Theories about Sound
 

Not entirely sure where to post this, since it's technically about a musical conecept and approach than specific genre - so I hope it doesn't die a horrible death out here.

Anyway I wanted to discuss something that's really changed my outlook on music, as well as what we percieve as art in the first place.

For many years now I have been a semi-passive fan of the works of composer John Cage. Some info about him can be found here if you are curious. I have listened to his complete prepared piano works (some challenging stuff) and enjoyed his more mainstream works like In a Landscape.

But recently, after reading several of his works and interviews I've found a new appreciation for music in general.

One night I decided to experiment with his piece 4′33″ - which he is well known for. The piece consists of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence, not a single intentional note is played.

For the first minute or so I was a bit lost in my thoughts... after all I usually have music blairing at me all day, my brain tends to surge into activity previously occupied by music when the music stops.

At around the two minute mark I heard my dog (a very large breed with a deep bark) start to growl out the window at passersby... at first I turned to stop him, but held myself back and just listened to the deep, bassy, grinding growl - coupled by random jolts of loud, forceful barks.

I heard my air conditioning activate, cars drive by, people talking in the other room, the hum of my computer's fan... all sort of activate and become players in the piece I was experiencing - and would never hear again. Not only is it the ultimate chance music, it changes my perception of what can be considered music: beyond technicalalties like notes, time signatures, etc. I was experiencing sound and enjoying it as if I were listening to a symphony.


John Cage talks a bit about 'silence'

The meaning of 4'33" accorrding to Cage is to show that there is no silence. Things can stop, notes can stop being played - but sound is a constant. This idea has sort of allowed me to stop my brain from rejecting something, if I don't like a piece of music in the traditional sense I can look at it as simply being sound and I really enjoy it. It's a very hard thing for me to explain, and I'm trying my best. What I'm saying I guess is I've really conditioned my brain to enjoy auditory stimuli a lot more than I did previously, probably because I never really took note of how sound naturally changes and stays interesting.

Once again it's kind of hard for me to explain, it's still knocking around my head right now as I try to find the words for it. And I certainly don't mean to sound snobbish or pretentious or whatever....

Anybody kinda know what I'm getting at?

it's all just a bunch of compressions and rarefactions, really.

I think I need to brush up on my physics :D

What does that mean/what do you mean by it?

The first thing we learned about sound design in movies is, that sound can be separated into 4 categories:

1-Talked words
2-Music
3-Effects (of which the noise, the environment, special effects ...)
4-Silence, which does a play a really big role in sound design. Even "silence" in itself can be divided into many other types.

Having "silence" being considered as part of SOUND in general, I guess I understand what you're trying to say.

I enjoy organized sound too much to understand how anyone could enjoy unorganized sound as much.

I've always done something kind of like this. As long as I can remember, a lot of the time I'm not actively engaged in something my mind listens to what's going on around me and sort of turns it into music. For example, when I'm in a city, I hear the cars, footsteps clacking, people shouting and talking, horns honking, sirens, etc. but I think of it more as chaotic music than random sound. Sometimes I'll turn it into a series of notes in my head, adding things in to my song as I hear more. It's kind of like musique concrete, but to be honest I never enjoyed that too much. I don't see the point to listening to a recording of normal sounds if it's the same thing all the time. You make a good point of not knowing what's going to come. It can make listening to the sounds of life very interesting. I also can usually find some sort of rhythm to sound, something to tap my foot to. It's rarely ever as chaotic as you might think, though I'm not sure if anyone would agree with me there. That said, I still listen to or make music almost every waking hour, so I don't spend too much time listening to the sounds around me.

(most usually) sinusoidal vibrations of the local atmosphere based on minute pressure gradients, produced by (most usually) some mechanical shock. physically, "sound" is energy losses to the atmosphere which can't be attributed to deformation or friction.

compressions/rarefactions themselves are incremental changes in the local atmospheric pressure. take an explosion, for example. the "shock wave" you feel/hear is actually a finite increase in local pressure over your eardrums. but when represented as some continuous frequency (or pitch) they manifest as a certain sound that we can distinguish in the range of 20 - 20 000 Hz.

I can't comment on that cause my mind is too small to understand that kind of thing.

BUT I am quite interested in the science behind binaural beats.

Right. I don't see exactly how this is of importance since it seems to be more of a technical definition of what sound is rather than how we consciously percieve it / enjoy it. But physics are fun anyway.

This is something I find very interesting as well, I want to do some research on it but I'm still having trouble understanding a lot of what I read. If you know of any good documenteries, reports etc with easy-to-understand language let me know.

Yeah I did do some reading in the library but don't quite remember the title of the book :( It was quite awhile ago. If you're interested there's a program called I-Doser and there's various "doses" which are binaural beats and they have ALL kinds. Some of them are extremely far fetched and don't believe they do anything at all.. although I haven't even bothered to try them. The ones like Insomniac that help you sleep and CalmME which, obviously, is for calming at least for me work very well. There's a plethora of drug related ones and couldn't tell you if they work.. I haven't tried them and never did drugs so I wouldn't know anyway.