Thursday 24th November 2011 – Sound, Architecture and Environment

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Jay

The odd thing about recording is that your end product, the music, isn’t exactly real… it is a process that allows replication of something that has gone on before: The music etc is played live and a snapshot is taken. Also, you may know that the recording process cannot capture every single aspect of what the sound was like when you took that ‘snapshot’. Current technology is very good at trying to emulate the original sound and you could argue that it does it so well that the imperfections are not even noticed, especially to the non-musician.

However, there are aspects of live music that the face-value capture of sound encapsulates with great difficulty. Think about listening to a great busking band on the street. You have the excitement of stumbling upon the performance; the personalities of the performers as they interact with the crowd, verbally and with their instruments; the collective experience of being part of a crowd; your own state of mind, if you are on holiday for example; and all of the sounds and feelings associated with these aspects. Then there are the more physical aspects: the way the sound of the different instruments reverberate around the buildings (even depending on where each musician is sitting), the qualities of that reverberation (imagine the difference in sound of a cathedral to your living room); other sounds working with/against the music intentionally or otherwise; even the state of the air could influence the total experience. You then buy a copy of the band’s CD as the experience was so wonderful but, although the CD may sound good, it just isn’t the same.

The total experience (the actual music added to these aspects missing from the CD) is atmosphere (which I go on about all of the time!) and modern recording technologies can even go a long way to accounting for this; think about those realistic reverbs for example. To my mind, maybe a change in focus is what’s needed to get closer to this elusive ‘atmosphere’. When recording, maybe don’t think of it as recording music; or even as recording a performance. Maybe think about the process as recording an experience. This combined with keeping an open mind about what you can use to achieve this may produce even stronger results. Music in particular tries to reproduce the thoughts and feelings of the song-writer using abstract methods (communicating with a guitar is very different from talking!), so why not extrapolate this to the whole process rather than just the sound-making? You could even take this to the extreme by reproducing the atmosphere of a performance without actually including the instrument being used, although this would be a little silly if you are recording a virtuoso violinist because they are technically brilliant, for example! Obviously, the balance of sound reproduction and atmosphere would have more real-life applications…

So, that finally brings me to the more overt topic of this post. Architecture could be said to be one of the unsung heroes of the life experience. We take it for granted that buildings, trees, and the rest of our surroundings are ‘just there’ but as any architect will tell you, these surroundings mold our lives and our life experience/atmosphere. Therefore if we are thinking about the recording of music as above, it follows that we should take time to notice how sound interacts with the spaces it is immersed in. This could go further than just putting the sounds in a reverb that emulates the space, and many musicians work with furthering this idea (for example Gustav Holst tried to describe the planets of our solar system in his music ‘The Planets’ using an orchestra; The band The Gathering used samples of crowd noises and street noises in their album ‘If Then Else’ to manipulate the atmosphere).

Thinking about how sounds interacts with architecture or the environment may not lead to placing sounds in a space as such, but it may also deepen an understanding of sound by looking into it’s real-life behaviour, which could loosen-up a musician’s perspective and therefore increase creativity. For example, watch this you-tube video of a fantastic sound-art installation and see what you learn…

http://youtu.be/Ve6PTrlLGOU

Also, think about the application of sound within the architectural field. Have a read here for some actual buildings/projects that have been designed to work within an environment that takes sound into account. A couple use fountains to put up a mask of ‘white noise’ (which contains sound from all frequencies- i.e. the ‘snow’ on blank analogue TV channels) to cover traffic noise; a classroom was also designed to reduce spill of outside noise whilst emphasising the frequencies that the human voice occupies; raised portions and physical barriers evade noise and different materials sound differently when walked on. Related to this, there are companies out there that design sound for business, taking every sound made within the company’s remit a part of their brand i.e. you wouldn’t use a noisy, clangy metallic floor in a shop that specialises in massage or meditation.

Of course, this is a two-way street as well. Musicians and sound recorders can learn from sound in the real world and architects can learn from musical idealism i.e. calming soundscapes may be used in a massage parlour so maybe the building can be constructed in a way to emphasises these sounds.

So, if you are a music fan see if these ideas change the way you listen to music; musicians out there, maybe try thinking about sound differently and see if it enhances your output; and if you are involved in any aspect of creation think about how sound is as much a part of experience as your chosen field is and how careful thought around it can enhance the end product.

Thursday 29th September 2011 – What is Musical Atmosphere and how do you Create it?

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Jay

Atmosphere is something that I often refer to so I thought I would try to explain this abstract term in relation to my interests. Many musicians are expert at manipulating atmosphere but many don’t even try so I thought I’d give my opinions and ideas. If you look at a dictionary definition it will tell you that atmosphere is a pervading tone or mood but I’m a little conscious that this is a bit vague when referring to music/sound.

In terms of creating a convincing, all-enveloping atmosphere that transports the listener I think that it is helpful to expand the above definition. An atmosphere is an intricate network of various emotions and senses that are tightly knit together, sometimes so much so that the overall effect gives no clue to what it is composed of. Because of this, creating an atmosphere by working backwards from a general feeling may produce very bland results i.e. just filling a happy song full of happy melodies/chord.

To effectively transport the listener into the song or music, a deeper understanding of the happy situation is needed. The best way to achieve this is to try to affect as many senses as possible and refer to related thoughts and feelings, untangling multiple causes of the atmosphere and deciding their weighting. I also find that it helps to picture the scenario and think about what you can see and/or feel as well as think about what others may see or feel.

To me, the most important aspect of an atmosphere is the space it is contained in because this seems to form a basis of almost any experience (through the filter of experience and emotion, but I’ll come to that). For this reason, I like to start here. Generally, a song or piece of music can have a sense of space when listened to because of the amount and/or type of echo (reverb) added to individual instruments or the whole piece. In many cases, this echo is added for technical reasons to help individual instruments be heard more clearly and to add depth for a bigger sound. In other cases, relevant to this post, it is used specifically for mood such as to enhance emotional vocal lines: the sound of an emotive vocal in a big hall can be very powerful. These days you can use convolution reverb to actually sample real spaces and use your computer to put your recorded audio into these spaces.

If you look at the space you are currently in you will see various objects around, some of them make sounds on their own, others may need a little help… If you are at work and think about making music about it, you could use machinery/technology noises but morph/adapt them to underlying emotions. Emphasising uncomfortable sound frequencies could increase a sense of stress (at work) along with using a rushed timing. You may use the same sounds but soften their sound and transients to make them more calming if your story involves a calm workplace. You may not want to use field-recordings in your music so, to communicate stress, you may play your guitar faster with a strong attack (note onset), and also emphasise those harsh frequencies. For work-related stress, you may also play with a mechanical, repetitive feel or even mirror the sounds of machinery/technology present. To soften this you may slow your playing down, manipulate the sound to get a warmer (bass-influenced) feel or layer it with a soothing instrument like a string orchestra.

There will always be more sensations though, such as experience or other emotions, as life just isn’t that simple. If you are at work, you may have an underlying sense of stress and also relief of being able to joke around. You may have a sense of pride or despair; or you may experience excitement and longing if you met your husband/wife there. Conveying the overall feeling may be hard without breaking this atmosphere into it’s parts. Of course, lyrics can convey these ideas but this wont work for instrumentals and if there are vocals wouldn’t the experience be far more intense if the instrumentation strengthened their effect? To create an overwhelming sense of being placed right inside the music’s subject matter, dissect the elements of the atmosphere you are experiencing and find sounds/themes/ideas for each aspect.

There are also more aspects you can reference; atmosphere also contains the perceptions of the people in the space, or have been in it, along with your own possibly unique viewpoint. These interactions may be a central theme but hard to convey from a general perspective so all these aspects could have sounds or themes. You could layer physical themes with references from personal experience or common sense to create your whole; obscuring the sounds may give the impression of dreaming or forgetfulness; you could use different sounds, instruments, styles of playing or different sound treatments to represent different people. The way the themes interact with each other in your ‘physical landscape’ can also be manipulated. Are they in harmony? Are they fighting? Are they working together to solve something?

Well, here are a few ideas of how the atmosphere in music can be intensified (in my opinion!). You may want to do this to make your music more convincing and substantial or you may be exploring sound and it’s relation to the human experience but either way have fun and use these ideas, if new to you, to open up a whole new universe of inspiration. If you have any thoughts or ideas on these ideas please feel free to comment below.

My first experiment into using atmosphere in this way, using synth, is Bedtime Nursery Rhymes. My next venture along these lines, using ‘found sound’, is Some London Life; go over and take a look!

Thursday 15th September 2011 – Some London Life

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Jay

Last week, I finally managed to get my new website up and running. This wasn’t without problems but that seems to be all part of experience when dealing with computers! As part of the new site I added the various pages that contain the different projects I am undertaking this year and the first of these to be completed is ‘Some London Life’ which I created over the summer (alongside some of the projects due to be finished). If you have read earlier posts about the creation of this you will already know a bit about it but I thought I’d introduce the finished collection and say a few more things about it and what I learned.

The collection ended up being five tracks that act as a sort-of fictional narrative based in reality. This narrative is based on the introduction, movement and passing of various spaces that I recorded in London and each one follows on from the previous. At the moment, I am thinking a lot about the importance of space in atmosphere and it’s manipulation. The use of artificial reverberation may seem to be the last word in this but for me it is so much more: A space is lived in (or otherwise) and is characterised but whatever is in that space, not just the sense of it having an echo etc.

As the idea behind the project was to present the fun side of London in response to hearing people complain about the city a lot I thought I’d use as little processing as possible. This was to intensify honesty which is needed in any good argument! I still used a bit when I thought it was necessary and ended up putting a slightly dark twist in at the end but I feel the essence of what I wanted to do remains and these little extras just enrich the project.

’Some London Life’ is my first experiment with ‘found sound’ and has really opened up my eyes with regard to what can be achieved with sound. An instrument or voice is a very expressive mode of communication but collected sounds can be arranged and manipulated to form something just as emotive or thought provoking. This may not be a big surprise to some of you but when you realise that something can be an integral extension of your work and not just an add-on, it is very empowering, opening up a brand-new and very powerful door. Such uses of sound have been eloquently used by artists (such as Janek Schaefer) and I can only hope to reach this level of experience and diction but it seems much of the time, when I’ve been exposed to such ideas used alongside more mainstream music, a sense of detachment between music and ‘effects’ usually prevails. This project has given me ideas and some insight to enable me to tackle this issue in my own way, and it is gratifying to feel that I may be able to put my own stamp on something this way in the future.

Head on over to ‘Some London Life’ to have a listen, download the audio as a single MP3 or download individual MP3 files. There is also a bit more information on the page including links to the articles I wrote when constructing the collection. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated; although I am showcasing my ideas, this is all exploratory work. It works in my head, and you could argue that this is all that matters, but the opinions of others will help me grow and improve.