White Noize

Hearing Yausa's musical piece "the Sea Darkens" (from a study in white) helped me realize how something that could be considered quite minimal and experimental was also complex and calculated. The idea that every sound was made from human voices, even if heavily distorted, was something I picked up on right away while listening to it, yet this did nothing to stop me from wondering how each and every sound was made. The complexity comes in with the dual nature of the song, where the male/female, English/Japanese, and feelings of both white/light and black/darkness created a juxtapozed sound that worked both as two and one. It switched from feeling very human to very alien at many points and often felt like both were at play. This lead me to think of the many times in less straight-forward music where the human voice is utilized as if it was an instrument itself. There is less focus on the meaning of words and more on their sound, rhythm, and dynamics. I remember the lead singer of Radiohead once saying, about his lyrics, that more often than not he chooses words for the way they sound over their actual meanings. The other main idea that was heavily discussed in class was the idea of this song unintentionally aligning up with the inverse golden ratio when broken down into parts. It still boggles my mind that these major changes in sound and mood were unplanned, and to me points out the idea that some people are just born with the ability to naturally do something like that in the same way that some people are just good at drawing or picking up an instrument and others are not.