The Audio Mark as a Storytelling Platform

Image by: Craig Cloutier

Music, as we know, comes in many forms. And one person's music is another person's noise.

Readers of this blog know I'm fascinated by microstructures; that is, those forms of noise and aural expression that may not represent complete 'works' as we think of the concept, but which nonetheless capably convey meaning.

THE DESCENDING CADENCE AS CLOSING STATEMENT

For instance, where one single pitch might convey neither music nor meaning, two pitches in a sequence –if they are the right pitches– might serve to conclude a story, a song, or even an event, such as a religious service. The two pitches in question are, of course, IV and I, which we know as a 'descending cadence', and which together package enough signification in one descending step that whenever they are deployed, everyone within earshot receives the exact same message: This is where the story ends.

THE AUDIO MARK AS INDEPENDENT SIGNIFIER

As it happens, it is the identification and contextualization of such nano sized musical expressions that provide the underlying conceptual framework whenever we are commissioned with the construction of an AUDIO MARK (and whether we are conscious of this activity or not).

For this reason, I do not always think of an Audio Mark as a micro musical work itself, but instead as a communication asset composed of sonic elements, especially in regards to non melodic marks. Such composition is often closer to sound design, in my mind, being born of qualitative research, analysis and a methodical construction process rather than simply inspired composition.

The outcome of inspired composition is not always immediately apparent, nor the activity always directed. When making music we may simply want to entertain; and the music may have no reason for being at all, except that we conceived it, either as formalized composition or improvisation. In contrast to this common artistic process, the construction or design of an Audio Mark is always crafted with purpose, and often to a client's detailed specifications. Thus, if the outcome of traditional composition can be said to be our moods set to music, marks represent the attempt to package data into non verbal sound. In other words, we are asking ourselves how sound may be used for signification.

This process is not limited to commercial branding; it has long been used in the creation of scores whose themes and other elements might serve to indicate an actor, an animal, the weather, or something else.

But when our task is branding, then much like a Morse code pattern, our intention not so much to create an entertaining rhythm but to package data in a way that a given audience can and will actually decode the resultant sonic expression And if the message is not so distinct as to be unintelligible, and coded with cultural conventions in mind, then there actually stands a very good chance that it will be received and understood.

THE RINGTONE AS BRANDED ALERT

While music fundamentally suggests mood, I believe that brands –if they are to live in the world as semi or crowd conscious entities– shouldn't be defined or limited by the results of a mood board alone. What kind of actual person only possesses a single mood? Psychopaths and sociopaths. Certainly,  some management teams might be accused as lacking empathy, but when crafting identity assets for a client, one should create assets that might be made to respond in the same manner as healthy human attributes. To put it another way, our moods ebb and our reputation might change, but our identity is generally regarded as stable.

Identity assets should therefore be responsive, and crafted in a way that allows for scale and variation. Easier done in print with size and color; and easy still, if our mark is melodic in nature, but somewhat more difficult if the mark has been produced as an immutable sonic construction, for instance, when designed as a parallel experience and synchronized to a specific moving image. Nevertheless, if we want a mark to carry, then it must possess the capacity to scale infinitely, or at least within a set of parameters that we identify as true to that specific identity.

This is not to suggest that every mark be designed as a musical motif, though the two concepts in their most popular forms share similar characteristics.

But something very different happens when we hear a mark than when we listen to a motif. A strong mark will be perceived as a whole entity and independent of any other asset within the same single framed context.  Motives, on the other hand, while they may express variation, are perceived as dependent on other assets within the same single framework.

Motives, on the other hand, are deployed in such a way as to produce continued delight and interest with every variation. Indeed, we might even define traditional music not as organized sound, as is the convention, but as any construct that employs reiteration and also, the thematic variation of a pattern. Given this definition, the thing might not even be aural, which is why we can look at the sky or the ocean, or  even traffic, and describe it as a musical experience.

Music is essentially patterns at play.

And it's also why we may not always frame an Audio Mark as a musical work. It does use elemental musical sounds in its construction, but it is of singular design and voices so quickly any inherent patterning is either lost or non existent. Repeat it again and again without variation, and while the result will likely demand our attention, it may equally be perceived as annoying if the alerting sound does not signify incoming important information, hence our response to Ringtones.

We can very easily design interesting or pleasing ringtones, but our perception of any ringtone will nevertheless be shaped by the user and those nearby.  We might even forgo the repeating tone, riff or sample and actually trigger a complete work with each incoming call, but it even high fidelity rendition of recording of 'Ode to Joy' by the Berlin Philarmonic might strike another commuter as irritating if the phone's owner continued to receive multiple calls between Dover and Brick Church.

And it may be that the Alert construction is the most effective construct for a Ringtone simply because it frames the subsquent experience as one of information processing.

THE BROADCAST STING AS CONTROLLED DISRUPTION

Melodic audio marks also share some similar characteristics to another form of sonic identity asset, being THE BROADCAST STING. Both Audio Mark and Broadcast Sting serve as a form of conceptual punctuation that sends a single message –again, like Morse code. But unlike Morse code, we do not want to hear either a sting or a mark repeat within a single context. Or if it does repeat, the inherent message of both the sting and mark become diminished by the sense of urgency conveyed by the repetitive aural experience. Alternately, if this is the desired effect, then the message is simply reduced to 'URGENT'.
 
Of course, all four forms of micro musical expression discussed here –The Audio Mark, the Descending Cadence, The Ringtone and The Broadcast Sting– are designed to work like zipped semiotics, which once open, a given marketer's message will be decoded and delivered.

I've participated in the production of several network package music and sound design projects: CNN, ESPN, HBO Zone, MTV, PBS and VH1, to name a few.

Interestingly, The Broadcast Sting is the only expression of the four that is not constructed as an independent statement. Ending on an anticipatory high note, the Sting, while designed to brand a television station, network or cable channel, is also designed as an open ended inconclusive element, which if we compare to sentence structure,

suggests interruption. The Sting thus requires a listener/viewer to wait until later (typically, 'after these messages') before being 'rewarded' with aural or musical closure (finishing the sentence). Indeed, the Sting does not so much announce who he is, as he compel us to wait another moment before closing with a big reveal.

Whatever construction is appropriate to the task, the message is clear: even micro musical structures can be employed in the support of storytelling; and a skilled sonic artisan can capably convey a lot of non verbal information in mere seconds, and sometimes in even just one second.

Extra Musical Expression

Medieval Musicians

If we accept the notion that a melodic hook or motif and musical meme are synonymous with one another, we must also accept that a meme is not simply a unit of cultural transmission, as Richard Dawkins initially posited when he coined the word, but the smallest possible unit of cultural transmission, as others have since suggested. And once we do this we will also realize, like physicists parsing the atom, that still smaller units of symbolic data play upon the ear drum with each resonant beat or note.

NOISE AND NUANCE

Certainly, both musicians and audiences know that a successful musical performance requires more than simply the dry execution of composed notes from a page or memory. That whether one puts it in these terms or not, it also requires the deliberate production of interstitial noise by the performer, not to mention other substrates of sonic data, which we might call Nuance or Quantum Audio, and whose production allows for a more efficient transmission of a given meme.

For instance, the play of bow placement relative to an instrument's bridge; the weight and pressure employed by the performer's arm on the bow; and add to this, a  sufficient use of rosin, and  all these variables and more can be used by a violinist to shape the ratio of generally noisy artifacts caused by the friction of the bow upon the string, and the tone produced by the vibrating string itself.

Similarly, singers and those who play brass, reed and woodwinds can also shape tone simply by changing the balance of air to pitched sound.

In either case, while the meme is capably notated, the scale of these synchronous and sometimes very nearly transparent expressions often inhibits our notation of them. This may not be true for all forms of notation, but it is generally true for traditional scoring, which despite the capacity to indicate general dynamics, is primarily a shorthand for transcribing pitches than it is a system for communicating extra musical expression, –not to mention non musical collateral.

Nor does a term such as nuance, which implies a set of actions singularly controlled by the performer, capture every facet within the 'performance framework' that might serve to fulfill and satisfy listener expectation. Architecture, for instance, is generally beyond a performer's control, but no doubt the resulting acoustics of a given environment contribute to the perception and reception of a work.

CONTEXT AND CARRIER

Take for example, the liturgical chant. Based on prior experience of liturgical chants, any subsequent liturgical chant requires delivery within a cavernous space, if one's intention is to deliver an equivalent experience as that provided by the genre in question. Otherwise such a work may fail or fall short as a carrier of the intended set of symbolic data.

It is certainly possible to make a recording sans extra musical sound, interstitial noise and sub memetic data. And in fact, this actually appears to be the prevalent trend. Indeed, noiseless recording has long been and continues to be a measure of perfection for many musicians, engineers and audio enthusiasts. And presumably, there will always be those who believe the very definition of a recording suggests any captured material should serve as the optimal document of a given work. Further, the concept of 'optimal' will suggest a precise performance (whether man made or machine modified) that features purity of tone, accuracy of pitch, consistent timing and intelligible signification.

And yet, no doubt, it is also just the opposite of all those things, employed with great artistry and captured on the recording medium by a discerning engineer, that makes the transmission of music more than just the sum of its notes, but an expression of the soul.

Deconstructing Tone

Credit: Omegatron

Did you ever wonder how much music does a recorded musician have to play before a member of the listening audience can identify not just the specific work but also, who is playing it?

I think the correct answer is not a byte, but a myte’s worth.

In my custom corpus, a myte represents the smallest musical unit capable of triggering a cognitive response.

By this measure, a myte is smaller than a meme, which is defined as a small but nevertheless complete unit of transferable cultural information. A myte, on the other hand, need carry only enough data to provoke a response.

QUANTUM AUDIO 

If Memes and Motives are Molecular; then Pitch is Atomic and the Myte a nano sized Sub Atomic audio particle.

Likewise, when we are impressed with a musical work, we speak of its compositional elements; and when we are impressed with a musician we are generally commenting on their style (how they play). But I think when we are impressed with a musician's TONE, what we are saying is they are deft manipulators of the myte.

That is, mytes represent the individual component elements that together form a matrix of expression that result in Nuance.

For instance, if one is a turn of the century rock fan of a certain age, one only need hear one (resonant) note from U2's The Edge to identify his playing, and a listener is able to do so not by recognizing what The Edge is playing (and therefore guess The Edge must be playing it), but rather by way of the sonic artifacts –intentional and unintentional– that are as much a part of The Edge's tone as the music itself (And this would be true for any musician).

WHEN THE MACHINE APPEARS TO SING

One might also consider the ratio of air to pitch in the production a horn player's tone; of bow and rosin friction to vibrating string, sounding a bit like chronic vocal fry, in the production of a string player's tone; of breath to voice for a vocalist or flautist. We, the listener, focus almost exclusively on pitch content; we might even comment on the purity of tone as we allow ourselves to be dazzled by a performance; but in reality great tone, unless it is artificial, is never pure. And that's what draws us in; the humanity by which the machine appears to sing.

In fact it is as much the individual character by which a performer shapes pitch as it is the noise and nuance coloring said pitch (by a sublime measure) that we identify a given performer. We can say they are excellent technicians not simply because they control pitch and rhythm, but because of their the capacity to make calculated deviations and control noise, using it to color expression. And it may be this deftly wielded noise that more than anything else that brands the band, so to speak.

Broadly speaking we can examine the production of tone on a macro and micro level. At the macro level, tone is the inherent sound produced by a given instrument. On a micro level, musicians shape that tone with their fingers. The result is timbre shaped by nuance, which we call a musician's sound.
Within the context of Quantum Audio analysis we might further define Tone as not quite molecular but ‘rather sub memetic’.  The reason for this is that Tone exists over time; and using our myte analogy, can be said to be made up of a matrix of mytes. And as it happens, once we identify the elements of this organization, we can produce an algorithm and replicate it with simulation software (or if we are exceptionally talented, our own hands and cognitive powers as they lend themselves to musical performance).

This is certainly the premise by which cover bands ply their trade (albeit intuitively); it never sounds exactly like the real thing, but sometimes good enough is often good enough.

SUB MELODIC AUDIO PHENOMENA

The identification of mytes and the algorithm by which they operate is also the premise by which manufacturers of simulation software produce devices by which we can dial in an entire era, and therefore evoke collective memories from a designated demographic. No doubt, this is obviously a useful tool in creating a brand asset or scoring period pieces, not to mention commonplace today.

And so, I think there can also be no doubt that even the merest sliver of a song can capably evoke an emotional response, and that the identification of the sonic gestures responsible for this cognitive phenomena are sub melodic and devoid of rhythm patterning, in other words 'incomplete' expressions.

We might similarly ask how much information can be conveyed and decoded from within a single phoneme? For no doubt, nomenclature experts having their own understanding of the power of incomplete expressions sound, ply their trade by stitching phonemes together into new, but nevertheless highly suggestive words for their clients.

MUSICAL EXPRESSION OR AUDIO ALGORITHM?

But whether musical or linguistic in nature, assuming there is a cognitive difference in the two approaches (I'm not sure, either way), I do think such expressions require a different method by which to explain their utility as elements in aural message delivery systems and sonic branding than can be currently achieved by either the macro analysis of traditional music theory or music memetics.

And until that time, we can still take pleasure in knowing that they absolutely do exist, just as sure as we can know when the punch has been spiked with Lysergic acid diethylamide. That is, we know because these sub musical particles (and often non musical particles) act upon the senses like a hallucinogen, not because they are chemical in nature –they are not– but because of their ability to serve as very real psychoactive triggers upon the consciousness and conduits to virtual worlds and experiences.

It stands to reason then that apart from melody and rhythm, there is something else inside the music that makes any assembly of sound expressive. Some call it nuance and others call it noise, but if that's the case, that what we collectively call noise can be identified as essential elements in the production of expression, then clearly it is something akin to what I like to call critical noise.

Deconstructing Nuance

Bmearns

Isn't it amazing how some radio listeners who can identify a song from a tiny clip of sound.I certainly think so, especially if a person can do so with less than a second of sonic information. I think this phenomenon speaks to powerful capacity for even a small musical bytes of sound to evoke memory, not to mention a profound emotional response. And my fascination only deepens in those cases when I realize that I don't know the song at all, have no history with it.

It must be that however short and unique a given clip is, it nevertheless stimulates the ear according to a prior, similarly framed aural experience so that an equivalent response is thereby triggered. And if that's what indeed happens, then this tiny matrix of sonic data hits our brain like a zip file, immediately opens its contents and we respond to that data almost the instant we hear it.

In other words, very small packages can produce very, very big feelings.

As it happens, I think there's a lot to learn from this phenomenon, especially if one is in the business of music or sound design, or otherwise involved in the craft of creating sound for commercial application.

So, the question I want to know the answer for is not how long a clip has to be in order for someone to recall the title of a familiar work, but how small can an unfamiliar sample of sound be edited, and still produce an emotive response?

In other words:

How much information can be conveyed and decoded from within a fraction of a single edit, sample or beat?

Certainly, we can convey a mood and much more with even a single beat. Sample enthusiasts do this all the time, lifting a kick or snare, say, and dropping it into one's mix, with the result often being a sort of verbal shorthand for a specific era. Gated snare drums, for instance, recall the eighties, and by extension, a general feeling of the entire decade. Whether or not it’s fair or honest to reduce a decade to a single feeling or vibe is yet another question, but this is often what happens in the production of any period reconstruction for theater, film or video.

Feelings of nostalgia and evocation of mood aside, no doubt a single sonic event can transmit a complete message, so long as there is general consensual agreement that certain sounds, combinations of sounds, or treatments of sounds signify extra musical meaning (which is what I mean by 'message'). It may be that such terse transmissions do work upon us because what ever is there, however obscure, provides just enough aural evidence that a listener receiving this incomplete communication can reasonably assume to fill in what is missing, like reading words without vowels, or when someone cuts us off before we've finished speaking because they already understand the point.

PATTERN RECOGNITION IN AUDIO

For the purpose of this article, I'm going to define 'pattern' as a series of repeating sets, with each set containing at least one thing or concept that act or are positioned according to an identical and recognizable logic, so that the sets might said to share a corresponding relationship with one another.

(Click the link in the following sentence, however, if you'd like to read a more formal definition of the concept from Wikipedia.)

A linear pattern can be defined as series of points on a graph (or notes on a staff), but a pattern that expresses itself across several different platforms can seem to resist linear graphing, because it is assembled from a matrix of multidimensional data. Even more difficult if one platform is exists in a the physical world, and the other is a conceptual platform manifest in our brains.

PATTERN RECOGNITION

For instance, if we watch the weather or the stock market, we arrive at a specific numeric value on a daily basis, the temperature or the Dow. We can then plot that value on a graph and over time analyze the graph for patterns. But we cannot extrapolate what it means to experience a drop in atmospheric pressure or the market from a mere number.

Likewise, a notated melody conveys information about a series about pitches. In this regard it is like any other pattern plotted on a plot/staff. But melody may also present itself as a carrier for emotional or semiotic content, and it must be performed if it is to be properly understood, decoded and (hopefully) replicated by listeners.

So it may be said that while a plot capably presents data, it is a poor delivery platform for experience. However, one reason why plot analysis remains intriguing is because by identifying and studying patterns we might learn how to reverse engineer an experience, the way a musician interprets a score in order to convey something about the human condition for a given audience.

So, really the identification of patterns in audio must be expressed as more than a series of sounds that share some relative relationship. We must also inquire as to patterns which evoke an emotional response. It sounds difficult to do, but in fact, musicians, composers, beat makers, songwriters and sound designers do this everyday, albeit with varying degrees of awareness.

MEMETICS + SEMIOTICS

In musical memetics, we analyze a work in order to identify patterns which lend themselves to such reproduction. A series of two or three notes sharing a particular intervallic and rhythm structure can describe a motif; a motif being a repeated meme throughout a given work, and which if it is successful is also scattered throughout or embedded in the culture.

Memes suggest a relationship to biology. Yet, in specific regards to the application of memetic theory to sound, sound predates biology. It is pre-biotic and pre-linguistic. What is new is for an organic sensor to respond by triggering an emotional reaction to this incoming data set. And also, our capacity to organize it in a cognate way no animal before us seems quite capable of doing, the infinite sounds of songbirds notwithstanding. This is to say, we understand how to charge sound with both feeling and meaning.

I sometimes think that if a dog's ignorance of our language is indicative of what some define as a diminutive cognitive ability, then what does inability to understand what dogs say, say about our own brains?

This still young study of music memetics suggests an expanded study of motif, which when combined with a knowledge of semiotics, appears to promise a deep, sophisticated tool kit for the sound designer interested in using audio as a carrier of symbolic data, and not just as a confirmation of an onscreen event.

ZOMBIE MAKING MEMES

I think we should not remain content, however, to accept 'meme' as synonymous with 'idea', as is often suggested. Because, what would be the point? By this definition every point on a graph is a idea and a meme, and how does that help us?

Nor should we accept that a meme is simply an idea that replicates, and therefore one memetic structure shares equivalency with another. In other words – all viruses exhibit viral properties, and so what, unless they somehow impact our lives in a significant manner. For as it happens, some viruses pass through our bodies without our ever knowing of their presence, while others will kill you.

The fact is all ideas once ignited into a network spread, and by that definition every single word, every letter is a meme –is a replicating idea. Maybe so in the broadest sense, but that knowledge alone will not necessarily help us achieve creative assets that reach and engage a broad audience.

It may not even be correct to say that an idea is appropriated, because a brain once exposed impresses upon itself real, physical and structural changes to the brain matter itself. So, it may be truer to say that ideas appropriate humans.

Far be it from me to suggest that your ideas are not your own, but in fact, that might be exactly the truth.

Perhaps the key is to investigate whether an idea appears to be replicated or is replicating. What is the distribution method? Is something popular because people know about it, or do people know about it because it's popular. These are purely a semantic questions because, ultimately, all ideas spread in much the same manner, from one human to another.

IDENTIFY THE PATTERN: IDENTIFY THE MEME

More to the point, by asking such questions we are reminded that before we advance further, we will need to limit our definition of meme to certain, mutually agreeable, parameters. In music, it needs to be defined as more than just a single note. But as Richard Dawkins, the originator of the concept even inquires, is a meme an entire work, or a portion of a work? Is it a hit song or just the hook? Can it be a cadence?

In this practice, I suggest we identify a meme as a thing, a fully formed construct, formed from more than one idea (or point), and which together can be said to behave like an earworm. This notion suggests not a single impulse, but a fully mapped pattern composed in such a way that it distributes culturally relevant data and concludes where it begins, forming a cognitive loop.

That is why some do say a meme is simply an idea that wants to replicate, and leave it at that, because we perceive the thing as replicating within our own brains as though by some sort of self generating cognitive cell division.

However, in the system proposed here, the pitch center 'A' 440 may be considered an idea that has been replicated, while the melody for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (or the hook of any popular song) is a meme.

QUANTUM AUDIO: SMALLER THAN A MEME

From catch phrase to catchy melody, memes are generally linear in our perception of them. Those involved expanding the field will no doubt attempt to invent theories that establish memes in texture, timbre and dynamics. But I think that such pursuits describe another branch of study, belonging to Quantum Audio, because texture, timbre and dynamics color the meme, but are not distinct patterns that follow and independent and individual trajectory. That is, patterns they may be, but they are entirely dependent on a carrier.

Without a melody or readily apparent pattern to shade, they do not exist. They could said to find a parallel in inflection, and are therefore akin to sub particles, or behaviors, perhaps more closely related to internally manifest, God-made, or Nature-made, archetypes than the externally man made concepts we call memes.

So, for the purposes of Quantum Audio Theory, a meme represents a small cohesive compositional unit, but not the smallest musical unit, examples of which include note and pitch, even if such units are the result of a replicated and much used concept. Music itself will be said to represent a man-made, organized means of communication while any given work a single sonic event, the same way 50,000 words can be identified as a book.

FROM MEMETICS TO MULTIMEDIA

One might reasonably argue that just because something can't be seen without a microscope (or telescope) doesn't mean it doesn't exist. This is true, but it is equally true to suggest that such things lack cultural significance, although their discovery and replication of that knowledge might indeed be the result of an external cultural impulse to explore or investigate.

The bacterium Yersinia pestis is not a meme.
But the pattern of habits that allowed the Plague to spread through Europe is.

A love for the music of Beethoven (or Coltrane or Julie Feeney) is not a meme. But the hook or motif that seems set to psychologically irresistible internal repeat, leaving ecstatic holes in your brain is (although certain, obsessive ways by which admiration and fandom is made manifest might indeed be defined as memetic).

–With one important caveat:

MEME, EARWORM OR BOTH?

If we further narrow the definition of meme as only popular phenomenon that serves as the smallest carrier unit for cultural information, then we must expand our notion to include not mere melodies, but melodies that deliver according to that rule. Thus a hook may be quite catchy, but not contain enough information to be a substantive cultural carrier. Indeed, many melodies appear culturally neutral.

To put it another way, a given melody is equally capable of sounding like nursery rhyme as it is a section of a work of Heavy Metal. Thus we may conjecture that what any single, linear melody expresses is not necessarily inherent to the pitch pattern sequence, but the result of an individual Quantum Audio overlay.

And regardless of Quantum Audio overlay, an earworm, for instance, might say nothing of its point of cultural origin, but that doesn't stop your brain from repeating the thing over and over again with a kind of memetic madness.

Apart from memes, Quantum Audio particles, therefore, represent information carriers smaller than a meme, of sentient or inanimate origin, regardless of their capacity to be copied or self replicate (though note that units of inanimate origin have their meaning projected upon them by yet to be understood biological processes). And however minute these structures they may be, they nevertheless present us with a valuable area for analysis, if our goal is the creation of content, such as sonic branding, for instance, which is intended to scan along a 'multi dimensional', multi platform, mixed media matrix.


* * *

Photo Collage by Terry O'Gara

MAN WOMAN MUSIC MEME

Commercial music composition for advertising, film and other media is often created from a model, sometimes called a ‘scratch’ or ‘temp’ track. But even music created for purely 'artistic purposes' conforms to the dictates of external format. II–V–I, anybody? IV–I? Are you going to stay clear of two of the most popular chord progressions because they've been used before? Probably not. It would be a bit like saying one is going to embargo vowels because the letters 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o' and 'u' all represent phonetic clichés. We don't even abandon real clichés because despite their lack of originality, they may still nevertheless represent a truism. At the very least, they may be employed as useful shorthand in our daily and informal communication.

For purposes of media commissions, modeling can be extremely useful for many reasons –direction and budget estimation to name two. That said, the practice also comes with an inherent possibility of producing a mediocre derivate, not to mention risk of plagiarizing the source, whether by inadvertent or intentional action.

This begs the question:

Can a copy ever equal or surpass the original?

Or can it even just simply exist as an enjoyable and entertaining alternate to the source from which it is born?

Naturally it depends how one defines 'copy'. In the present case we mean a derivative work, but not necessarily a variation on a source as the word is commonly used, especially in a pejorative sense. Rather, our definition of Derivative is more closely aligned with the way the term is used in mathematics, being "a measure of how a function changes as its input changes..."

Anyway, the answer as it turns out is an unequivocal 'Yes'. And as a matter of fact, it happens all the time. For instance, take The Beatles, relative to every other single band that followed them, and which claim the Fab Four as a direct inspiration. Or at the other end of the audio spectrum, take free form jazz and ask yourself how free it actually is once you understand 'the rules' players employ that enjoy expressing themselves within that format. Free it may be, but complete and unintelligible audio anarchy, rarely, which it would have to be, of course, if it actually were free.

But how then is it possible that the collective works of any specific genre can claim originality from one other when they might all be formed from the same creative building blocks?

Thousands of blues songs, for instance, share nearly identical melodic licks without one being considered a copy or infringement of another. Compare Texas' Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Baby Please Don’t Go” to Chicago's Muddy Waters' “Mannish Boy.” Each work is wholly original even if both remain identifiable as blues based. So, the two tunes can't be completely unique; they must share some commonalities –those things that make these blues a uniquely American blues, despite regional idiosyncrasies, and not, say Central Asian khuumii, which is also, arguably, a blues of another independently formed and Asiatic kind.

Similarly, ‘Simple Simon Met a Pie Man…’, ‘Johnny had a little Dog…’, ‘Yankee Doodle went to town…’, when sung, do not possess identical melodies, but all three share strikingly similar musical DNA making each immediately recognizable as a children’s song.

I have often asked myself: When a group of works share they same style, what does that mean?

Likewise, when comparing two works that share creative building blocks:

Where does originality end and plagiarism begin?

–A lot closer in music than in prose, I imagine, for while the adoption of one unacknowledged sentence maybe considered intellectual theft by most who learn of it, the appropriation and practice of an entire catalog of licks and executions by those who love a certain genre is arguably what makes a given popular musician one kind of stylist and not another.

That said, there is a practice today, among mash up artists to layer one popular musical work over another. The resulting audio collage can generate a potentially new musical experience, but it is as often implemented as a kind of postmodern Critical Theory litmus test, in order to demonstrate, arguably, the bereft inspiration of one artist or another.

But the truth is, unlike language, music's combinations are limited. That's not simply my opinion, by the way; that's actually the way the math works out.

The Math of Originality

How many words are there in the English language?

As of this writing, the English language hovers at around one million words, and its speakers might generate new words every day (although what eventually makes it into the common lexicon is another story).

On the other hand, the Key of C contains 7 notes. Likewise the Key of G. And there are only 12 major and 12 minor keys to work with. Naturally, there are various ways to define or modify a key, so that one might reasonably suggest that there are more than 12 options available to us. Regardless, barring the wholesale adoption of a completely different theory of music in the west, then the melodic permutations –however you define them– are not endless, especially when we limit potential combinations to useful combinations, and then further limit those results to pleasing combinations.

So, guess how many notes are contained in the twelve-tone system of equal temperament employed in the composition of every single musical work in the western canon in the last 300 hundred years?

Well, that would be 12, because this widely used system of which we are long accustomed divides the octave into exactly 12 parts.

Useful Musical Combinations

Granted, octaves repeat at higher and lower frequencies, so that a grand piano (and the cumulative range of all musical instruments) generally affords us about 8 octaves of pitch choices. On a piano, that adds up to 88 piano keys. Therefore, allowing for repetition of any given note, we have at our disposal over a billion melodic combinations, which almost sounds like the number of melodies out there to be conjured up is infinite.

But if we relegate all similarly named notes equal value regardless of frequency, and ignore repetitions or eliminations, then there are just less than five hundred million musical permutations allowed. By this I mean, we say C1, C2, C3, etc and C1-C1, C2-C2, C3-C3, etc all serve to indicate the same note, C, so that a given sequence of pitches –a melody– composed from a chromatic scale and then transposed in parallel fashion to another key or octave can not be considered wholly unique from the original melodic placement.

Similarly, 'Pop Goes The Weasel' is still Pop Goes The Weasel' whether it is performed in C at the lower range of a marimba or whether it is played in Bb at the upper range of a trumpet, and regardless of what harmonic choices might support it, and not two or more distinct melodies.

Granted 500 million options is still a pretty big number, but when was the last time significantly large populations chilled out for any substantial length of time to 12-tone compositions? Or even a room full of people? Right, on a historical time line that begins in 1700 and stretches to infinity, the answer is closer to never than most fans of Serialism would care to admit.

More commonly, the music of the masses as it has been composed in the west for the last 300 years is produced by various arrangements of the diatonic scale, being the 7 distinct notes which express a common key. These seven notes can be considered the most 'useful' pitch options available to us because audiences generally find them pleasing, and the number of permutations they provide is just over 5000.

Personally, I would be quite surprised to learn if four or five hundred years after the invention of the equal temperament system, not each and every 7-note combination had been employed already. In fact, I think it's closer to the truth to assume that prolific composers and improvisational musicians cycle through every single one of these combinations on a rather frequent basis.

So, obviously, musicians appropriate from one another –and themselves!– and they do it all the time, not to mention every single time someone takes a solo. In fact, they have no choice in the matter, or there would be no music. Such sourcing and re-arranging of pre-existing elements does not indicate a meager imagination, because in the hands of a capable talent other parameters come into play which allow for infinite variability, prominent among them being 'Time' and 'Feeling'.

And in fact, it is also by this process that styles and genres are born and also how traditions stay alive.

Which is not to say originality can never be achieved, but generally what we strive for when we compose a new work in an existing idiom is a new expression born from familiar materials and performed within an existing set of rules, conventions or framework, and not something sprung out of a new theory (unless that is our task, and if it is, well, good luck winning mass appeal (or even a single client) with that). It is hard enough to get people who live on opposite sides of the same planet (and sometimes even the same couch) to appreciate, much less enjoy, each other's music.

And God help the drummer attempting to hold on to his or her so-called trademark beats, because each nifty new rhythm will without a doubt become the bed of every single Jamaican pop song by next summer’s end, and not a judge on the planet will hear evidence, complaint or accusation of intellectual property theft.

Beats, once born, belong to everybody. Not always melody, though.

Generating Clones or Producing Original Kindred Works?

Whether literally or intuitively, media composers face a similar issues whenever they subject a temp track to analysis. For them, the question is not how to clone a copy, but how to reproduce a kindred work.

Producing Original Kindred Works from analysis of a model is a process that requires one to determine the musical DNA of one given piece, and then to combine it with DNA of one's own. Not to simply find inspiration not from another composer’s thematic ideas, but to draw from a mish mash of archetypal, interstitial, semiotic, memetic and bio-musicological microstructures (audio units smaller than a motif) inherent in what we define as the model.

And then once identified, to synthesize these ‘structures’ with one’s own unique content and concepts, so that the result is in fact a wholly original work, derivative only in so far as one may say, they share the same style or ‘parent’ creative, that one piece was the inspiration for another, and confidently leave it at that.

By using terms like 'mish mash' and 'parent', I mean to imply that a kindred work is never composed via the asexual replication of source material, but by combining bio-memetic material from two different and unrelated sources, and then allowing for intelligent design and development.

A man and woman meet and form a child. Similarly, one composer or artist assimilates another composer’s or artist's ideas and yields not a copy but a wholly unique and separate work.

Afterwards we do not say a child (assuming it is not an unauthorized clone) is ‘a rip’ or ‘ripped off’ from either parent. More correctly we recognize that although both works, parent and child, are created from the same basic, elementary particles, that the child is capable of being as wholly original unto itself as its parent/s.

So, when faced with a temp track, what is it that we look for in our musical analysis?

A classical theorist might examine chord progression and melodic direction. But that kind of surface analysis can only ever yield a reproduction. Our purpose is different, not to appropriate a well executed concept in order to create a parallel work, but rather to create another original work that produces a parallel feeling. And in order to do that, our first task will be to identify a given work’s artistic and sonic DNA so that we might then combine it with our own, and thereby fulfill both a client's commission and yield our own contributions to the repertoire, and perhaps in the process also produce a work that will inspire someone else to make another piece of music.

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Photo Collage by Terry O'Gara.

Synonym, Metaphor and Inflection in Music

Recently I've suggested a new musical analysis I call Quantum Audio, which depending one's perspective, can resemble both genetic information and the search for behavioral analysis of sub atomic particles. Either way, Quantum Audio refers to the identification and analysis of small sonic elements, which when artfully combined can be said to be the building blocks of effective musical memes and signifiers.

Two major particles I listen for in musical works are Sonic Synonyms and Musical Metaphors. These are sounds embedded with meaning, or which trigger a common reaction in a given demographic.

Why does thunder, for instance, inspire fear? Indeed, what of sounds for which there is no human performer, only a natural act? A million ways for thunder to clap, and yet each one sends you running for cover. Is this reaction spontaneous, triggered by a certain range of frequencies, or is it the combined result of volume and perception of proximity? Or is our reaction triggered by other variables known or unknown?

And is the reaction genuinely spontaneous, culturally learned, or is it the result of instinctual programming. In short, has a physical pattern triggered a biological pattern, and is there a way to deconstruct this cognitive activity so that we might later reproduce our patterning which sound little like the source but trigger a similar reaction, as a means to deliver data rich audio? For now, it’s not important to know the real answer, or even if there is an answer, but it is important to consider the question.

Actually I think that most adept musicians understand ‘thunder’. The proof being that many a musician can create a facsimile of the sound on his or her given musical instrument. But in addition to mimicry, can we actually identify those sonic particles which whether separately or together produce the thunderous effect. In this manner, we might skim one effect from the other; power from fear for instance. The result being identifiable, isolated components we can integrate the effect in our own musical designs, much the same way we now layer one voice over another.

Of course, we already do this to some degree; for instance:

What makes one ascending string line sound majestic and another feel embedded with dread, although both might share the same sequence of notes in the same key?

As a young producer one of my first assignments was to serve in the capacity of line producer for the production of the Columbia Pictures audio logo. At the time, it struck me how this beautiful and grand work, conceived to produce anticipation in the audience for a forthcoming entertainment, might well teeter from anticipation to suspense, if only the tempo was pushed a few clicks forward, and the strings agitated by a degree.

I’ve heard that the Chinese language has many words or phrases that seem identical but in fact can mean different things depending on inflection alone. And of course, the same can be said about music.

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Photo Collage by Terry O'Gara.

Sonic Branding with Sub Atomic Audio

Quantum Audio describes a variety of micro structural units of audio transmission which may be collectively described as scale conveyors of symbolic data.

Charles Seeger has coined a related term, ‘museme’ to mean a “basic unit of musical expression which in the framework of one given musical system is not further divisible without destruction of meaning.”

I think there is some overlap between his ideas and my own independent musical musings, but for the time being, let’s explore the notion and implications of this thing I have dubbed 'Quantum Audio'.

Readily observable examples of Quantum Audio elements include Meme at the upper range of scale, which is itself composed of at least four key elements: Semiotic Signifiers (a specific cultural expression of Archetype), Audio Archetypes (a plastic, primordial and universal concept), Nuance (representing both the physical expression of data, and often a unique data unit itself), and Artifact (often unintentional and resulting from mechanical manipulations, but sometimes capable of a performer's control).

And it may be said that as Archetype (Organic) inspires Signifier (Designed), Nuance (Intentional Communication) can be said to produce Artifact (Collateral Communication).

Obviously we are expanding definitions a bit in order to express newly identified phenomena. Therefore, it is natural to ask if Quantum Audio particles are 'real', or if this investigation is merely an intellectual exercise? As it turns out, this is akin to asking if light is composed of particles or waves, because the answer is both, depending on one's method of observation.

Quantum Audio describes what have heretofore been considered intangible concepts. However, we may nevertheless identify and re-define certain notions as observable 'elements', and we do this by acknowledging the very real impact they leave on an audience. Indeed, the measurable result of this collective phenomena can be found in the production of identifiable and undeniable bio musicological reactions in listeners who share a common cultural context. This is to say Quantum Audio elements produce real psychophysiological changes in brain activity, the way we might expect any external or environmental influence to do.

In this paradigm, the motivic Meme will stand for the equivalent of a musical molecule. Next, the building blocks of music long identified by traditional music theorists we will serve as audible atomic structures. But our study primarily concerns itself with even smaller elements, including Archetype and Signifier, as mentioned before, which despite their diminutive scale nevertheless gently impress upon listeners (who share a common cultural context) observational emotional markers, and thus can be said to capably convey symbolic data in the form of audio, which we now designate as Quantum Audio Components or particles.

For instance, it is Quantum Audio that provokes an emotional reaction from even a single beat of music, or any short snippet of sound. Devoid of melodic information or even a rhythmic pattern, this audio 'unit' might not even be said to be music (except on a quantum scale), but our senses tell us it nevertheless remains an entirely capable platform for communication.

What is this then? A burst? An edit? An expression? I think 'Gesture' is a good word, but whatever it is, it is not the word in a sentence, but it is perhaps the syllable in the word, whether verbalized or printed, so infused with emotive or contextual potency that one brief utterance alone may require no further support or enhancement.

Oh?

Exactly.

However, it should be noted that within this system there is a world of Microsound which exist on an even smaller time frame than we are concerned with when we use the term Quantum Audio. The 'grains' of Grain Synthesis', for instance, however interesting and useful for composers, generally lie beyond the domain of this present discussion. A 50ms audio sample might certainly be itself composed from a carrier wave and other physical phenomena, but such assets are generally too small carry to meaning, which is what we are concerned with in this discussion. Suffice to say, the phrase 'sound quantum' as it is conventionally used typically describes physical units of sound, whereas Quantum Audio as it is used here is limited to describing indivisible semiotic constructs.

The application of Quantum Audio data is also what distinguishes the sound of a Rock Guitar from one that is merely amplified, independent of what kind of music is being performed. EFX units may be said to bathe source sounds with Quantum particles. Some may call this nuance; others may label it an algorithm. Either way, what is clear is that emotive quality appears rarely the result of one component, but rather more likely produced by a matrix of controlled minutiae.

Likewise, Quantum Audio data allows the carrier signal to 'push' symbolic data, either independently or in conjunction with melody. And it is these triggers that produce a resulting emotive impact on the listener, whether the musical expression is a full length work or a single beat. A capable musician or music designer can inflect/suggest a variety of 'meanings' on the same melody or audio design construction, transforming the material at hand into any number of rich and differently textured messages.

Interestingly, Quantum Audio is also that which allows listeners to identify one performer from another, creating a fundamental feature of sonic ID or audio branding design.

While not occupied with the natural world, the application of Memetic theory is a good starting point for anyone interested in Quantum Audio. The Memetic premise challenges us to deconstruct any communication until we can at last identify within it what might be called a ‘fundamental pattern’, that is, the smallest unit of cultural transmission capable of being replicated. (For more about music and memes, read: Music Memetics, 1 May 2010)

As with genes, memes follow biological laws –in fact memetic theory parallels genetic theory. But Quantum Audio components, like quantum particles, behave differently, as we have established, depending on how they are observed. Which is to say, while we might find universal agreement in the underlying Archetype, the Signifiers they inspire will likely mean different things to different groups (or nothing at all), depending on local definitions, cultural perception and demographic norms.

Unlike memes, which we can more rightly say are composed of Quantum Audio Components, Quantum Audio itself does not form 'a fundamental pattern', nor do such particles lend themselves to replication. No one hums a Quantum Audio Component, for instance. Rather, it is the assemblage of such elements into an audible matrix that create the potentially (and hopefully) exponentially, replicating musical gene/meme. They are the stuff from which patterning is made, and on the sublime and oft-seeming sub sensory level.

WHY ‘QUANTUM' AUDIO?

In physics, a quantum is the minimum unit of any physical entity involved in an interaction, and because this study conducts itself with the examination of musical microstructures, we borrow 'quantum' as a loan word.

Speaking of musical microstructures, an early inspirations for this inquiry arrived as a result of studying bowed stringed instruments as a child. Unlike a piano, or software instrument, a violinist must first spend many days, weeks, even months learning how to produce a suitable tone before they can hope to produce anything that resembles 'music' as the term is commonly understood. The result of such rigorous application is the development of an acute awareness, and the ability to control both musical and non-musical resonances, which produced in tandem as successive and overlapping sounds, and generated at what might be described a frame-rate scale, when mastered and summed, finally serve to create a single satisfying tone.

Years ago I even wrote an essay describing my fascination with the process of coaxing a usable tone from the various members of the string instrument family, and as thorough as I might have thought myself at the time, it's probable that I was still incomplete in my description of the process. (Contact: The Character of Sound)

One may argue a pianist must also learn ‘touch’, or that the operator of a digital instrument must also acquire technical skills necessary for modulation. But neither is responsible for their respective chosen instrument's tone. The sound of a violin is not the sound of the instrument itself. Don't believe me? Pick up a violin and bow and tell me if you can produce anything that resembles what we commonly think of as a the sound of a violin.

Unless you already have a a degree of competency with stringed instruments, or you think violins generally sound like screeching birds, the answer is probably not. Rather, the pleasing sound, timbre or wave form capable of being produced by a violin –as we commonly think of a violin sound– is that of a violinist engaging with a deceptively complex mechanism that he or she has mastered, and which he or she has formed a symbiotic relationship with. Contrast this with the sound of a piano -or an organ, or a harpsichord– which requires interaction with an interface, but little that might be regarded as actual symbiosis. Thus the sound of a piano –its essential timbre– is always the same regardless of who is pressing down any given key.

It is perhaps like the difference between flying a kite and using a hammer.

To be clear, we are limiting this discussion to the production of tone in the singular, not the full or even partial performance of a musical work.

Granted, the sounds generated by a synthesizer may be modulated in realtime by the electronic musician. And no doubt we can recognize an interface as a tool, the computer itself a collection of tools. That some are masters of this kit should therefore be a given. But it would be an over simplification to state that electronically generated sound is produced as a result of symbiois between man and machine.

This is not to disparage any single kind of musician. I've been a fan of the synthesizer and an electronic and computer musician for thirty years. And perhaps it is for this reason that I can easily recognize that one of the main reasons such instruments enjoy wide and current popularity is because aspiring musicians can get right down to the business of making music without first spending years training their ears and their bodies to work in tandem in order to develop the bio mechanical skill-set necessary to creating a reasonable steady state tone, much less actually make music. In short, perfection, in this instance, does not necessarily require practice.

It's important to recognize this fact, because it is only by the deft integration and application of sound that an audio designer can endow an otherwise sterile set of patches or samples with a gesture that causes his or her composition or construct to suddenly resonate with thrilling humanity, and therefore actually 'touch' people, which one assumes is always the desired result.

As a result, it's worth mentioning that a violinist's relationship with tone is never steady state. String players do not trigger a 'patch' or a sample, and so organic tone is never one static thing, but rather the summed event experience composed of many elements (some imperfectly made) and made manifest over a given time-line by a constantly changing and potentially infinite number of variables, controlled only by the fingertips, and the brain, of course –indeed the entire anatomical structure. This is to say that a violinist's tone is produced by his or her entire body literally working in concert with instrument and bow.

Another way of looking at it is to say that Tone, deconstructed, is not simply the pitched 'musical' or sonic focal point which listeners train their ears on, but includes an infinite number of peripheral, evolving musical sounds plus non musical 'Artifacts', which together produced and controlled by a performer in real-time over a given timespan, serve to enhance each subsequent pitch center with suggested emotive feeling or symbolic data.

To the trained and untrained ear both, Artifacts, in and of themselves, are rarely considered musical, but summed with tonal information, they create Expression, and as such they often prove to be the very reason we feel the way we do about a given performance.

Obsess upon a given Artifact, however, and the sounds of fingers scraping steel, the clacking of keys, the singer's quick inhalation (to name just a few examples) become annoying. But attempt to perfect a recording by eliminating such sounds altogether and we find that what we are left with is sterile by an inhuman degree.

Another fascinating –and easily observable– example of Quantum Audio at work is in the oft heard radio contests that ask listeners to identify a work based on a short clip. These bursts of sound may be as short as a single beat, or even smaller. Yet, regardless of whether one is familiar with the source track, or even if one can't identify the source of the edit, these short snippets nevertheless reveal themselves as fully capable of triggering any number of cognitive reactions, from emotion to memory to inspiration.

At any rate, it is clear that fundamental sonic elements, which we can identify as (micro) Gestures capable of conveying (meaningful) Expression –or Message– and which we collectively call Quantum Audio, is worth continued investigation, especially if one is engaged in the delivery of symbolic data for the benefit of a commercial client, such as in the production of sonic branding, or for some other utilitarian purpose.


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Photo Collage by Terry O'Gara

Quantum Audio: Post Modern Post Noise

It seems apropos that on the first day of a new year to make a resolution for the future. I would like to make such a resolution on behalf of staid Music Theory, which is I think in need of some new threads to follow. Mine is merely the opinion of a commercial music producer, but I arrive at this opinion based on the increasing necessity by which commercial works are judged not just on thematic development, but on their ability to communicate symbolic data.

Certainly, I'm not the first to suggest updating the core curriculum. Others before me have sought, developed and presented new methodologies for analyzing traditional music, e.g., the application of linguistic analysis to a given composition. Indeed, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music by Fred Lerdahl, Ray Jackendoff and Ray S. Jackendoff have had me pondering this and related topics for over twenty years. Along the way it occurred to me that while there are several approaches on the table, a common realization amongst many musicologists is that there is more to music than just the music itself.

Therefore, it seems to me, that at the same time we expand our meaning of Music Theory, we must also expand our meaning of Music. And it may also be that Composition itself is a limiting word, because so much of what we do in commercial audio is better described as Design.

Yesterday’s Music Theory parcels musical from non-musical sounds. However, today’s music designer doesn’t draw the same distinction. Likewise, today's Music Theory limits itself to the analysis of harmonic constructions, whereby a pitched note is like an atom, and a motif a complex molecule. But anyone commissioned with the design of a sonic brand understands even smaller particles exists, and they must possess some significant value because their deft placement produces increases the effectiveness of a given communication.

Traditional music analysis continues to be useful, but modern music designers will often expand their knowledge base by cobbling together a kind of personal post modern, post noise philosophy. By doing this, they form an individual understanding of how to communicate Concrete Information with Abstract Sound. The result is a skill set which allows one with some confidence to code commissions with inherent semiotic DNA in order for to maximize the efficacy of a given transmission.

By ‘inherent’, I don’t mean that a given sound is inherently imbued with any meaning at all, but that human cognition endows certain sound classes a specific meaning, but only after a collective audience has agreed to a shared definition of a given sound, collection of sounds or sonic experience.

Do you know what Happy and Sad sound like?
Do you know what Spring and Autumn sound like?
Do you know what Victory and Defeat sound like?
Do you know what Sadness and Anger sound like?
Do you know what a Chase or Love Scene should sound like?

Of course you do.

But what does Nokia sound like? Or General Electric? Or Ikea? Pick any brand. It's when we are faced with such a commission that we begin to form an art (and possibly a science) out of what may have once been executed by a natural impulse or guess work. Which is to say we form a technique, which is never present without a theory to support and direct it.

Choose a friend or family member: What do they sound like? How do you filter his or her traits and attributes in order to choose the ring tone to alert you to their incoming calls? –Yes, that too is branding! Do you do this by feeling or analysis?

Some musical professionals already do employ musical symbology, especially those who create movie scores, primarily as a means to enhance story, but still, mostly only at the motivic level. Otherwise, this art is not common, and more media composers –especially those in advertising and branding– would do well to begin exploring and implementing their discoveries.

My own ongoing study enters its thirtieth year and synthesizes relevant data from a variety of extra-musicological sources including: linguistics, semiotics, psychology, cultural theory, environmental sound and more recent findings produced by the study of memetics, which altogether have produced in me a nearly formalized bio musicological understanding of sound that I have taken to call ‘Quantum Audio’.

Of course, Quantum data suggests –as with quantum physics– an understanding that the world exists on at least two scales: Macro and Micro.

Let us agree for the purposes of this article that 'Macro' suggests the construction of traditional harmony and melody. Pitched notes are its atoms and motifs its molecular structures.

'Micro', then, as it applies to Quantum Audio, is the examination of sonic particles, both musical and non musical, whether initiated by man, machine, nature or created as an effect, or existing as a residual 'after glow'. Whatever category they fall into, they are always smaller than a motif, rarely longer than a note, but they are nonetheless significant because by tiny, almost imperceptible means, they shape our experience of a given musical or sonic work, signaling to us whether or not what we are hearing is a message or something else. In fact, their impact might be said to delineate the difference between whether or not we recognize incoming audio data as general information as informative audio.

British physicist Dennis Gabor also proposed a similar term, 'quantum of sound', to describe indivisible physical units of audio information. And while the two concepts sound identical, we will limit our use of the phrase Quantum Audio to describe only those psychoacoustic microstructures that are not so small that they cannot also act as carriers of semiotic messaging.

At any rate, if we are to become experts of 15-second 'messages', 5-second stings, three-second bumps, two-second logos and 1-second long (or less) navigational tones -and it is clear that we have to be– then it goes to reason that those who aspire to creating the most efficacious music design must begin analyzing music on a micro semiotic level, much as composers have long done at the macro level. And if we are to become experts in audio branding, then the research academics have long taken for granted will also have to become part of our skill set as commerical sonic artisans.

While it may strike some as gibberish, others will find that once one approaches the art of music design as the skill of assembling and embedding symbolic data, rather than, say, simply pasting sound to picture, or developing thematic support to enhance narrative, one actually does arrive at a different musical or otherwise sonic result –and some might even think an expontentially more potent communication– than one would have otherwise.

VUVUZELAS AND V-TWIN ENGINES

In Luigi Russolo’s seminal work, THE ART OF NOISES –first published in 1913-– the Italian painter and Futurist proposed that: "For many years Beethoven and Wagner shook our nerves and hearts. Now we are satiated and we find far more enjoyment in the combination of the noises of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds than in rehearsing, for example, the ‘Eroica’ or the ‘Pastoral’.”

In fact, “…We are therefore certain that by selecting, coordinating and dominating all noises we will enrich men with a new and unexpected sensual pleasure.’

Today, many still distinguish between sound and musical sound, but if film production and the tape recorder did not erase that distinction, the sampler certainly has.

As for Russolo, he wasn’t simply suggesting this would be an interesting pursuit, he thought it a necessary and inevitable musical evolution:

“…Futurist musicians must continually enlarge and enrich the field of sounds. This corresponds to a need in our sensibility. We note, in fact, in the composers of genius, a tendency towards the most complicated dissonances. As these move further and further away from pure sound, they almost achieve noise-sound. This need and this tendency cannot be satisfied except by the adding and the substitution of noises for sounds…”

Over the last century, our ears have indeed grown accustomed to the sound of the industrialized and now post industrial soundscape. That a sampled beat might be sourced from one machine, processed in another device and finally performed from yet another is not just no longer a novel idea, but in some genres, de rigueur.

But what Russolo did not foresee is that when we have at last subjugated noise –when we actually become masters of it; when we learn to enjoy it; dance to it, and even to sing along with it– that it no longer retains its shape as a continuously surprising cacophony, which is what he longed for. Nor could he predict that this so-called art of noises might perhaps reach it’s highest apex in the repetitive and musical looping of something we call hip hop.

But I think that he would be very pleased to know that noise-sound instruments, which he called ‘intonarumori’, would one day underscore the global zeitgeist. For evidence of that, tune one’s ears no further than to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Because it was then and there that FIFA President Sepp Blatter noted that one ubiquitous intonarumori in particular, the vuvuzela, contributed much to the "…noise, excitement, dancing, shouting and enjoyment" of the event.

But could Russolo have possibly imagined how well the art and conquest of noises might lend itself to the art of sonic branding?

For today, not only have composers learned how to integrate noise into what we now might consider relatively conventional musical compositions, but they also routinely use an assortment of analog and digital intonarumori in the creation of varied sonic designs, whether for score, device application, venue installation or audio mark. Not to mention the now common use of conventional instruments employed in unconventional means, producing controlled noise for color or effect.

Amazingly, along the way, audiences have also simultaneously developed the ability to intuit non-verbal messaging from these noise-built audio constructions.

A roar of a Harley Davidson V-Twin engine, for instance, is not just the distinctive sound emitted from a particular motorcycle, but it also signals the drive, power and freedom felt and projected by the owner of the vehicle.

Our ears, it turns out, are capable of decoding multiple layers of semiotic and emotive meaning from a single sonic event, even from a single beat.

Consider that whatever its construction, a sonic logo is nothing less than a carrier for symbolic data. And not unlike a small work of origami created from a torn page of a scared artifact, once unfolded (and translated or decoded using common cultural assumptions), it will reveal a world of meaning within it. Similarly, no matter how fastidiously edited, a mere sliver of sampled pop music from our youth can transport each and everyone of us back through time and space.

Interestingly, no matter how much our current compositions resonate with Russolo’s noises, nor how accurate his vision of the future; and despite our synthesizers, samplers, or the zeitgeist and the vuvuzelas; neither the kalimba nor the violin has become obsolete. This I find a particularly profound topic for further consideration. Not to mention how the guitar itself has also performed a neat trick by evolving into a hybrid sound design tool, capable of serving as both traditional instrument and electronically processed noise-maker.

It is all, somehow, music to our ears.

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Photo Collage by Terry O'Gara

Music Memetics

'MEME' is a trendy word these days, so popular in fact, that it is also now itself a meme. The word is often used to describe viral video, but what does 'meme' mean, actually? As it happens, the definition of ‘meme’ is in a bit of a state of flux –still evolving, it may be said– as specialists attempt to apply the concept to their own specific field of study.

First coined by evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, the meme was conceived as “a unit of cultural transmission.” And like genes, memes propagate themselves following the rules of evolutionary biology. Others have since modified this definition by declaring the meme not just ‘a’ unit, but ‘the smallest possible unit’ of cultural transmission. However, this modification is by no means universally accepted. Not to mention that two other necessary questions remain unanswered, being: What is a ‘unit’? And: what is ‘culture’?

Susan J. Blackmore, in ‘The Meme Machine’ (2000), points out, Dawkins himself expresses contrary definitions about memes, and why shouldn’t he? It’s clear from the tone of his writing that he thinks the concept is new to him, too, and yet because he realizes that it is so exciting and so potentially revolutionary, that he has to share it with us before it's fully formed

First, Dawkins says, “A meme should be regarded as a unit of information residing in a brain.” But then he also says that a meme “can propagate from brain to book”, and presumably from book to brain.

Arguably, these are not really contradictory statements, since books, media, computers and really, any man made device or object, for that matter –whether capable of storing retrievable recorded information or not– are all but kinds of external hard drives for our brains, i.e. places to stockpile the ideas of a man or an age for another day or another century. If this were not so, how could an archaeologist retrieve information from a clay pot? And yet, in point of fact, he or she does, with considerable regularity. One might even be forgiven for thinking that all relics come standard with a USB or Firewire port.

It is not exactly accurate to say this, but it is fun to consider that a shared misunderstanding of the word meme has also become a meme.

Ultimately, Blackmore decides to define meme as simply: “whatever it is that is passed on by imitation".

She also writes “We do not know the mechanism for copying and storing memes.” Maybe this was true in 2000, but it is not completely true today. At the very least, new research indicates that when we learn something, there is an actual change in the physiology of the brain. One reason why it maybe so hard to break old habits, is because it is not simply a matter of changing one's behavior, but doing so long enough to form new brain physiology.

Sort of makes it scary to think that the ear worm in your head isn't simply repeating all by itself, but that you are quite literally and actively engraving it into the white matter of your brain to enjoy for the rest of your life.

APPLYING MEMETIC THEORY TO MUSIC

As a result of this interest in memes, a fascinating topic of study regarding the application of meme theory to music has begun to sprout (one might even say replicate).

What is a musical meme? Well, one can think of a memorable tune as a meme, but only so long as we preclude the notion that a meme must also represent 'the smallest unit' of communicable information. Beyond that, definitions abound.

In 'The Memetics of Music: A Neo-Darwinian View of Musical Structure and Culture' (2007), Steven B. Jan tackles the task of applying Dawkin’s concept to music. I do not always agree with his conclusions, if only because the concept is still too elastic, and can therefore be made to fit almost any precept. How then to reduce the concept to one specific set of rules? It can be a clunky exercise; even Dawkins had difficulty with his own creation:

“So far I have talked of memes as though it was obvious what a single unit-meme consisted of. But of course, it is far from obvious. I have said a tune is one meme, but what about a symphony: how many memes is that? Is each movement one meme, each recognizable phrase of melody, each bar, each chord, or what?” [The Selfish Gene, p. 195]

It sometimes appears, we can regard anything reproducible, and therefore, anything man made, as a meme –and one day, that may in fact be the consensus. But for the purposes of this present discussion, I agree with Jan when he states:

“The biological analogy, indeed replicator theory itself, suggests that memes tend towards the latter end of the continuum Dawkins outlines –towards existence as short and clearly demarcated rather than long and diffuse units.”

Naturally, I'm unconvinced with examples that strike me not so much as transmissions of cultural information as they do the essential building blocks of western music theory, as when Jan suggests a common chord progression is a meme. But why shouldn't it be?

It strikes me harmony plays a supporting role to the actual meme. For instance, IV–I, commonly referred to as 'the Amen Cadence' supports a melodic line composed of a subdominant tone moving to the tonic. Are we to accept the chords sounding in tandem with the actual meme a meme itself?

We can also accept that the ii-V7-I cadence can also be said to transmit some kind of cultural idea –western civilization in its totality, perhaps(?)– if our definition is limited to the notion that a meme is a 'short and clearly demarcated' 'cultural transmission', and leave it at that. But by Jan's own standard, a (musical) meme is expressed only when it is sounded by a combined given arrangement and tonality.

Ergo, the following must be true:

The ii-V7-I cadence –or any other cadence– transmits different messages whether relayed by Stradivarius or Stratocaster.

Personally, I believe the mathematical foundations underpinning music theory have archetypal rather than memetic origins, even if certain expressions only replicate in one culture and not another, in the same way we accept signs are born of archetypes but may be expressed differently depending where, when and how they become manifest.

Also, I subscribe to the notion that a meme presents itself as a complete and independent statement.

All of this begs the question: What came first? The Meme or the Archetype?

If we accept the theory of Jungian archetypes, the meme strikes me an expression of the archetype:

The archetype is elastic. The meme is not. The archetype is universal, the meme culturally specific. The Archetype is primordial and therefore original. The meme, on the other hand represents a copy, however popular, born not of the Source but out of the Zeitgeist. And while we are, for the most part, unconscious of the Archetype. the meme reminds us of its presence every chance it gets.

If archetypes grow up to be memes, then the process bears a striking resemblance to the evolution of Brands. Graphic designers and brand managers do everything they can to define a mark before launching it into the world, but logos only actually become Brands when enough consumers endow and reflect consensual meaning/s onto or into a merchant or marketer's symbology.

Dawkins makes no such distinctions however. In practice, any viral idea is referred to as a meme.

I’m not sure what to think when Jan writes:

“…memes which appeared initially in symphonies composed by Haydn in the isolation of Eszterhaza in the 1770s continue to copy themselves into the brains of concert goers on the West Coast of America in the twenty first century.” –and later he declares “For the longevity of musical memes, the greatest advance was the development of notation.”

I'm confused because he seems to asks us to accept that any 'convention' is a meme, as when he writes:

“…one such example is the 'motto' opening of classical-period symphonies and sonatas where, irrespective of the nature of the pitch and rhythmic material, a piano-forte dynamic antithesis is stereotypical.”

If we accept that a meme is anything, then best the description of meme is the one posited by some anonymous editor or copywriter who writes in promotional copy printed on the inside jacket of Blackmore's book: “…a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, ways of plowing a field or throwing a baseball or making a sculpture.”

But if that is the case, and we are still intent on defining some precise and practical definition of 'meme', that we may justly apply the concept to our music endeavors, then we will have to shoot the word through a conceptual super collider, so that we may identify and examine even smaller particles of cultural transmission.

I'll save for another day further discussion on this topic specifically, and later examine the notion of nano memetic structures I call 'Quantum Audio', being fundamental audio units which once identified can be extremely useful in the construction and transmission of music design.

Contact: The Character of Sound

As a student of both the violin and viola, I used to slide my bow back and forth, fascinated by the kaleidoscopic tonal changes that occurred by ever so minute changes in technique:

Pull the bow perpendicularly across the strings so that it nearly touches the bridge, and one produces a wispy effect called sul ponticello. Tap the strings with the wooden portion of the bow, and one is playing col legno. Changes in tempo induce no consequential changes in pitch, but when accented by movements in the wrist or elbow, and depending on speed and strength of the accent, these actions can yield limitless variations in character and tone.

Similarly, tilt the bow along its central axis so that one is either pulling the bow towards oneself, or pushing it away, towards the head of the instrument where the pegs or tuning keys are placed, and you will also introduce a multitude of different tonal effects.

Changes of pressure –how heavy or lightly one rests the bow on a string as it is drawn– is yet another away to affect the character of the sound.

Guitarists intuitively understand the angle of the pick can have an equally significant effect on tone. Similarly, the choice between even using a plectrum, or using one’s fingers to pluck the strings will produce profound effects, not just on the strings, but on one’s life, one’s career, and perhaps one’s relationship to God as well. (Because as we all know, the devil loves rock’n’roll.)

Additionally, the method of contact of one’s left hand upon the violin's neck also produces several appreciable variations. And as with the guitar, the same pitch can be sounded from either a low position on a high string, or from a high position on a low string. The result this affords a player is one of subtle tonal difference between two or more otherwise identical pitches.

The application of vibrato –that is moving minutely on and off pitch– far from making the instrument sound out of tune, also creates an infinite variety of sounds framed by suckle sweetness on one end of the sonic spectrum and frantic anxiety on the other. But why would you do this, besides as an emotive effect? Well, as no two players make contact with their instrument in the same way, nor apply exact speeds of vibrato at the same time, nor can be said to be perfectly in tune with one another at any given moment, a rich choral effect is produced (when two or more string players perform as an ensemble). But strip away vibrato, eliminate dynamics, and though you may have cloned one violin into sixty identical units, what is left is not a powerful symphonic ensemble, but the syrupy singularity we often associate elevator music.

This instant access to variation, in real time, across the breadth of any work, by string players, is one reason why novice arrangers using modern electronic technology often fail to produce realistic string parts, even when working with recorded samples of real instruments. For in order to produce a convincing recreation –and it can be done– each facsimile must somehow be made different than its copies, reflecting minute variations in apparent contact between bow, left hand and strings, note to note, and even within notes.

Using samples from several different libraries is a common approach and aids in adding variety, especially if those samples are then further tweaked by the composer, and their expression modified via the application of high and low pass filters. Of course, it’s cheaper to do this than it is to hire a full orchestra, which is why professional composers will sometimes take the time to deal with such minutiae –or have their assistants do so. And if the budget allows, the samples will eventually be eliminated altogether, or 'massaged' into the mix so that they lay just beneath the surface of an actual orchestra.

It works the other way, too. I can think of many live orchestral dates, which I either produced or supervised, where when working with a small ensemble, we filled out the sound with samples in order to produce a grand orchestral effect on the listener. In this manner, an adept composer can capably convince an audience that a synth track with a soloist is a chamber ensemble and that a 16 piece ensemble is a sixty piece symphony.