Get Flash to see this player.
Description
This is going to be a difficult one to listen to.
This is its form: CONSTRUCT - PERMUTATE - DE (CON) STRUCT - (RE) CONSTRUCT
When listening back to the Sound Experiment, I am struck by its hard and fragmented nature. While this was in part intentional, the full extent of a creative work may not always be grasped by its creator while in the heat of composing, or even for a time thereafter.
What strikes me is how each movement becomes like a shard of sound, each is hard and jagged with a sharp almost cutting tone. The seeming arbitrary beginning and end to each movement compounds this affect, for each movement is only a piece, a moment, a section, of a greater whole. And what happens when all the pieces are aligned and the composition is heard in its final form? The affect is compounded. The greater whole will, unto itself, sound incomplete and like only a fragment of something yet still greater.
But when listened to as a whole, each piece aligned, what is discovered is that the alignment is askew, each section does not flow smoothly into the next. The resulting affect is more like a collage. It is almost as though each of these fragments has been taped together, and instead of a pristine picture, one has ripped and jagged and punctured and creased sounds precariously held together by scotch tape and sounding as though they may all again, piece by piece, fall to the floor.
While listening to these sections taped to the wall, one is still left feeling that the composition is incomplete. That as a whole it is only a fragment, and a fragment that feels as though it could go on beyond the scope of what is presented. It is like trying to watch outer space through a wide-angle lens. No matter how wide the angle, no matter how much you can see, you know you are seeing only the smallest fragment of a larger whole.
When thinking of the Sound Experiment, what comes to mind as analogy is not music or a musical form, but that of a visual form, I think of collage. But maybe to be apposite, I think of Cubism. When looking at a cubist painting, one is struck by hard jagged planes depicting abstract images and colors, or by sections and pieces of abstracted images and colors. In the visual field of the spectator these pieces of highly abstracted sections of a larger whole work to distort time and space and literally force the spectator to see in a new way, or to be apposite, allow the spectator to be aware of what he already knows, but doesn’t know that he knows. This then is the function of art, to make one aware.
This also is the attempt of the Sound Experiment. Within each fragment or as a whole, individual sounds or sections work off one to another in varying contrast. The attempt is to distort time and space aurally. By having jarring and grating and difficult sounds, I’ll call them simply “uncommon” sounds, running into each other or overlapping and distorting each other, it is forcing the listener to hear in a way that they may otherwise not be used to hearing. This distortion of time and space literally places the listener into a new mental state of being.
This idea can be pushed further. If the universe and everything in it is composed of sound which is vibration, then one, by listening to music or words (or anything), is literally altering one’s physiology, and by extension, who and what one is. Therefore, the more radical or different or extreme or difficult or uncommon is a musical composition, the more it will literally alter you. This is always where a person will recoil and why that which is new is always greeted with great apprehension, if not downright suspicion and disdain. People’s response becomes then not a question of understanding, but literally, a biological fear.
The Sound Experiment is just that, an experiment . . . an attempt. Portions or section or aspects of this experiment will, by nature, be more successful than others, and by extension, each listener will enjoy certain qualities more than others. That is, if pleasure is to be found. In the end, what I find to be most important is not the “success” of the experiment, but to have attempted it.
This is its form: CONSTRUCT - PERMUTATE - DE (CON) STRUCT - (RE) CONSTRUCT
When listening back to the Sound Experiment, I am struck by its hard and fragmented nature. While this was in part intentional, the full extent of a creative work may not always be grasped by its creator while in the heat of composing, or even for a time thereafter.
What strikes me is how each movement becomes like a shard of sound, each is hard and jagged with a sharp almost cutting tone. The seeming arbitrary beginning and end to each movement compounds this affect, for each movement is only a piece, a moment, a section, of a greater whole. And what happens when all the pieces are aligned and the composition is heard in its final form? The affect is compounded. The greater whole will, unto itself, sound incomplete and like only a fragment of something yet still greater.
But when listened to as a whole, each piece aligned, what is discovered is that the alignment is askew, each section does not flow smoothly into the next. The resulting affect is more like a collage. It is almost as though each of these fragments has been taped together, and instead of a pristine picture, one has ripped and jagged and punctured and creased sounds precariously held together by scotch tape and sounding as though they may all again, piece by piece, fall to the floor.
While listening to these sections taped to the wall, one is still left feeling that the composition is incomplete. That as a whole it is only a fragment, and a fragment that feels as though it could go on beyond the scope of what is presented. It is like trying to watch outer space through a wide-angle lens. No matter how wide the angle, no matter how much you can see, you know you are seeing only the smallest fragment of a larger whole.
When thinking of the Sound Experiment, what comes to mind as analogy is not music or a musical form, but that of a visual form, I think of collage. But maybe to be apposite, I think of Cubism. When looking at a cubist painting, one is struck by hard jagged planes depicting abstract images and colors, or by sections and pieces of abstracted images and colors. In the visual field of the spectator these pieces of highly abstracted sections of a larger whole work to distort time and space and literally force the spectator to see in a new way, or to be apposite, allow the spectator to be aware of what he already knows, but doesn’t know that he knows. This then is the function of art, to make one aware.
This also is the attempt of the Sound Experiment. Within each fragment or as a whole, individual sounds or sections work off one to another in varying contrast. The attempt is to distort time and space aurally. By having jarring and grating and difficult sounds, I’ll call them simply “uncommon” sounds, running into each other or overlapping and distorting each other, it is forcing the listener to hear in a way that they may otherwise not be used to hearing. This distortion of time and space literally places the listener into a new mental state of being.
This idea can be pushed further. If the universe and everything in it is composed of sound which is vibration, then one, by listening to music or words (or anything), is literally altering one’s physiology, and by extension, who and what one is. Therefore, the more radical or different or extreme or difficult or uncommon is a musical composition, the more it will literally alter you. This is always where a person will recoil and why that which is new is always greeted with great apprehension, if not downright suspicion and disdain. People’s response becomes then not a question of understanding, but literally, a biological fear.
The Sound Experiment is just that, an experiment . . . an attempt. Portions or section or aspects of this experiment will, by nature, be more successful than others, and by extension, each listener will enjoy certain qualities more than others. That is, if pleasure is to be found. In the end, what I find to be most important is not the “success” of the experiment, but to have attempted it.
Leave a Comment
You must be registered and logged-in to comment.
I didn't find it hard to listen to at all. It was sound poetry to me and
flowed very well. I like it as a stand alone song, or as an experiment to a
future song.
Well done.