The Computer As A Musical Medium
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Infanticide.mp3 [3.6meg]
Introduction
The aim for this assignment was to create a soundscape depicting the inner mind of a woman in the midst of a mental breakdown.
Credits
Brisbane poet, Rosanna Licari, contributed a reading of her poem entitled Verge for this recording.
Equipment Used
Vocals and live audio recorded with a Roland VS1680 Digital Workstation and a Sennheiser MD416 microphone.
The background sound wash was created with sounds from a Roland JV1080, Roland U220, Roland A90ex, Roland SC88Pro and Yamaha DX7s.
Vocal and other live audio samples were treated with effects such as pitch shift in Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge.
Cakewalk Sonar 3.1 PE was used to assemble all the elements, apply spatial effects and EQ, mix down the final result and burn it to CD.
Methods
Inspiration for Infanticide came in part from Bret Easton Ellis's novel American Psycho and his use of a writing technique called "the unreliable narrative". It is a technique whereby the reader is led to believe something happened but ultimately is left unsure as to whether anything really did happen, or whether the main character imagined it all. Other inspiration came from readings of Lewis Carroll's fantasy works and an idea that the computer as a medium has the ability to channel abstract thoughts into reality. This is all discussed more fully in the accompanying essay: How The Computer Can Be Used As A Medium.
Rosanna's original poem was a continuous and coherent narrative of a woman remembering her childhood. After recording her reading, I transferred it into Sound Forge, extracted several key phrases from it and discarded the remainder. Phrases were chosen on the basis of the aesthetic quality of the timbre and inflections in Rosanna's voice. From the outset, I conceived the inner mind of this woman as being filled with voices - her own voice, but disembodied from its source.
The phrases were divided into three groups that in turn would form three layers of the soundscape. The phrases for the foreground were essentially untreated, except for some reverb to give them a light, ethereal quality. The two other layers were both heavily treated, particularly with EQ and a spatial 3-D reverb effect that was automated to make them swirl around the soundscape. They were also repeated in a way that created a vague sense of rhythm each time they recurred. Expansion and contraction of these phrases also enhanced the irregular rhythmic effect.
Layering multiple sources of similar sounding tones from various sound modules created the background drone. These were subtly mixed so that different frequency ranges of the tones faded in and out. A number of audio samples were also combined, such as the "breath" (the sound of compressed air from an aerosol can) that rises and falls in the background. A "heartbeat" pulse was also recorded for the background but later discarded for being too cliché. The music box recording of Greensleeves is positioned with reverb so that it sounds like it's outside of the woman's head as she finally loses whatever tenuous grip she had on reality to begin with.
Results
The finished soundscape is very faithful to my original conception of it. I am particularly pleased with the hypnotic effect of Rosanna's voice and its various treatments. I also like the way there seems to be a narrative happening and that it almost makes sense. However, it's an unreliable narrative and ultimately the listener is left unsure of whether this woman has really killed her own infant or if any child even existed to begin with. The Greensleeves reference works on several psychological levels. At one level, it is the sound most Australians would associate with ice cream vendors and thus acts as a fond memory she might have of her own childhood. At another more abstract level, it's a composition attributed to King Henry VIII and thus creates a kind of connection to women being executed because of their inability to have children.
Conclusions
This soundscape creation is only possible because of the technology used to create it. Aside from the channeling of an imaginary audio landscape into reality, the methods employed in its composition were more like painting a picture than composing music in any traditional sense. For me, this was a very relaxing and satisfying artistic experience.
How A Computer Can Be Used As A Musical Medium
Abstract
This paper examines the concept of computers as a musical medium. The word medium has many definitions. Among them is "a person thought to have the power to communicate with...agents of another world or dimension."[1] Sceptics argue that such people are deluded or out of touch with reality but if disbelief is suspended and the computer considered as something that can channel fantasy into reality, then a case could be argued that a computer can actually act as this kind of medium.
Introduction
Christopher Longuet-Higgins in Musical Structure and Cognition (ed. Howell, Cross and West: xi)[2] describes music as "perhaps the most mysterious of all the arts, being at the same time so remote from reality and so faithful to experience." To talk about reality at all is to talk about our perception of it. Perception is shaped by experiences, both real and imagined and these combine to create memories. Memories enable us to compare and contrast experiences, our perceptions of them and thus define our reality. One of the prime characteristics of the computer as a medium is its ability to blur this reality and by extension, alter our state of consciousness.
Virtual Realities
Lewis Carroll's stories of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass both provide good illustrations of blurred realities created in the literary medium. They conjure worlds in which big is small, up is down, and so on. For a child, these stories challenge their perception of the world they know. It is the same challenge faced by the character of Neo in the Matrix films and the Virtual Reality world in which the films are set. It is a computer world where none of the usual laws of physics apply, just as Wonderland was for Alice. At a deeper, more philosophical level, both explore concepts of morality, choice and a search for meaning.
Carroll's Jabberwocky poem could also be a metaphor for today's news media - a medium that presents to us a reality but which is filled with Orwellian double-speak and jibberish. Alice's statement after reading Jabberwocky sums it up very eloquently:
"...it's rather hard to understand!" (You see she didn't like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't know exactly what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate..."[3]
A Playground For Musical Fantasy
The references to Carroll have been used to highlight an important facet of the computer as a musical medium and in particular, the methods by which it can represent things that otherwise could only be imagined. When Alice first begins to read the Jabberwocky poem, it makes absolutely no sense to her at all because the typeface is all reversed. It dawns on her that the poem can only have meaning if its words are reflected in a mirror. If one was to make an audio recording of a reading of Jabberwocky using computer software, the medium is such that it can easily be played in reverse thus allowing the listener to hear the poem actually spoken as Carroll might have imagined. In a sense, it could be said that Carroll's creative spirit is being channelled directly through the medium.
Similarly, the computer can act as a musical medium to channel any sound a person might be able to imagine from their thoughts and into a world where everybody can hear them. If there is any limitation to this, it's unlikely the computer medium is at fault. Rather, the only possible limitation will be that of the human operator's imagination and their ability to use the sonic manipulation capabilities of various music software programs.
Taboos, Invention and Creativity
In music, just as in life, there are many taboos. By definition, these are strong social prohibitions relating to human activity or social custom declared as sacred and forbidden; breaking of the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society.[4] What is particularly interesting, however, is that taboos are social conventions that exist in reality but not necessarily in the human mind. There seems to be a consensus among those who have studied creativity (Csikszentmihalyi et. al.) that creative individuals are aware of traditions but aren't afraid to challenge and break from them.[5]
Throughout music history, various musical taboos have been broken. Perhaps the most significant break was when western music was liberated from its role as purely religious and devotional to become a secular entertainment. The tritone interval, once called diabolus in musica or the Devil's interval in the early music era through to the Baroque, is now in common use across a range of musical styles.
In the past 100 years, many things once considered purely as noise and thus a taboo in music are now regarded as new and exciting timbres in the creation of new sounds. Technological advances have made this possible in music though there are many parallels in other fields of artistic expression as well. The invention of electricity not only paved the way for the capturing, storing, manipulation and dissemination of sounds. It made possible dozens of new forms of visual arts, from motion pictures to laser light sculptures and for the integration of these with sound and music. More than this, these combinations themselves - borne in the imaginations of creative people - can be channelled through the computer medium to form virtual worlds that are greater than the sum of their parts.
Conclusion
Sceptics might argue, just as they do about psychics, that the disembodiment of one sound from its traditional context to create another and the channelling of it into something labelled as "music" is the work of charlatans. It is certainly the case that the computer as a musical medium challenges traditional analysis and meaning of music but then, the very nature of music has eluded scholars for well over three thousand years.[6]. As a phenomenon, music is ubiquitous and universal and yet its existence remains unexplained by any apparent practical purpose. Perhaps the best explanation might be simply that our entire perception of reality is flawed by the nihilism so prevalent in today's culture. If the computer medium really is the conduit between some other world or dimension and this one, just as the rabbit hole was Alice's portal into Wonderland, then the future as I see it looks as bright and meaningful as any I can imagine.
"Reality: a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." (Anonymous)
References
1 Dictionary.com (2006), Medium, http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=medium, Accessed 20 May, 2006.
2 Howell, P., Cross, I., and West, R. (Eds.), (1985) Musical Structure and Cognition, London: Academic Press.
3 Literature.org, (2005), Lewis Carroll: Through The Looking Glass, http://www.literature.org/authors/carroll-lewis/through-the-looking-glass/chapter-01.html, Accessed 20 May, 2006.
4 Wikipedia, (2006), Taboo, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taboo, Accessed 20 May, 2006.
5 Csikszentmihalyi, M., (1996) Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, New York: Harper Collins.
6 Serafine, M. L., (1988) Music As Cognition: The Development of Thought in Sound, New York: Columbia University Press.
Infanticide.mp3 [3.6meg]
Introduction
The aim for this assignment was to create a soundscape depicting the inner mind of a woman in the midst of a mental breakdown.
Credits
Brisbane poet, Rosanna Licari, contributed a reading of her poem entitled Verge for this recording.
Equipment Used
Vocals and live audio recorded with a Roland VS1680 Digital Workstation and a Sennheiser MD416 microphone.
The background sound wash was created with sounds from a Roland JV1080, Roland U220, Roland A90ex, Roland SC88Pro and Yamaha DX7s.
Vocal and other live audio samples were treated with effects such as pitch shift in Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge.
Cakewalk Sonar 3.1 PE was used to assemble all the elements, apply spatial effects and EQ, mix down the final result and burn it to CD.
Methods
Inspiration for Infanticide came in part from Bret Easton Ellis's novel American Psycho and his use of a writing technique called "the unreliable narrative". It is a technique whereby the reader is led to believe something happened but ultimately is left unsure as to whether anything really did happen, or whether the main character imagined it all. Other inspiration came from readings of Lewis Carroll's fantasy works and an idea that the computer as a medium has the ability to channel abstract thoughts into reality. This is all discussed more fully in the accompanying essay: How The Computer Can Be Used As A Medium.
Rosanna's original poem was a continuous and coherent narrative of a woman remembering her childhood. After recording her reading, I transferred it into Sound Forge, extracted several key phrases from it and discarded the remainder. Phrases were chosen on the basis of the aesthetic quality of the timbre and inflections in Rosanna's voice. From the outset, I conceived the inner mind of this woman as being filled with voices - her own voice, but disembodied from its source.
The phrases were divided into three groups that in turn would form three layers of the soundscape. The phrases for the foreground were essentially untreated, except for some reverb to give them a light, ethereal quality. The two other layers were both heavily treated, particularly with EQ and a spatial 3-D reverb effect that was automated to make them swirl around the soundscape. They were also repeated in a way that created a vague sense of rhythm each time they recurred. Expansion and contraction of these phrases also enhanced the irregular rhythmic effect.
Layering multiple sources of similar sounding tones from various sound modules created the background drone. These were subtly mixed so that different frequency ranges of the tones faded in and out. A number of audio samples were also combined, such as the "breath" (the sound of compressed air from an aerosol can) that rises and falls in the background. A "heartbeat" pulse was also recorded for the background but later discarded for being too cliché. The music box recording of Greensleeves is positioned with reverb so that it sounds like it's outside of the woman's head as she finally loses whatever tenuous grip she had on reality to begin with.
Results
The finished soundscape is very faithful to my original conception of it. I am particularly pleased with the hypnotic effect of Rosanna's voice and its various treatments. I also like the way there seems to be a narrative happening and that it almost makes sense. However, it's an unreliable narrative and ultimately the listener is left unsure of whether this woman has really killed her own infant or if any child even existed to begin with. The Greensleeves reference works on several psychological levels. At one level, it is the sound most Australians would associate with ice cream vendors and thus acts as a fond memory she might have of her own childhood. At another more abstract level, it's a composition attributed to King Henry VIII and thus creates a kind of connection to women being executed because of their inability to have children.
Conclusions
This soundscape creation is only possible because of the technology used to create it. Aside from the channeling of an imaginary audio landscape into reality, the methods employed in its composition were more like painting a picture than composing music in any traditional sense. For me, this was a very relaxing and satisfying artistic experience.
How A Computer Can Be Used As A Musical Medium
Abstract
This paper examines the concept of computers as a musical medium. The word medium has many definitions. Among them is "a person thought to have the power to communicate with...agents of another world or dimension."[1] Sceptics argue that such people are deluded or out of touch with reality but if disbelief is suspended and the computer considered as something that can channel fantasy into reality, then a case could be argued that a computer can actually act as this kind of medium.
Introduction
Christopher Longuet-Higgins in Musical Structure and Cognition (ed. Howell, Cross and West: xi)[2] describes music as "perhaps the most mysterious of all the arts, being at the same time so remote from reality and so faithful to experience." To talk about reality at all is to talk about our perception of it. Perception is shaped by experiences, both real and imagined and these combine to create memories. Memories enable us to compare and contrast experiences, our perceptions of them and thus define our reality. One of the prime characteristics of the computer as a medium is its ability to blur this reality and by extension, alter our state of consciousness.
Virtual Realities
Lewis Carroll's stories of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass both provide good illustrations of blurred realities created in the literary medium. They conjure worlds in which big is small, up is down, and so on. For a child, these stories challenge their perception of the world they know. It is the same challenge faced by the character of Neo in the Matrix films and the Virtual Reality world in which the films are set. It is a computer world where none of the usual laws of physics apply, just as Wonderland was for Alice. At a deeper, more philosophical level, both explore concepts of morality, choice and a search for meaning.
Carroll's Jabberwocky poem could also be a metaphor for today's news media - a medium that presents to us a reality but which is filled with Orwellian double-speak and jibberish. Alice's statement after reading Jabberwocky sums it up very eloquently:
"...it's rather hard to understand!" (You see she didn't like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't know exactly what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate..."[3]
A Playground For Musical Fantasy
The references to Carroll have been used to highlight an important facet of the computer as a musical medium and in particular, the methods by which it can represent things that otherwise could only be imagined. When Alice first begins to read the Jabberwocky poem, it makes absolutely no sense to her at all because the typeface is all reversed. It dawns on her that the poem can only have meaning if its words are reflected in a mirror. If one was to make an audio recording of a reading of Jabberwocky using computer software, the medium is such that it can easily be played in reverse thus allowing the listener to hear the poem actually spoken as Carroll might have imagined. In a sense, it could be said that Carroll's creative spirit is being channelled directly through the medium.
Similarly, the computer can act as a musical medium to channel any sound a person might be able to imagine from their thoughts and into a world where everybody can hear them. If there is any limitation to this, it's unlikely the computer medium is at fault. Rather, the only possible limitation will be that of the human operator's imagination and their ability to use the sonic manipulation capabilities of various music software programs.
Taboos, Invention and Creativity
In music, just as in life, there are many taboos. By definition, these are strong social prohibitions relating to human activity or social custom declared as sacred and forbidden; breaking of the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society.[4] What is particularly interesting, however, is that taboos are social conventions that exist in reality but not necessarily in the human mind. There seems to be a consensus among those who have studied creativity (Csikszentmihalyi et. al.) that creative individuals are aware of traditions but aren't afraid to challenge and break from them.[5]
Throughout music history, various musical taboos have been broken. Perhaps the most significant break was when western music was liberated from its role as purely religious and devotional to become a secular entertainment. The tritone interval, once called diabolus in musica or the Devil's interval in the early music era through to the Baroque, is now in common use across a range of musical styles.
In the past 100 years, many things once considered purely as noise and thus a taboo in music are now regarded as new and exciting timbres in the creation of new sounds. Technological advances have made this possible in music though there are many parallels in other fields of artistic expression as well. The invention of electricity not only paved the way for the capturing, storing, manipulation and dissemination of sounds. It made possible dozens of new forms of visual arts, from motion pictures to laser light sculptures and for the integration of these with sound and music. More than this, these combinations themselves - borne in the imaginations of creative people - can be channelled through the computer medium to form virtual worlds that are greater than the sum of their parts.
Conclusion
Sceptics might argue, just as they do about psychics, that the disembodiment of one sound from its traditional context to create another and the channelling of it into something labelled as "music" is the work of charlatans. It is certainly the case that the computer as a musical medium challenges traditional analysis and meaning of music but then, the very nature of music has eluded scholars for well over three thousand years.[6]. As a phenomenon, music is ubiquitous and universal and yet its existence remains unexplained by any apparent practical purpose. Perhaps the best explanation might be simply that our entire perception of reality is flawed by the nihilism so prevalent in today's culture. If the computer medium really is the conduit between some other world or dimension and this one, just as the rabbit hole was Alice's portal into Wonderland, then the future as I see it looks as bright and meaningful as any I can imagine.
"Reality: a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." (Anonymous)
References
1 Dictionary.com (2006), Medium, http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=medium, Accessed 20 May, 2006.
2 Howell, P., Cross, I., and West, R. (Eds.), (1985) Musical Structure and Cognition, London: Academic Press.
3 Literature.org, (2005), Lewis Carroll: Through The Looking Glass, http://www.literature.org/authors/carroll-lewis/through-the-looking-glass/chapter-01.html, Accessed 20 May, 2006.
4 Wikipedia, (2006), Taboo, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taboo, Accessed 20 May, 2006.
5 Csikszentmihalyi, M., (1996) Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, New York: Harper Collins.
6 Serafine, M. L., (1988) Music As Cognition: The Development of Thought in Sound, New York: Columbia University Press.
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