists' experiments and ideas.
if you are dealing with audio in the analog domain, there is noise, as all particles vibrate above absolute zero, and these vibrations are perceived as 'noise'.
if you are dealing with audio in the digital domain, there is noise, as the incoming analog signal (already containing noise) is subject to quantisation error, and other noise-adding treatments.
John cage went into an anechoic chamber inside a studio, and asked the engineer if he could sit inside to see if he could hear silence. He went in, and after half an hour came out explaining that the room is not silent, and that he could hear a high pitched and low pitched 'noise'. the engineer explained that the high pitched sound was his nervous system and the low pitched sound was his blood circulation.
so everything has 'noise', it is natural part of our lives, so how can we label it as an un-wanted artifact, when it is everywhere!
I love listening to noise. the first 5 seconds are difficult, but when the brain adapts, and the noise doesn't correclate with the way that our ears and brain perceive it, it is an awesome experience, that changes daily.
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jmcdaniel_ee



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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

There is the scientific definition of noise as in non-pitched sound, or sound of an undetermined pitch.

Then there is the relative/artistc/purpose-concerned definition of noise. In this case I usually compare noise to the dirt/soil example: soil grows plants and supports walking, etc. Dirt is misplaced soil. If you compare noise with dirt in this example, I don't know what you compare soil to. Inteded sound, I guess. If you're talking about using actual unpitched sound in an intentional way, then it's purposeful sound of undetermined pitch.

Try using the term in a sentence. As in: "Johnny decided to fade into the song a breif swell of white-purposeful-sound-of-an-undertermined-pitch." It has a nice ring to it.
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Digiton



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PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 3:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

just to head back 3 years to the start of the thread Smile being about the futurist movement, the futurist artists (visual) are incredible as well. The whole movement was hell bent on breaking down artistic barriers, so much so it's manifestos can seem miltaristic in their intensity and the painter/sculptor boccioni died in combat...um, so here are some links to his work, quite famous yall probably seen it before but its dang hot!
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/art/20th/sculpture/boccioni01.jpg
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/art/20th/sculpture/boccioni02.jpg

You can almost "see" things like granular synthesis and time stretching applied to the 3d form, no?

and in terms of "noise" (white pink brown) being unpitched sound thats true, a pitched sound is a periodic waveform (most basic being sine, square etc.) and noise is aperiodic...so in a sense, calling certain music "noise music" is from a scientific standpoint quite correct!

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