noise of the month

Each month (or as regularly as I can) I'll upload a new soundbite along with a written piece about it. As you will hear from the following entries, each sample is completely arbitrary and has absolutely no relevance or purpose to anything in particular other than whatever its own individual auditory manifestations can offer. But feel free to derive some meaningful narrative from them as a whole if you wish and, by all means, do let me know what it is.

Samples are embedded after the text. If you don't have Quicktime, you can download it free here

Tom.

11: Sferics

If humans had radio antennas instead of ears, we would hear a remarkable symphony of strange noises coming from our own planet. Scientists call them "tweeks," "whistlers" and "sferics." Although we're mostly unaware of them, Earth's natural radio emissions are around us all the time.

"Everyone's terrestrial environment almost literally sings with radio waves at audio frequencies," says Dennis Gallagher, a space physicist at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). "Our ears can't detect radio waves directly, but we can convert them to sound waves with the aid of a very low frequency (VLF) radio receiver."

Lightning is striking somewhere on Earth nearly all the time (about 100 times per second), so strange-sounding VLF signals are constantly propagating around our planet. "The best time to listen is usually around sunset or dawn," says Gallagher. "That's when electron density gradients that act as natural waveguides form in the local ionosphere."

Here's some samples of the recordings. The first is a 'Sferic' and the second is a 'Whistler'
These samples and text were taken from here

10: Seal Synthesis

It seems nature has been producing its own science-fiction sound-effects long before Bob Moog was around to make famous his Minimoog Synthesiser. This recording could have easily been lifted from the soundtrack of Forbidden Planet or some Amazonian jungle gig Pink Floyd never played. It is in fact the sound of Weddell seals under the Antarctic sea ice. I found out about this after watching Werner Herzhog's, Encounters at The End of The World. A documentary well worth a watch.


Sounds courtesy of http://www.junglewalk.com

09: Carmen of The Spheres

In 1977, Nasa launched the twin Voyager spacecraft. Their primary mission: the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. Though the mission was successfully completed years ago, Voyager 1 continues to send signals back to Earth and is now farther from us than any other human-made object - more than twice as distant as Pluto - and speeding outward at over 38,000 miles per hour.

PhotobucketAppreciating the vast distances into unknown territory these craft would venture, scientists placed a very interesting item on board. They each carry with them a 12-inch gold-plated copper phonograph record (pictured) containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. Should the disc be discovered by an alien culture, engravings on it indicate how it is to be played; the revolutions per minute and how the needle and cartridge (also included) are used to make it work. Kind of like an Ikea assembly diagram for E.T.

But among the variety of analog encoded pictures, mathematical equations, human greetings and sounds of dogs, babies, crickets, hyenas, volcanoes, aircraft and music (click here for a full list) is a recording called 'The Music of The Spheres'.

Originally thought to have been conceived by the Greek mathematician and astronomer, Pythagoras, Music of The Spheres deals with proportions in movements of planets, stars and moons as a form of music. For example, if you take the number of days it takes the Earth to revolve around the sun (365.25) and turn that number into a frequency of sound (frequencies are determined by the number of times a pressure wave hits the ear drum per second) you can make all 9 planets in our solar system produce their own 'tone'. 

However, waiting 365 days for every one pressure wave to hit your ear drum isn't going to work, but if you divide the numbers so that you raise the pitch of the notes by whole octaves and keep doing that again and again until the the waves are frequent enough to be humanly audible (human hearing is roughly between 20 and 20000Hz, or waves per second), then you can turn the data of a planet's movements around the sun into a musical pitch. In effect, you speed up the spin of the solar system till it sings.

The following audio file is an interpretation of these concepts by composer Greg Fox entitled, 'Carmen of The Spheres'. Going one step further and applying the data to the duration of notes as well (a method known as consilience) Fox uses sine waves to produce, I think, a really mesmeric piece of music.

Listen through speakers or headphones to hear this properly:To hear the recording that appears on the Golden Record (now hurtling through the outer reaches of space) click here. It's a very poor quality mp3 though so probably not a good representation of the original.  

08: Backdrop For The Ears

If log fires made no sound at all, would we enjoy them as much? Obviously, if they'd never produced sound in the first place we'd have no way of knowing but hypothetically, if those crackles, rumbles, spits and fizzes were suddenly removed via some new fangled contraption I think they would be sorely missed.

For me, there is an inherent parallel between this and vinyl recordings - possibly even an unconscious association between the gentle crackle of vinyl and a wood-fire - but that's another story. Since crackles were never an intention in recordings, technology has improved to the point where silence in a record really does mean silence. In reality though, you'd be hard pushed to find yourself in a situation where there was no background noise, no matter what your surroundings. 

Good ambient music uses background recordings in the same way theatres use scenery as a backdrop. Though it was never intended as a backdrop, essentially, that's what vinyl crackle has become and its absence has left a void for some producers. But interestingly, that void has given rise to more creative ways to fill it. Just listen to Phillip Jeck, Marsen Jules, Helios or even Boards of Canada to hear how far background texture has evolved to become an integral ingredient in modern music production.

Even some pop producers have been known to use white noise as an instrument to fill sections of a track. If you listen carefully to Crazy by Gnarls Barkley (despite the fact that there is an intentional vinyl crackle used throughout the track) during the chorus you can hear a windy accompaniment in the background that stops dead when the verse comes back in. Although only subtle, it helps set the chorus apart from the rest of the tune and applies emphasis to the verses by being absent upon their return.

So, for those of you in need of a little scenery, here's the original ambient backdrop - and next to it, the unmistakable sound of a roaring fireplace... or is it just vinyl crackle again at half-speed?
  


07: Never-Ending Descent

Photobucket Being as it is that such a wide variety of optical illusions exist (like the 'Ascending, Descending' staircase by MC Escher, pictured) it wouldn't be a stretch too far to suppose there would be a similar variety for confounding the ears as well. But from what I can find, that simply isn't the case. There are, of course, lots of interesting effects for playing around with sounds and distorting them, but they can't really be categorised as illusions.

The Shepard Glissando Tone (named after Roger Shepard, a Cognitive Scientist) does what a good illusion should do; utterly discombobulate the listener and make them feel a little bit strange. This seemingly endless descending tone (that is no lower in pitch by the end of the recording than it was at the start) is actually a chord made up of a number of descending notes. Each individual tone fades in from nothing, peaks in volume when it reaches its midway point, then fades out again toward the end.

Because there is no definitive beginning or end to the tones, the human brain glues all the midway parts together as they fall and perceives the overall sound as constantly descending. Imagine a big circle of trombone players each starting their descending tone about one second apart from each other. If they were able to fade in from nothing and fade out perfectly (no mean feat) they could perform this illusion live.

The sound doesn't have to descend of course, it could be a never-ending ascending tone, but I find it far more disturbing this way. It presents the listener with an interesting mix of confusion and weirdness; the prime ingredients for a good illusion.


06: Long Distance Relationship

What makes a sound remarkable? Is it what it can offer simply by charm, or is it the story behind how it came into existence? Paintings in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo (pictured) are nice and everything, but they're really just a bunch of pretty pictures on a wall if you don't know the convoluted struggle the man went through - politically, mentally and physically - to get them finished (not to mention the tampering that went on in the aftermath with the loincloths and everything). 

But sometimes, the why and how are irrelevant. A good noise or tuneful sound can simply make you feel good and therefore doesn't require an understanding of why it is. But, if the sound has come into being via some truly astonishing set of circumstances, then that noise can be badly recorded, distorted, muffled or even harsh on the ears and people will still marvel at it because it's much larger than the sum of its parts.

This sample below is a recording taken by the COROT space telescope in October 2008 of the resonant vibrations of three different stars. By detecting subtle frequencies emanating from them, scientists can now create and map images of their core interiors from thousands of light years away.

Were there a definitive list of remarkable sounds, I think that music made by stars would rate quite highly. They do, however, sound uncannily like some sound effect lifted from an early Star Trek episode. Maybe Gene Roddenberry knew more than he was letting on.

05: Luscious Texture

If it weren't for dog hair, a Swiss bloke and Burdock Burrs (those annoying seed sacs that stick to your jumper when you're out and about walking in the woods) kids the world over would be experiencing a distinct irregularity in the amount of aural irritation they could inflict upon their teachers during class, for the fantastic, one and only, ingenious VELCRO would not exist to fasten their trainers and rucksacks.

The story goes that George de Mestral, the Swiss mountaineer and inventor, came back from a stroll with his dog covered in burrs. Noticing the stubborn determination by which these things cling fast to their furry subjects, old George took a look under his microscope and saw that the burrs had stiff hooks clinging tightly to the fluffy fibers of his dog's hair. Thus, in 1941, Velcro was born (a combination of the word velour and crochet).

Personally, I don't care much for it's function. Velcro attracts every frikkin' hairy thing of all colours and fabrics until it renders itself completely useless after a matter of months.  Either that or its own strength works to its detriment by eventually ripping it from the seems holding it in place.

However, it is a rich and sonorous delicacy for the ears; spicy and full bodied with a crisp finish. Textural bliss for the audiophile. And just as a kid, I can't help but play this sample over and over again.

04: Cosmic Belch


Subjecting oneself to the seduction of raw synthetic frequencies can be a sumptuously arousing activity to do now and then. Take this dirty, granular, almost pornographic snarl, for example; a sleazy yawn of electrical vomit that, despite its luridness, I find is a joy to have gurgling in my ears. Its consistency is so absorbing, one might be forgiven for wanting to caress its coarse and malleable hide. It's almost reminiscent of some massive creature's final breath as it falls, slain by some gallant foe. If you could smell it, it would surely be a foul and pungent stench that, somehow, you cannot help but enjoy, like a particularly flavoursome fart.

On the other hand, this noise is almost like the fabric of space time being pinched and sucked into oblivion; like those images they create in documentaries on space travel as they attempt to explain what would happen if you fell into a black hole.

Apparently, scientists have discovered that black holes do indeed 'fart'. They even recorded one to be a B-flat, 57 octaves below middle C. I'd like to think that, out there, some filthy, guttural sub-sonic belch like this one is rippling across space right now.

03: Dashing Off

It's pretty damned impressive when you think about it. Just how it is that a bongo, a hi-hat, a cowbell and the sped up sample of a bullet ricochet can be sonically sewn together in such a way that - despite it having absolutely no real similarity to the sound of the action it has been used to depict since cartoons began - there isn't a single person alive who's seen television who can't immediately picture its visual counterpart? It goes to show just how easily manipulated the human brain is.

It's actually a bit disturbing. If a cartoon sound effect can embed itself irrevocably in our collective psyche and become instinctively associated with a completely arbitrary element, what other things could have been fed into our brains through tv and the media since childhood? What other unconscious associations are we making?

We're all manipulated in one way or another. Even if we're aware of any controlling societal influence and actively fight against it, we're still governed by it because it has our full attention. It's a distraction. What would we be doing and thinking about if we could break free of that influence? Probably sat at home watching cartoons.


02: Man Scream

Evidently, the motivation for this sample was meant to reflect some form of primal fear; an incomprehensibly horrific encounter with something hideous but instead, it's just bloody pathetic. I mean, in such a predicament, who would produce such a noise? Maybe it's because I haven't been subjected to a sufficient enough horror in my life yet but still I'm hoping if I were, I might jettison something with a little more clout than this guy.

There's something quite camp about it. Maybe it's not a horror film clip at all. Maybe it's for a scene in which a stereotypically camp thespian finds bird-shit on his feather boa. I can picture him with his head thrown back, flailing like a turkey that's just had its cage rattled.

But whatever the reason for expelling a shriek of this magnitude, you can be sure that the circumstances are unlikely to be in your favour.

Perhaps it's because the sample lacks additional background noise that it sounds ridiculous. Maybe if you included the theme to Hollyoaks before it you could relate to the sheer horror the poor bastard's about to go through, or maybe just the deep and sinister voice of an inhumane sex-fiend slurring the words, "Mama needs lo-ove…"


01: Kung-Fu Bitch-Slap Punch

Unless you are pounding raw steak, shattering chicken carcasses stuffed full of walnuts with baseball bats, or smacking around slabs of meat using pigs' feet (methods used in the film Fight Club) you're gonna have to accept that the reality of it is, a punch in the face still only sounds about as tough as a girly little hand-clap.

In movies, the job of the Foley Artist is to recreate sounds for films after they have been shot to add additional background noise or to emphasise a scene. They can add anything depending on what is required; cutlery being used if the scene was shot in a restaurant; traffic sounds if shot near a road; music for a car radio; dogs barking; cats laughing; aardvarks sneezing, etc...

However, the Foley could be viewed as a liar and a cheat, embellishing sounds to sensationalise scenes.  And none more so, I would say, than the legendary fight-scene punch in the face.  However hard you hit someone in the face, it'll never sound quite the way it did when Indiana Jones fought that burly German geezer by the aeroplane in Raiders of The Lost Arc. There are three reasons for that.

1). You are not Indiana Jones
2). You probably never punched a large Nazi as hard as you can in the face and so will never know
3). Unless you manage to convince your nemesis to wear a chicken carcass filled with walnuts as a meat balaclava and then proceed to thwack them with a baseball bat, you'll have to accept that punches only sound that way in films.