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brian carroll

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soundings (B)

soundings (B)
soundings (B)


Statement

The recording of a previous acoustic piano session had a technical error that resulted in voice-activated mode starting and stopping the recording every few seconds depending on a lower threshold pause, at which point each start and stop has sharp edges of sound and unsmooth gradients for the beginning and ending of each clipped file. In an era of sampling it seemed possible to try to rearrange these via a cut-up technique, to see what might result via trial-and-error experiment. That in addition to panning was the goal of this exploration though the coherence assumed potential is not realized and these are further from where they were assumed to potentially be, when combined. There is a gap from lack of knowledge and experience and first musical expressions and yet it is also close to a conceptual model and still relevant in this way, though the music less so than what it ultimately attempts to model, which is real life.

The first file has five tracks of the same non-repeating piano fragment panned in a complex overlapping or weaving of sounds, which fade in and out, attempting to spatialize different pitches as they move around, yet this does not translate the way it was supposed and more attempts will continue.

The second file has four non-repeating tracks, likewise criss-crossing via left, center, and right stereo panning that moves each track across the others in various ways (say, left to hard left to center for a given sound), and once again this does not necessarily translate the way it was imagined.

The third mix is a bit different, it has different piano fragments that are repeated in a single track over and over, no panning, though within this multiple repetition of various cadences, a single longer piano file is played within this texture or field of atmospheric sound, which then is submerged by the dominant sound and remerges upon its silence. There are technical aspects of sound that are of interest, like building a language or learning about musical aesthetics by experimenting and trying different approaches that then, when the sounds someday find their their coherence, can be a way of shaping what music may exist.

The fourth mix is all different piano fragments set in different tracks and overlapping, no panning because it somehow softens and mutes what is there. This has more coherence than the rest and mostly involves clippings of the same recording segment (of some longer piece of piano playing that was subsequently cut up by during digitial recording).

To me it is not the 'music' though the idea of the music that could move in and out of phase (and maybe other files are better examples of this) - yet it starts to get at a general experience of people (say instruments or sound fragments) each living different lives, and perhaps playing their own tunes, yet in moments they overlap or the experience and sounds are bridged via strange interactions or harmonies or rhythmic encounters that may only be momentary, while the many local or relativistic worlds co-exist yet may or may not interact or share similar structuring.

The way I think about this idea and what is hoped to be further explored someday is the role of the instrument as it may exist, say, in an office environment, where a piano may be a typewriter or a violin may be a telephone, and people may have certain encounters that may or may not overlap, as a telephone rings or something is typed up or printed, which may be independent of one another or may have a sequence or structural relation, and how this could be modeled as a parallel performance. Obviously this 'music' is not that interesting, it is just some sounds collaged, yet the paradigm of a multiple track audio editor and various samples tends towards this environment or context for various encounters and seems more like the real world than the monologue of a single voice saying its piece in silence or total control over its conveyance, when so little is actually like this in a world of others, and others many timings that may constrast and at times compliment the same ordering. So in a sense, sounds as a form of awareness, potentially, or conceptually, and to ask these questions and not know how to proceed yet to seek this direction slowly via trial and error. Perhaps many errors and much unintended noise, a barrier to already having answers and instead, the enigmas of searching for something known yet not yet grasped and this the result of that gap, between intent and actuality.

Though in a realm of soundings all the same, perhaps a minor hint or tinge of the concept, that is what is sought and why what may not achieve music per se may still convey other forms of meaning, in the way of aesthetics and its structure and elements, as pieces eventually fit together.

Addenda:

A fifth recording was made upon considering that music sounds may limit the panning effects due to their inconsistency and therefore sine tones and chirps and pink noise replaced previous piano fragments in a new experiment. The other change in conceptualization was using the pink noise as a noise threshold that sounds may rise or fall out of, via fade-in and fade-out wavelike formations, perhaps not spare enough to notice with the piano track playing and itself without panning or fading during beyond beginning and ending. The principles though are the same with this track and others preceding it, though the variance in sound and location may be more noticeable when a constant tone or simpler waveform as a shape in motion. In elevation the panning and fade-in fade-out would seemingly look like a mountain range or ocean waves peaking above and below an imaginary median, which in this case is the pink noise though it could be anything that may drown out signals or have structures emerge from it. The idea is what interests, the sounds less so at this stage, yet it is worth a try to test the approach and see if what occurs technically as data sounds like what it is imagined to. Oftentimes there is much more variance than imagined.

5.1 and 5.2 are the same files mixed differently. 5.1 is mixed so the piano is audible through the pink noise, whereas 5.2 allows the other noises more similar weighting and drowns the piano track. This becomes a context akin to 'parts per million', trying to retrieve or access a faint signal admidst a noise field or other more dominant sounds or dynamics. If overwhelmed in this way, the track that is attempted to be listened to or accessed could be made inaccesible, as with thoughts or memory or whatnot. It is a basic situation for the human nervous system living admist a toxic environment of signals, fields, deadly chemicals, and other competing or contrasting interactions. Does the signal get transmitted or can it be sustained or accessed or does it get lost in the surrounding noise. What is the threshold. And like consciousness and the subconscious, what remains in the realm of attention and what falls into sleep or daydream, and where exactly does reality reside in all of this, and might it in some way be consituted within the business of atmosphere, the noise fields generating data or hidden information or meaning that it intuitive yet beyond conscious awareness. In this way, perhaps data patterns are constellations encountered, repeated and accessed again and again, though still invisible except within the senses that perceive them, in a given range of frequencies or sensor-based relations, natural, artificial, and-or virtual.