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You Say Somatosounds: The Tintinnabulations of Tinnitus

15 November 2010, 11:22 pm

triple forteNot all sounds are ear sounds. Some sounds are beyond ears, like head sounds. These sounds are known as tinnitus, and probably everybody experiences them at one time (as do our animal friends). You may temporarily hear a “ringing in your ears” after being exposed to triple forte rock music. These are just the “phantom frequencies” that are dying inside your brain, never to be heard again. Or you may be like me, and experience Chronic Tinnitus―a mildly annoying to deafeningly debilitating condition. Some sufferers have even cut off their own ears in the hopes of exorcising the sound. Of course, head sounds need to be decapitated. There have even been reports of objective tinnitus―nerve noise so loud that it can be heard outside of the head in which it is produced.

Luckily, my own tinnitus is quiet enough that it only annoys me. Besides, these days there’s so much external noise around to mute our inner music, that I doubt anyone would mind a boy with an audible mind.

Now, before you start thinking that I drummed my ears into oblivion playing in rowdy rowdy rock bands for too long, I’ve always had this tinnitus, and it’s always the same sustained nerve note―a high-pitched D. Check it out!



Annoying right? Like a cricket. Long after my aging ears can no longer detect this frequency, it’ll still be in my head.

Under careful auscultation, my tinnitus is composed of a tsunami of sine waves. The root is a distant D tone, as if sounding over the cerebral horizon, backed by an ugly Ives chord of insect spectrals, coming in jerky crescendos. Underneath it all, the blanketed bass drumming of my heart kicks out of time.

Oh tinnitus―fated fermata―prepared by the Great Conductor, who with downbeat baton, denotes the ictus of death. Will it resolve on the one? Or slowly decay into black noise.

The openings empty out their last sound. From every mountaintop, let tinnitus ring.

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The Bloop

14 November 2010, 8:19 pm

In the 1990’s, the Sound Surveillance System—a chain of underwater listening posts in the Atlantic Ocean—recorded a number of mysterious sounds of unknown origin. The most popular of which, is nicknamed “The Bloop”. When sped up, it sounds like a whale call, and yet the Bloop is far louder than the loudest animal in the ocean—the blue whale. In 1997, the Bloop was detected by the underwater hydrophone array, from sensors up to 5,000 kilometres apart, deep in the waters off the West coast of Chile.

If no known marine beast is capable of producing the Bloop—not even the giant squid, krakken, leviathan, or Nessy—then it’s gotta be Cthulhu. To me, it sounds like any other slightly tonal bubble playing from the brine, but NOAA experts have been unable to match the Bloop to the spectogram of any ocean sound—natural, biological, or industrial. Whatever it is, the Bloop is a D Tone, or at least this sample is. For some reason, all of the NOAA samples are sped up 16 times. Here’s what it sounds like normally (Watch your woofers!).

Another unknown ocean sound is nicknamed “The Train”, recorded on March 5, 1997 on the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array. This is the most tonal of the unknown NOAA sounds. It mostly warbles around Concert A—440 hz.


Every once in a while, the Train bends up a half-tone or a whole-tone, from G to A, or G to G# to A. Remember though, that this sound, like the others, has been sped up 16 times.

“Julia” is yet another mysterious underwater sound, recorded on March 1, 1999 on the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array. It sounds like a Cthulhu voice, saying the name “Julia”.

So let’s review this all: In the 1990’s, mysterious sounds are being recorded in our oceans. Scientists suggest that they belong to an animal, but far larger and louder than any known animal. Half a century earlier, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft writes of a sea monster living in the exact latitude of the Bloop—a squid-faced alien named Cthulhu.

Secret sounds under the ocean?
Reality, really? Is anyone buying this shit anymore?

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I Say Tomita

13 November 2010, 11:26 am

Isao Tomita, the electronic composer famous for synthesizing classical music into bloops in the 70’s, and performing inside giant glass pyramids suspended above the audience, writes the following passage on the back of his 1975 Pictures At An Exhibition album, concerning the nature of acoustic and electric music.


Two kinds of loud sounds in the natural world have been growing on the earth since time immemorial. One is the roll of thunder, the other the sound of volcanic eruption. Both of them were feared by mankind for many centuries as the anger of God. However, the roll of thunder has been proved to be the sound caused by an electric phenomenon—that is an electric sound. Volcanic sound, on the other hand is produced by the eruption, impact and rubbing of the substances involved; later such dynamic sounds were made by tools—hammers, bellows to make fire, etc. With the passage of time some of these tools were gradually transformed into musical instruments. At present the methods of blowing, beating, rubbing, etc. are incorporated into many musical instruments in the symphony orchestra.

Electric musical instruments, on the other hand, did not come into existence until the present century. In 1927, Leon Theremin devised the first electric musical instrument, whose pitch was controlled by placing the hand near to or away from its vertical rod. In 1928, Maurice Martenot, a French musician, invented the ondes martenot, which is considered the father of the present music synthesizer.

It has been said that electric sound is not expressive because it is not a natural sound but an artificial one made by a machine. However, I think that natural sound implies the rustle of the leaves by the wind, the murmur of a brook and the sound of the waves beating upon the shore. In pianos, violins, flutes and other instruments the determination of their musical scales and the methods of their resonance are made by the art of mankind, so their sounds are not intrinsically natural but mechanical.

Compared to the traditional instruments with a history of many centuries, electric musical instruments have a history of only 50 years. In addition, their shapes are not yet established, so the player is apt to become disoriented. Players of these instruments equivalent in ability to virtuosos of the piano or violin have not yet appeared. I think we must make more effort to study electric musical instruments for the future.

I have used a great variety of electrical sound-producing and -controlling devices, as in my previous album Snowflakes are Dancing, I have been encouraged to believe that my efforts have produced music that is truly expressive, evoking the emotions of a high musical experience. It is very rewarding.


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Synaesthesia

11 November 2010, 4:09 pm

Did you know some crazy folks out there have actually seen Music? They’re called synesthetes and often experience what is known as “colored hearing,” or “Sound → Color Synesthesia.” What do these synesthetes say that Music looks like? Well, no two synesthetes ever agree on tone (especially the musicians), but mostly it looks exactly how you’d expect music to look: Colored lights, flashes, and bangs. Pulsations aflicker. A ferocious phantasmagoria of light and sound blowing through the mind’s eye. Honey combs, spiderwebs, tunnels, cones, spirals. Form constants. “Something like fireworks.”

Here’s an example. The key of D Major has always struck me as a green sort of fellow. There’s also some strong yellowness inside his heart. And the whole thing kinda explodes, like a firework. Click on the chord below for a simulation of synesthetic phenomena.

Kaboom! Music is so violent and colorful. The sounds you hear are little explosions, like in the quantum world where everything is exploding all the time. They attack, sustain, decay, and finally release, but not without a bang. Artistic noise—that is to say Music—is like a controlled demolition, or a fireworks display. Ya know, the kind of explosions people like, as opposed to bombs and volcanoes.

So it would seem that Music absorbs much of the violence of the human race. Like a touretter’s drum circle, like the beating of a gorilla’s chest, crazy aggressive energy can be channeled into Music. As background, Music can hypnotize us, lock us in step with its beat, sooth our savage hearts, and entrain our minds along a peaceful path into sleep, sex, or sociability. As foreground, Music spars with us, hijacking our thought trains with its melodies, reaching directly into our cockles like an odor, shredding upon our heartstrings like Yngwie Malmsteen.

What does all this interplay of light and sound tell us? Is this Life Reality? No. Colors and sounds are the same. They’re both waves that are sensed in two unique ways, due to both cultural nurturing and natural brain development. Color is an electromagnetic wave; sound is pneumatic. A 60 cycle wave sounds like the Flat B hum of a refrigerator, guitar amp, or anything else plugged into the Grid. A 60 cycle wave of light is invisible. Now take the 7 Classical Colors (ROYGBIV) and transpose them down 40 Octaves into the audible spectrum of sound. Each Color falls into the region of the 7 Classical Notes (GABCDEF).

Mister Roy G. Biv, meet your twin brother, Gab C. Def.

 A Supersynesthete would be the rare individual who sees the correct colors while listening to the analogous tones. For more on synesthesia and music, check this out.

So there you have it! Light. Sound. Explosions. Synaesthesia is the Sixth Sense. Music is the Fifth Force. Play for peace.

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Elevator Music

8 November 2010, 2:07 pm

The Industrial Music that surrounds us is bellful, horny, and white with noise. Dings and blares come from every clock and car, the electric B-flat hums from every outlet, and the streets are seldom silent. If one were to form a SimsBand, covering the music of each day, it would have plenty of brass and bells, and the rainbow of noise would rise in a high drowning arc across the sky. We’d bring all the bellboys back of course. Clear the bats from the bellfry. Make way for the old timey elevator operators to return to their lifts, and once again man those tiny tintinabulations by hand.

Behold the Elevator Bell Ding! How many times have you heard this little tone in your life? Just take the amount of times you rode a lift, and multiply by two, because this bell dings up and down, open and closed—twice in one ride. It only takes two notes to make a melody after all.

Unlike the door bell, which covers the interval of a Major Third, the Elevator Ding is monotonal, right on the edge between noise and tone. (Click on the the wave to the right for frequency analysis.) The most dominant tone seems to be an F, but the spectrum is very messy. There are strong spikes in the G# range, as well as an E. Most importantly, there is a very high piercing C#, as well as a lower one, that make a musical tone out of an otherwise noisy sound.

Add up the dominant tones in this messy noisy wave, and you get a C# Minor chord. Try dragging over the chord below, quickly scroll back up, and ding the elevator bell to see how close they are (The elevator bell is actually a quarter tone less than a C#).

Who knew elevator music was so sad?

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Adult Sing-Alongs in Contemporary Film

7 November 2010, 9:28 pm

Dead, dead; dead.

The American sing-along is dead. Once upon a time, there was a baby Steinway in every household, and American families sang together in perfect nuclear harmony. Pa was an operatic baritone, and little Timmy had chosen to forgo puberty to carry on the castrati legacy. The sing-along was the musical hearth of the home, warming our spirits each holiday with all-night medleys fake-booked on the spot.

Sadly, the patriot songs, hymns, and drinking songs that inspired the group sing-alongs of yesteryear will stay in those fake-books, abandoned by a war-wearied atheistic public who still like to drink, but now to the tune of a digital jukebox. Is there anything more terrible than the obligatory Happy Birthday sing-along? Even the National Anthem is a little too sing-songy, to perform in public.

However, embarrassing sing-alongs can still be found in contemporary films—a quaint artifact of our Atlantean musical culture—as if it required a great deal of special effects and movie-magic to get a group of people to sing together.

Below, we have Jerry O’Connell belting out David Cassidy’s “I Think I Love You” from Scream 2. Somehow they even got the key of this song right—E Flat Major. Either O’Connell has perfect pitch, or Wes Craven respects the Partridge.

The really interesting thing about this clip is how beautifully it illustrates the phenomenon of Clapping on the Ones. The audience actually keeps their clap on the same beat the entire time, as if they were cued and synched for this scene. It is Jerry O’Connell who compromises the rhythmic integrity of the sing-along song. Around :20 seconds in, O’Connell is late on his melody, and the audience finds themselves unwittingly clapping on the ones. While the clap begins on the Two’s and Four’s, Jerry misses a beat, and forces the audience to clap on the One’s and Three’s, so that what was once Up-beat, is now Down-beat.

All I’m sayin’ is: Clapping on the One’s would never even be happening like this, if the people would be stomping on the One’s instead. Not that it’s such a bad thing. It’s a wonderful thing really.

The above lunchroom sing-along scene was borrowed from an earlier film—Top Gun—wherein Tom Cruise sings “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” accompanied by a bar full of fellow air jocks singing unison. As in the clip above, these guys are dead-on Db Major—the original key of The Righteous Brothers song. Such respect for the classics!

Of course, people still have serendipitous sing-alongs at sporting events and church. And the children still sing nursery rhymes and play double-dutch. Leave it to the kids to keep the song alive, while us atonal adults fade into the black noise.

Sing-alongs ain’t embarrassing. Talking without tone: now that’s embarrassing. Next time you need to tell someone you love them, try doing it in song, in a public space, with all of your comrades singing along in perfect lunchroom harmony.

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iFart computer sounds :) (o)- – –

5 November 2010, 1:04 pm

What are the most popular sounds around us? Are they musical or noisy? Artful or aleatoric? Do you hear more birdsong than pop song? Is the human speech around you monotonal, monotonous, or musical? Do you wear headphones all day, or does your own cortex hallucinate music for you?

Friends, there are no more insidious sounds out there than the perpetual music of our machines. Along with the Grid Hum and corporate earworms, the synthetic sounds of personal computers earn their place in the Industrial-Musical complex. These are the most popular sounds around us – neither words nor lyrics, nor melodies, nor even our own effluvia surround us so much as these perverse atonalities. The computer literacy involved in turning these presets off, combined with the hopeless habituation of users to their presence, makes the following samples some of the most played sounds on Earth ever. Unlike the B-flat hum, which will drone on into the twilight of humanity, we have the choice right now to silence this digital flatulence.

Behold the Mac fart!

This farting sound is actually attached to the volume controls on an Apple computer, so that every time you turn it up or down, it fires off a fizzle of these pathetic robotic imitations of our beautiful body score – that big ass brass, like a Spike Jones concert, perfectly blending comedy and music.

There is an analogous sound on a Window’s machine, the so-called “System Notification” that resembles a lip-pop—another offensive natural sound that emerges from our bodies. Now why would a Gates, or a Jobs, want to make machines that reproduce our flatus for us? The answer lies in the Doomsday Seed Vault.

For all their irksome qualities, these body-based synths are nothing compared to the truly tonal variety, such as the Window’s “Asterisk”. This is another of a million alarms that come ready to rock each PC. Like the Hum of American machines, it is a B tone.

What kind of instrument is that? Does it sound like any instrument you can even name? It’s pure computer tone.

Please, people: Get in your control panels and turn this shit off. I can shut my eyes from the horrors of this world, but I ain’t got no earlids!

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