I’ve come across several interesting sonic experiments on the interwebs in the past couple days. As I noted a few months ago, I’ve been listening to a lot of ambient, minimalist stuff lately (while studying) which has helped to cultivate a growing interest in the geometry of sound in music. Which basically means: resonance and very tiny tonal interactions intrigue me in ways that they never did before.
As such, this project has drawn quite a bit of my attention in the past couple days. It’s a compilation of youtube videos, with a wide variety of sounds, instruments, voices, etc. The crucial thing is that they’re all in the key of B flat. You can pick and choose which ones to play. The result is (invariably) eery, delightful, are intensely beautiful. For me at least, it really helps to clarify the emergent nature of music – the way that sounds play against each other to pass that invisible, astonishing barrier between noise and music.
Play around with it. It’s like having your own personal Stars of the Lid-generator in your browser.
Second, there’s this little thing: basically a mini-synthesizer set to instantly reproduce whatever notes you tell it to play. For something that only gives you 16 steps to work with and 16 tonal variations, it is absolutely astonishing the variety of sounds you can produce. I think I wasted about three hours the other day just playing around with this.
Actually watching the sound produce itself as it works across the grid reminds me of those 90s-era movies that tried to visually represent ‘the internet’ or ‘virtual reality.’ But in a totally good way.
You can even copy and paste your favorite versions. I just made this one, which I’m finding moderately entertaining:
72196,33376,33032,45328,65544,78900,17608,16928,
23088,32792,68816,65792,16964,22816,33856,33032
And while I’m on the subject of this sort of music, allow me just a moment to rave about this new track from Hildur Gudnadottir.
It’s over 11 minutes, but feel like it goes by in a flash. The overlay of that droning sound on top of these thick cello movements is breathtaking. It evokes the deep winter of Iceland, a single streetlight casting long shadows in the snow…
She’s got an album called Without Sinking that came out a couple months ago which I haven’t picked up yet, but am really looking forward to.