Monday, October 29, 2007
guess and tell
Actually no, the parts fit even better than that. There was structure to the starting points of every stimulus and reaction and much control over volume for the reactions. This will greatly enhance my creative musical mind!
Chris Lundeen
Thursday, October 25, 2007
What Rhymes with Radio?
If anyone knows of something that rhymes with radio, go ahead an comment.
I'll post more soon.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Collaborating music and lights
Monday, October 22, 2007
The silence
In last week's class we performed a radio music piece that involved tuning stations at random timing according to the order of a sheet with the only limitations being it would span 6 minutes and you could not stay on one station for the whole time. Because of this inbetween stations we encountered a lack of a radio program however, i would argue that we still got tonal music in the "blank" frequencies. I feel this way because there is still noise in the background. If you asked someone to listen after you turned the dial on a radio from a station to a unused frequenced you would get the "Listen to what?" response and it would be common to hear them say what am i listening for there is nothing there, its just silence. This wouldn't occur in some cases where a radio projects the static very loudly, but especially on many newer radios nothing would project and maybe there IS silence. However i would still argue this is very much so musical for many reasons.
Mainly I would argue for that because you can easily compare the empty frequencies to the pauses in songs. Is it not true that just as you are dialed in with your attention in a song when its paused, and you wait for something to happen? Is it not also true that when you have a radio on and it is not tuned to a broadcasting station it makes that same desire for something to happen occur? In my mind much of the effectiveness in music might be in the commonly unnoticed, suspense of pause or silence. THE SILENCE is what brings forth our desire for more, and does its job every time.
Chris Lundeen
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Being a sensitive listener
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/42237/
Monday, October 15, 2007
2 Different Melodies Creating a Third
Click Here
Throughout the piece there is a dichotomy between sounds that are very tonal in their nature, and those that are more rich regarding their spectrum. The latter of these sounds have more inharmonic spectra (frequencies in between what we would call "notes" in a tonal structure). These two sounds are intertwined in the first section showing relationships between their range and also the specific frequencies present- one just has more differing frequencies (and is probably derived from the first sound [the """"piano"""" sounding thing] but I will not go too much into the source of these sounds.) A similarity in these first two sounds, or gestures from now on, is their almost chordal structure. There usually is an interval in the first gesture or a similar intervalic range produced in the second gesture; only in the second this interval is filled in or has some frequency material between the frequency maximum and minimum.
The second "section" that I noticed was more melodic by far, not being driven by intervals harmonically, but rather- you guessed it: melodically. I wouldn't classify it as a classic lullaby, but its softness does offer a rather delicate nature often becoming more active dynamically but then receding back to its almost docile quality. This section is then accompanied by rich long tones and intervals that provide a background texture to add some color to the sound pallet. Soon this section reveals another instance of the """""""piano""""""" sounding thing and is much more agitated for a period of time. Now we are beginning to experience delay! Or at least a much greater semblance than we have heard so far. Now the melodic gestures are accompanied by themselves and create the intervalic material from well, itself. Then... There... Is... A... Slower... Section... Lots... Of... Space... Then... An alien talks. Well. No. Not really.
Being the humans we are, we immediately notice someones voice no matter how drastically changed it is. This is one source that I oftentimes have a real difficulty listening to and not just shouting, "HEY! I KNOW WHAT IT IS!!!" So I will. Just this once... maybe.
And then... MORE DELAY!!!! I CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF THIS STUFF!!!
The delay that he used in the piece decays rather quickly, losing a lot of the frequencies from the original gesture in only 1 or 2 generations. At the 5th and 6th generation it is a totally different sound. Almost like the difference between the dichotomy of the two sounds/gestures in the beginning...
But I really don't know. So I'll leave you with that for now.
mystical noise
I listened to "Dialogue" by Tenney, and was pleasantly reminded of the R2D2 effect as i will call it. There are what seem like random pitched and timed note sequences that make up the phrases of such music.
However cool all that is, that wasn't the main point of this. The main sounds of this include a rhythmic background that comes and goes, and creeping whistle noises making it reminiscent of the forbidden planet and other scary movie parts but not for long because they are quickly interupted by the above mentioned R2D2 randomization.
What i got from this was basically a feeling of curiosity, which I think is natural when listening to music that both stimulates lurky and random things in my head.
Chris Lundeen
Friday, October 12, 2007
White Noise?
white noise
–noun
1.
Also called white sound. a
steady, unvarying, unobtrusive sound, as an electronically produced drone or the
sound of rain, used to mask or obliterate unwanted sounds.
2.
Physics.
random noise with a uniform frequency spectrum over a wide range of
frequencies.
This handy definition from dictionary.com shows us that any structuring of the white noise makes it no longer "white". White noise is a very specific quality of sound that has its own definition. There is no audible semblance of the word "white" or "sea" in white noise. If we subtract enough sine waves through subtractive synthesis we may uncover such a phenomenon, but we would destroy the purity of true white noise in the process by changing it. If we must use the idea of "white noise" let us only refer to it as part of the source or process in creating the piece we heard, but not so much of any exact sound presented in the piece. I sound pushy don't I? Well, I'll stop here. I would probably get quite annoying if I continued.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Xenakis
this clip of Xenakis' electronic music includes the main works from his 1st period (1957-1962), - Diamorphoses, Concert PH, Orient-Occident - one from his 2nd, (1969-1977) - Hibiki-Hana-Ma -and one from his last - S.709.
http://www.digital-music-archives.com/webdb2/application/Application.php?
Monday, October 8, 2007
White Noize
That thing
Well i've spent a lot of time with not-so-typical music in the past year and studied with the basis that the sound's source is unimportant on many occassions. However different the listening experiences of bands and the studying its funny how much the things i've learned in studying apply to the typical listening.
First of all, when bands play most of the time everyone thinks, yea i know what that sound is its a bass drum or a snare head or you name it. The thing that many people are oblivious to are that many times in live performance and/or recording sure someone played a bass drum or snare head, but the sound that comes out is a desired triggered sound that is pre-recorded and used for that *near perfect* sound.
Also, many sounds that are live or real are now days easy to mix up with instruments because of processing and effects. In fact people have confused keyboard and guitar parts since the 80's rock music of van halen and i'm sure even before that. What this leads me to conclude is that new media music and pop music however different they seem in aesthetic tonality, really value the same thing, that being how something sounds. I've come to see that whatever "that thing" is that we like to here we don't care how it is generated.
It's funny what a year in new media does to your outlook. A couple years ago i would have just called anyone that wants anything to do with the WEIRD MUSIC a little goofy in the head, but now i see how the important sound aspects correlate perfectly with typical popular music.
Chris Lundeen
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Two week-old hat...
More situations with a variety of difference tones? Yes, please! That'd be awesome. I've had a fascination with what results when two guitar strings are tuned and/or fretted in such a way as to create an interval of a major second or less (i.e. C & D, C & Db, etc), an affliction whose acuteness stemmed mostly from becoming aware of the method behind this band's madness, which involved near-unison, but not quite, notes strummed quickly, repetitively, and at high volume.
I guess my initial openness to something perhaps as strange as the music of Arab on Radar stems from a search for alternate approaches to playing guitar which maximize the instrument's visceral potential, or at least lead to questions such as "That's a GUITAR making that sound?!"
As a tangent from this as well from as the earlier discussion of experimental music often being used for horror films, a piece by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima," comes to mind. I think that, given our cultural background, it becomes something of a physical ordeal to process information like tone clusters, which I would guess is probably why it was chosen as part of the soundtrack to Kubrick's movie version of "The Shining" - as an aid to heightening the feeling of sensory overload. I was pleased to find that this piece was also used recently in a scene from "Children of Men" in a context removed from outright horror, placed instead in a climatic setting of senseless militaristic violence perhaps more closely aligned with the piece's actual title.
The initial unsettled feeling I experienced when first hearing these dissonant (and what I learned later were sometimes microtonal) clusters of pitches quickly passed into, well, a sort of enjoyment as a result of my being unsettled. This was illustrated when, in class, I paused between the two speakers trying to find the point where someone (who was it again?) said they felt ill as a result of the pitch(es) being projected by the two speakers, sadistic as it may have seemed.
When I found out more about the phenomenon of difference tones last year in a physics of music course, I was thrilled to discover that something to which I had intuitively/perversely been attracted actually had something to do with my perception of these notes adding that additional tone which was allowing me a certain subtle texture achievable without the use of an effects pedal, as well as its lending of an additional element of physicality to the sounds I was making.
If I can find a means to host some clips of audio, I'd like to put up some links to examples of this interest of mine reflected in guitar parts that I've written and recorded with a band.
Also, apologies for using Wikipedia. It makes things too damn easy (and sometimes isn't factually correct, either).
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
WHY DO FANS MAKE ME SLEEP SO GOOD!?
BUT I DON'T GIVE UP!
I moved on to another source. Link *2 located on bottom.
HOLD ON BABY.
This isn't about fans anymore hunny, this is about WHITE NOISE! Yes, white noise, the frequencies we all learned about in class.
Whats this? WE CAN MAKE MONEY SELLING WHITE NOISE? People are so stressed out and they just want to sleep dang-it. Sleeping pills just are not enough.
This is my favorite part "Comfort your crying or fussy baby" Damn those fussy babies. Just take a gander and read all of these symptoms that WHITE NOISE can solve. No wonder Dr.T is so relaxed.
We have been working refining our Pure White Noise® for over 20 years. (Ref: link *2 on bottom)
Yes you have it folks. They have been refining "pure" white noise for 20 years. 20 full years of filtering frequencies. They even crossed the line a bit in this example (http://www.purewhitenoise.com/clips/pwn_wav.wav) yes, they named it pwn_wav.
"pwn" in geek terms pwn = Owned. They sure owned me with this amazing job on white noise.
BUT DONT BE DISCOURAGED the cd is only 10.00 dollars. So don't waste 10 seconds of your day filtering a random sound to white noise, let them do it for you with 20 years of experience.
Well as you can see looking for why fans make me sleep so good turned into white noise. I'll just give it a shot and say anything that remains equally pleasant to an ear continuously through the night will keep you well asleep.
*1)http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060821182653AA52pmw
*2)http://www.purewhitenoise.com/usewhitenoise.html
Monday, October 1, 2007
Sound in a garage
I recently played a show in a garage with my band members from Valia. This experience lead me to a philosophy on sound waves inside and outside of the garage. As we were projecting the sound from inside the garage, it was all being pushed out via the entrance. When you were outside of the garage where the sound was being pushed, it was not that tremendously loud. It was rather quiet. When moved in the right spot, the sound was almost unbearable (not next to the speaker but almost in a certain row back from the speakers and in the middle. I am unsure of what caused this but I would like to know!
Octaves Anonymous
Upon being asked to steady a mic cable in class confusion was set in. Dr. Twombly then twirled the cable so it would revolutionize as one big piece, and confusion remained. At first, a wondering came to be about whether profs think students in music dont understand that notes correlate to wave forms, but this did not last long. After talking about this basic concept, it was time to steady teh end of the cable again, and this time things were a little different. Twombly sped up the pase at which he twirled the cable causing it to revolution at two points. Why did he do this? He did it because as he then stated that it was a representation of octaves.
It is funny how physical examples of sight can help one understand something. Obviously it would have been really hard to create a speed where the cord had anything like 10 spinning sections, but the first demonstrations did the job. With physical representation, concepts become much clearer, and in this case it brought much of the new media world towards home so to speak. When you see the basics of how a sound wave works for a pitch with a physical example it says so much more than just that.
Without any explanation concepts of chordal structures and what makes an octave can confuse a person, but seeing how partials go together in a more physical manner settles many questions. To the idea of teaching octaves with a cord, i give this a bravo just for making things so much more simple.
Christian Lundeen
Sign.wav/
This is when I tell them that I enjoyed a 20 minute span of listening to sine waves interfering with other near-frequency sine waves. I think more people should have this mindset. Sine waves are cool right? Sure. But moving on from the opinion section.
The reason I was so enthralled with this interference is that it produces the difference pitch, or however it was labeled in class. It is almost startling when someone proves to you that there are only two sine waves produced from the speakers by turning one off. BAM. Both the frequency produced by the speaker and the perceived frequency produced by the difference drop out.
My first thoughts are: What else can you do with that difference pitch? Could you perhaps make another difference pitch along with it by interfering with it again? And again? Someone might know. With some time- I will soon know. Or maybe Dr. Twombly will just comment the answer or something to incite me to find out sooner. My second thought is: What if there are several frequencies moving higher or lower- out of synchronization with each other? What happens then? I guess we will see. Two little experiments that have either been tried and will need to be reactivated, or maybe new to some- and need to be explored further to ensure a thorough investigation.