tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8009551625417231557.post3992751651397833049..comments2023-08-25T05:10:41.926-04:00Comments on the death of everything: Why Do You Think They Call It Noise?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8009551625417231557.post-26973560509685535552011-07-04T11:47:06.818-04:002011-07-04T11:47:06.818-04:00Yeah, Clark, I think you are pretty much at the co...Yeah, Clark, I think you are pretty much at the core of the matter on these issues.<br /> <br />1) I call noise a subset of sound because I think of noise as a specific type of sound. Though they are sometimes used interchangeably (You and the wife are lying in bed late at night and you hear a thump in the next room, saying "What was that noise?" is the same as saying "What was that sound?"), there seems to be a difference that is useful in some contexts (You and the wife are riding in the car and the young one is making a racket in the back seat, you would turn to him and say "Why are you making so much noise?", though probably not "Why are you making so much sound?"). I'll admit that the idea of noise as I use it is a bit of a conceit, but a reasonable one, I believe . . . as long as I can hammer it out in a more coherent manner.<br /><br />The last sentence of the first paragraph, and all of point 2), is pretty much at the center of the whole discussion, so I'll take a poke at 3) first.<br /><br />3) When I speak of noise being irreducible, what I am saying is that when you try to unpack noise, all you come up with is more noise. So, an industrial air conditioning unit makes a certain noise, and that noise may be the squeal of a rubber belt, the thrumming of a fan, and the slosh of various liquids inside the unit, but they are all noises in and of themselves. <br /><br />This thinking is also a reference to set theory, which is frankly above my head at this point. Someday I want to get a book to study up on set theory so I actually have a shot at understanding Badiou's *Being and Event*, which I read a year or two ago more as modernist poetry than an actual philosophical text.<br /><br />2) I'm trying to have it both ways, aren't I? I'm trying to say that I am consciously creating something outside music, but then using as my definition of music a "pleasing arrangement of sound" with, to my mind at least, "arrangement" being the key there. There is no way for me to say that I am not arranging my sound even if I do things that allow for certain randomness (use of guitar feedback, using mixers plugged into themselves in a way that makes the response difficult to predict, etc.). So, once I start arranging things, I'm done with noise . . . unless I want to focus on the "pleasing" in my definition of music: then I could say that what I am doing is designed to subvert the definition of music by being "not pleasing". But that too is disingenuous, since I listen to "noise" music all the time, so I must (and do) find it pleasing. Besides, as briefly alluded to in the essay, "pleasing" is a very culturally defined idea, so even if I am taking this in a broader cultural context, noise is not an absolute thing.<br /><br />Now, I could make most of these problems go away by making noise a simple descriptor, such as "alternative" or "college rock" or "grime" or "dub step", but that seems too easy to me. It's not going to be much more than a simple descriptor, but there is something at the core of this idea that is worth chasing out a little further. Noise to me is different than just another subset of popular music, though I don't think I've put my finger on why yet. I'll have to answer the big question you posed in 2) to have any hope of moving in that direction.<br /><br />Time to retreat to the John Cage books.Bill Zinkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10614494130260695458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8009551625417231557.post-65831174924457044002011-06-29T15:50:56.741-04:002011-06-29T15:50:56.741-04:00Damn Bill! Good stuff. A couple of thoughts:
1) W...Damn Bill! Good stuff. A couple of thoughts:<br /><br />1) What's the difference between noise and sound? I don't really think noise is a subset of sound. Noise is sound, sound is noise. A noise has sound, sound makes a noise. Music, mos def is a subset of noise/sound. Once you do anything to arrange or structure your noise consciously, you're making music no? <br /><br />2) You write: "But while music will stretch and change (which is, by the way, the beauty of music), noise remains outside, remains irreducible." I think that noise that has been consciously altered/produced/presented (and hence music) must then be able to stretch and change. If you make a second recording in the "noise" genre, don't you by default feel the same way? <br /><br />3) Why is noise irreducible? If it was created on purpose, it can be reduced; the purpose can go away and we'll see what happens--leave the guitar sitting against the amp, but even that... There's very little pure noise right? So any piece of noise can be reduced to its individual elements. When a train screeches to a stop, it's not one noise, it's many.comfortstarrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00234120431573108100noreply@blogger.com