Spectral analysis is a very important tool in order to smoothly discover new timbres that aren't real or natural. How will the "image" of this timbres mutate? What do we get when we reach the end of the road, where we need to build an image of those timbres that haven't got any defined image? What kind of visual guide do we need as a basis to support these new timbres that haven't got an image?
When we listen to an album at home, let's say orchestral music, there will be instruments that suddenly will come to our minds, and also music players and conductors. We listen to a piano and we imagine a piano -sometimes we even imagine that we are playing that piano-. But how about those who didn't saw a piano in their lives? Here we got lots of things to research on. For example, what kind of instrument does a child imagine when he hear an instrument that he never saw? Do they actually hear as they link what they're listening to with "instrumental images"?
What was the impression that Debussy had at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1899 when he could get in touch with a brand new timbre - the javanese gamelan?
"Debussy said about gamelan music, 'If one listens to it without being prejudiced by one's European ears, one will find a percussive charm that forces one to admit that our own music is not much more than a barbarous kind of noise more fit for a traveling circus.' " (Hugh, 1998)
What comes into our mind when we hear music commonly described as ambient? Maybe just a person in front of a laptop? Maybe an animated situation with abstract or concrete elements? In which way is the video performance artist or "VJ" relevant in this kind of associations between music and visuals?
Before the sound was recorded, did we always saw what we were listening to? In which situations did we not? What happened in certain operas, churches and synagoges, where choir was hidden on purpose? And what about those instruments that were hidden in order to provoke some strange effect?
Are there any definite universal images for timbres? Is there one or more timbres associated with the same "real" instrument?
What do you imagine when you hear timbres that are similar to real timbres -midi cellos, electronic percusions, but also instruments whose sounds are linked by fading using an attachment technique that can link their most "human-relevant" partials together-? What do you imagine when you hear timbres that are not that related wih those that we can call conventional timbres?
There is a bird that imitates sounds. The lyre bird adjusts its timbre in order to sound like other birds and other things going on in the environment. What can we study with the help of this "timbre chamaleon" in order to get new conclusions in this subject?
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
what does timbre perception/recognition means emotionally to us?
How can we associate a musical act with an image? A few years before, I heard the sound of a cello and I could imagine a cello. I was even forced to see it because it was there. But this situation changed drastically. Now it's not easy to determine what is made in the computer and what is not. How is it possible to make today a link between a determinated timbre and a "cognitive image"? Musical perception and visual perception work usually together. People tend to associate faces and voice inflections.
I should say that today the sinthesized sound is an important emotional vehicle in pop music. What emotional value is expressed in those fake cellos that are used in cumbia and reggaetón music? We could take a step further and ask ourselves: what is the relationship between the fonological and the semiotical aspects of musical language? What does timbre means and what emotions does it deliver in relationship with the image of it?
I should say that today the sinthesized sound is an important emotional vehicle in pop music. What emotional value is expressed in those fake cellos that are used in cumbia and reggaetón music? We could take a step further and ask ourselves: what is the relationship between the fonological and the semiotical aspects of musical language? What does timbre means and what emotions does it deliver in relationship with the image of it?
an emotional approach
The subject I'm trying to study is related with music and emotion. What do you feel like when you listening to music but you can't tell which instrument is playing because it simply doesn't exists?
It couldn't just be a combination between two instruments that you feel that you could recognize separately. What I'm talking about is when you feel that you can't reach a visual image about what you're hearing. It's like a "Señor Coconut effect". The listener doesn't know if there's a big orchestra playing and some guys over there shouting "Mambo!" or if it's nothing more than just a guy in front of the computer. How many instruments do you hear in this recording? How many players? What kind of instruments are they?
The most astonishing subject is that people like Uwe Schmidt make albums like "El baile alemán", where the computer does everything with the help of just a few samples, but when you here Señor Coconut playing live you see a computer but lots of musicians with their "classic instruments" too. That's as disturbing as a Farinelli. It gets confusing and maybe most of the listeners will tend to think that the album is made with "real" instruments too. What's a real instrument today?
Maybe a computer playing "real timbres" is less confusing than a two real instruments playing a unisone and creating a new timbre?
Anyway, my thesis is that synthesized sounds can be music expression vehicles. Today we can hear more and more timbres and we see all kind of strange things even in contemporary popular music. For example, an electric guitar can play as if it was a piano (King Crimson). Musicians and music producers play and express theirselves in a genuine emotionally way by using artificially sinthesized timbres. It's not about two or more instruments playing a unisone and creating a new timbre, but about developing new timbres in musical acts. The result is that music is less "seen" than yesterday.
The history has lots of things to say to us about this. I'm interested in an experimental approach and i would like to write about what different artists do and why do they do it like that. I'm also interested in the "castratti" voices, in some church choirs that play are hidden so that you can't see them in churches, synagoges and operas and in Mahler's sixth symphony, where a bell is being played from outside the scenario so that you can't see where it comes from.
What can we say about recorded music in this investigation? We record music since XXth century. This makes possible to reproduce always a same version. Recording and playing distort the sounds, giving us new musical experiences. Some of them are the vinyl sound, the scratched cd sound and the bad quality mp3 sound. All of them are used today as musical tools for making new music. Not only Uwe Schmidt, but also some of the 80's music, most of the recent film and tv soundtracks and pop music is made using midi orchestras or keyboards that emulate a "real sound". Virtual timbres have helped to some musical styles developement, such as the casiotone MT-40 in 1985, who give birth to the "digital reggae". The latinamerican cumbia and reggaetón styles need some use of the synthed percussion, bass, brass and strings in order to reach a particular sound.
Adorno said that art is not the same now that we live in a technical reproductibility era. I would like to add that according to music, some time ago the timbre could be seen, but nowadays it's not that easy.
There is a sound in my head that hasn't got any image nor face.
Which methods should I use to demonstrate this ideas?
It couldn't just be a combination between two instruments that you feel that you could recognize separately. What I'm talking about is when you feel that you can't reach a visual image about what you're hearing. It's like a "Señor Coconut effect". The listener doesn't know if there's a big orchestra playing and some guys over there shouting "Mambo!" or if it's nothing more than just a guy in front of the computer. How many instruments do you hear in this recording? How many players? What kind of instruments are they?
The most astonishing subject is that people like Uwe Schmidt make albums like "El baile alemán", where the computer does everything with the help of just a few samples, but when you here Señor Coconut playing live you see a computer but lots of musicians with their "classic instruments" too. That's as disturbing as a Farinelli. It gets confusing and maybe most of the listeners will tend to think that the album is made with "real" instruments too. What's a real instrument today?
Maybe a computer playing "real timbres" is less confusing than a two real instruments playing a unisone and creating a new timbre?
Anyway, my thesis is that synthesized sounds can be music expression vehicles. Today we can hear more and more timbres and we see all kind of strange things even in contemporary popular music. For example, an electric guitar can play as if it was a piano (King Crimson). Musicians and music producers play and express theirselves in a genuine emotionally way by using artificially sinthesized timbres. It's not about two or more instruments playing a unisone and creating a new timbre, but about developing new timbres in musical acts. The result is that music is less "seen" than yesterday.
The history has lots of things to say to us about this. I'm interested in an experimental approach and i would like to write about what different artists do and why do they do it like that. I'm also interested in the "castratti" voices, in some church choirs that play are hidden so that you can't see them in churches, synagoges and operas and in Mahler's sixth symphony, where a bell is being played from outside the scenario so that you can't see where it comes from.
What can we say about recorded music in this investigation? We record music since XXth century. This makes possible to reproduce always a same version. Recording and playing distort the sounds, giving us new musical experiences. Some of them are the vinyl sound, the scratched cd sound and the bad quality mp3 sound. All of them are used today as musical tools for making new music. Not only Uwe Schmidt, but also some of the 80's music, most of the recent film and tv soundtracks and pop music is made using midi orchestras or keyboards that emulate a "real sound". Virtual timbres have helped to some musical styles developement, such as the casiotone MT-40 in 1985, who give birth to the "digital reggae". The latinamerican cumbia and reggaetón styles need some use of the synthed percussion, bass, brass and strings in order to reach a particular sound.
Adorno said that art is not the same now that we live in a technical reproductibility era. I would like to add that according to music, some time ago the timbre could be seen, but nowadays it's not that easy.
There is a sound in my head that hasn't got any image nor face.
Which methods should I use to demonstrate this ideas?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)