Post Industrial Soundscapes and Electronica

I have often been interested in the concept of a Soundscape which is really just the constant flood of sounds that we hear everyday. Where we live can have a big influence on this. I live in a city with a highway overpass nearby. At the moment I hear the muffled sound of cars and trucks from the overpass and the local roads, the sound of the furnace, the sounds of the office, someone coming upstairs, the doorbell (very irritating) and even the sound of my typing on the IPad.

As a continuation of my last blog, I realize how much of what we hear is mechanical and industrial. This must have an impact on our music. Perhaps the sound set of house, techno, hip hop, dubstep and the whole host of evolving genres is just a reflection of the industrial Soundscape we live in.

I wonder if those who live in Montana listen to different music than those like me who live in a city? Would Vivaldi have written about the 4 seasons if he lived in a modern city?

This is more of a question than an answer. I am wondering what others think and hoping to get some comments.

A Sound Walk

Every once and a while I decide to make a conscious effort to listen to everything I hear. Today, i parked my car on the roof if a garage. I live and work in a city so pretty much everything I heard was mechanical. But what I observed was how sound tells a story.

First, the change from the many conversations inside the building to outside. The conversations were replaced by cars some distant and some near. The filtering and reverb was multifaceted. Music, even electronic, usually only applies reverb at one distance.

Then the garage elevator closes and you get a change from the vast collection of sounds to the motor of the elevator. As I watched the world outside, the silence was so noticeable.

Then the door opens and the city sounds return but the are muffled by the height. Not just softener but the more distant sounds increased.

Then I got in by car. Door closing and immediately silence except for the intimate environment inside and the slight but muffled engine sound. It was distinct from the elevator.

The the slight phasing of sound as the car moved through the enclosed garage. Then the window opens so I can swipe my card. The sounds of the city return but still muffled and then as I moved outside the sounds were similar to walking to the car but also different. Then I closed the window but since I was not in the garage the city sounds remained but muffled.

What amazed me was that filtering and reverb told as much of a story as did the sounds. I have to record this. It was an interesting sound walk.

First Impressions of Blade

I decided to make a blog of my first impressions of Rob Pappen's Blade. I have a long history with Virsyn's Cube which had a rather unfortunate parting of the ways between me and it's designer but for anyone who wants my reflections on Cube and additive synthesis you will find some pretty in depth posts on Virsyn's Cube bulletin board. I am "Ex Member".

At the time I started to get into additive synthesis I was very intrigued. Having an extensive background in mathematics made the prospect of additive synthesis seemed like the holy grail of synthesis. By drawing partials one could create any sound or so I thought. Understanding what a Fourier Transform is and what it is not I should have know better but that is a complex topic. Reading my posts (ex member) will provide a whole library of my thoughts on that.

What I tried to communicate to Harry Gohs was that drawing harmonics gives someone very little idea of what a waveform is going to sound like. Not only that but waveforms are static as is the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform). Cube (and Alchemy's additive morphing) both use a concept called windowing. This idea is also used in granular synthesis as well. Without going into the details (which is where the devil of spectral morphing is), windowing allows one sound to be morphed into another (not cross faded - long explanation with frightening math). It also allows for the morphing of time (slowing down and speeding up without the dreaded chipmunk effect)

So Cube (and Alchemy's older brother Chameleon) both use spectral morphing. Cube and Chameleon both used an XY pad to graphically represent this. Each point of the Cube was a spectral model.

If you ever see a demo of Cube you will see the dancing dots you see in Blade. However, the XY pads only controlled the morph in both Cube and Chameleon and there are no LFOs and envelopes to control other parameters.

The path on the XY pads of both cube and Chameleon are line segments. Blade records the motion of the musician making it far more flexible and natural. I am sure this was a bit influenced by Korg's M3 and Kaos pads.

One of the features wanted to see added to Cube was a way to tame the spectral displays of partials. This is in fact what Blade is doing. It is taming an almost unintelligible series of partials and translating them into something musical. Native Instrument's. Razor also does this and to some extent their Reaktor Synth Prism. I do see a bit or borrowing from Alchemy's "symmetry" and also Absynth's multiple voices per oscillator. Virsyn's Cube and Poseidon also have a similar feature.

What I also see is what I would call one of the 1st West Coast synths. What I am referring to is Donald Buchla. If you look at a 200e music box you will find a highly complex oscillator. Buchla placed for focus on the oscillator than the filter by creating dynamic waveforms. This is what Blade is doing.

I buy very few new synths. When I do it's for a reason. When I first started making electronic music I was a neophyte but now I can look at the specs and demos of a synth and get a pretty good idea of what it's about. When Blade is released I will buy it because it's breaking away from old additive and subtractive models. It's leaving familiar but boring standards and defining it's own ground and for that I very much approve.

On Organ Stops and Additive Synthesis

I have been thinking about pipe organs these days and they have given me some food for thought for a few observations.

One only need a brief perusal of the world of organ stops to realize that trying to mimic sounds by mimicking their partials has been with us since the 1st additive synthesizer, the pipe organ.
Pipe organ stops attempt to mimic anything from violins to the human voice by simply trying to physically recreate partials. Truth be sold that attempts to get a pipe organ to sound like a human voice or a violin have been rather feeble.

This brings me to a diamond in the rough, the Kawai K5000. This is a great synth because those who designed it realized what pipe organs would have told them centuries ago. No natural waveform is fixed.

If you want to get something to sound like a certain musical instrument sample it. And yes, I am aware that sampling is passé and old school. Who cares? Certainly not me. The exception to this is physical modeling but that is for another blog.

Its also important to realize that the attack and decay of a sound should be looked at differently that the sustain and release. This is what the K5000 did and it's easy to do with any DAW today by layering (or dare I say modern day orchestration w/o the orchestra).

I also don't really understand spectral morphing. My personal opinion is that trying to morph one instrument into another with additive synthesis is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. What additive synthesis can do is a lot of spectral Alchemy in the sustained part of the note. It's why I like Alchemy more for pads and soundcapes than instrument sounds. But the partials in the attack transient are non linear, noisy and chaotic not to mention very brief. Trying to morph them just creates artifacts that IMHO are far from musical.

What synths like Alchemy do well is create morphs in the sustained part of the note. This is worth doing. It creates a dynamic spectrum rather the fixed spectrum of a natural instrument during it's sustain which is what synthesis does well.

I think the focus in additive synthesis is in the wrong place. Rather than trying to create modern day organ stops it's far more productive to look to the richly creative world of pads, drones and soundcapes and leave the transient to samplers and physical modelers.

On the Development of Instruments

In my early posts you can find many posts criticizing the whole notion of additive synthesis for the very simple reason that it is not really possible. I will not get into the reasons here to avoid mathematics which most don't have a background in.

As a clarification, I do own Alchemy because I find it's application of additive synthesis useful. However, I find the whole notion of describing sound in terms of partials to be of only limited use. I also find waveforms while essential for analogue synthesis to again have limited value for describing natural sounds.

For the most part, when we hear a sound, it is the attack transient that our brains use to determine what instrument is being played. Lets do a thought experiment. Take a number of orchestral instruments and have a group of musicians begin to play them together but separated by a few measures and then stop playing in the same manner. Experiments have show that it is relatively easy to distinguish when each instrument started but difficult to distinguish when each finishes.

The truth is simply this. It is the attack transient that we use to distinguish an instrument and not the much more stable waveform during the sustain or decay part of a note.

So if waveforms don't help and partials don't help much in understanding sound what does? My theory is that by studying the dynamics of transients and their underlying physical properties one can develop a means of classifying sounds that is far more natural and corresponds to how we hear sounds rather than how they can be expressed with mathematics. So in studying instruments historically I can find a basis to begin to describe how sound changes and how that can be used musically.

This is where I find myself drawn to musically and many times my music also is truly experimental in that I am learning as well as creating.

This is not my only interest musically. I am also very interested in how music creates an emotional response. I also have an interest in orchestration but these will have to be for future blogs.

Comments are always most welcome.

Shake, Rattle and Role

Sometimes I find as an electronic musical artist that I can get so wrapped up in the technical aspects of my music that I forget the simple joys of sounds. As many of you might now, I have a great deal of appreciation for what music therapists do. One aspect of their work is their delight in simple musical instrument. For example, I have really enjoyed "Building a Rhythm Band on a Budget" from Natalie Mullis, a certified music therapist and also Kat Fulton's blogs about Boomwhackers and drum circles.

Their influence has been so great that I now have built my own rhythm band complete with egg shakers, boomwhackers and even a giant boomwhacker. Of course, no electronic artist can resist the mangling of samples into something new but working with the raw sounds has taught be a lot.

Lets take egg shakers for example. They have been around for a very long time. Well, not really egg shakers in modern plastic motif but rattles that seem to dominate every culture going back to the time man first learned to bang two rocks together. Many have used hollowed out goards with some material inside to make an effective rattle.

In her video Natalie observes that the egg shaker is non distinct, that it has no sharp rhythm so it's good for children as they learn to develop their sense of rhythm. In a sense, egg shakers are a form of granular synthesizer. The beads inside the egg act literally like the grains of granular synthesis. The same principle is true of rain sticks, ocean drums and and Maracas.

What is interesting is how prevalent the broader term "rattle" appears in many cultures throughout musical history. On my vacation in a few weeks I plan on visiting the Metropolitan Museum of art which has a very large collection of instruments including, yes, several rattles. The books I also have on musical instruments show how prevalent the rattle has been in musical history.

Another musical instrument I have found to be a favorite of music therapists is the Boomwhacker. While in some sense this is a children's toy, it has many ties to other instruments. For example, I have been using an effect called corpus and a synthesizer called Prism which act like waveguides in a sense much as these two synths and effects do.

Prism uses an impulse, comb filtering and a feedback look. The impulse is very much like striking the Boomwhacker with a hand. Corpus has a tube option which also behaves like sound played through a Boomwhacker.

It's clear that observations of simple instrument provide a useful framework for talking about the development of instruments new and old.

On Music Therapy

For a while now I have been fascinated by the work of Music Therapists. They are good people trying to help others using an art form that I hold dear to my own heart, music. I also am attracted to their simplicity in how they use music for therapy. At times I like to get past the knobs and sliders of my art form and enjoy a video that delights in the simple sound of a drum.

For a while now, I have also been interested in the psychological aspects of music. Music therapists use basic musical ideas in their work to bring healing and joy to others. In many ways it helps me at times to focus on my own music. Every time I compose music I am drawing on emotions and memories. Music for me is often self exploration, sound exploration and personal exploration and sharing.

However, what I don't share with music therapists is a desire to define my art. When I create music it's no holes barred. I use all sort of ways of getting the sounds I want. That said, many of the videos I have watched and blogs I have read on music therapy I use as starting off points to create something new. I take a basic form such as the beating of a particular drum and discover a broader musical context in the Electronic Music art form.

There is also nothing more rewarding that to meet people personally. In getting to know other artists I have found a common kinship with other sonic explorers. When navigating the unexplored country, there is no particular discipline. We have no conferences, committees, guidelines or standards. We just create. We so come together but to share, not limit, define or dissect.

In my discussions with music therapists and electronic artists I advocate for Music Therapy with fellow artists I but also share my art and others with music therapists. As much as I have found that music therapy enriches my art, it is my hope that what myself and fellow artists do can enrich music therapy.

I have found that what can be a strength can also be a weakness. As an electronic artist, I realize that much of what in do is unmapped and lacking a solid discipline, a weakness. But the strength is that as artists, we, in the words of a Santana song, are soul birds that fly in infinity sky. I see no boundaries for my music or the music of other electronic artists.

Music therapists are very discipled. However, in their strong desire to be respected, they often create walls around their good work. This is a limitation. As I share my world I am in doing so inviting Music Therapists to see with my eyes and hear with my ears and to join me in opening up the field of Music Therapy to the unexplored country. I want to assure Music Therapists of my continued support and respect but also invite you to fly with me in the infinity sky of electronic music and perhaps, we can cultivate some gardens outside the walls. You would be most welcome to visit the Electro Music Festival this year and give a presentation and allow us to share our music with you. If you are interested, let me know. We had a drum circle last year to :). I would love to bring our worlds together.