Speaking of Stimulation

"Those who would mould public opinion must take due account of the relative effectiveness of eye and ear modes of stimulation, and particularly those modes of such vast and rapidly growing proportions as the screen, the radio and television. What effects are these comparatively new instruments of entertainment, of instruction, of propaganda, of culture exerting upon society. To which of these new tools of communication are people attending most readily? Are people remembering what they see on the screen and hear on the radio? Which do they remember better? And what do we expect from television?"

– From Eye vs. Ear in Moulding Opinion (The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 3, Jul., 1937), by Frank R. Elliott,

Holy Cow! 1937!

We haven't even fully answered –much less assimilated– the original question and here we are now, grappling with the effects of intercontinental travel, cable television, satellite communications, MTV, Reality TV, the 24 Hour News cycle, a thousand channels to choose from and a set top digital video recorder to capture it all, not to mention personal computers, portable media players, mobile phones, smartphones, smart missiles, first person shooters, video game consoles, causal games, social games, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, texting, sexting, tweets, blogs, apps, email, social networks, the erosion of copyright, the end of privacy and the emergence of globalization, ubiquitous branding, guerilla marketing, environmental installations, product placement, branded coffee sleeves, ad-wrapped buses, digital signage, desktop publishing, instant messaging, chat rooms, online forums, streaming video, beat matching, pitch correction, loops, samples, plugins, hyperlinks, passwords, adwords, broadband, cloud computing, databases, floppy discs, laster discs, compact discs, hard drives, flash drives, backup drives, global positioning technology, Internet search, Silicon Graphics, silicon implants, collagen lips, avatars, Unix, Intel, AOL, Apple, IBM, Windows, Photoshop, MySpace, cyberspace, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, jpegs, mp3s, movs, office docs, dot coms, hook ups and STDs, slow motion, stop motion, 3-D, P2P, Hi-Def, holographic, motion graphic, closed captioning, closed circuit, open source, outsource, sound bytes, ringtones, podcasts, viral vids, keywords, metatags, 'I Like', 'Friend Me' , friends with benefits, wiki this and wiki that, free content, cross border discontent, hacking malcontents and porn, porn, porn just about anywhere and everywhere you look.

Gee, is it any wonder that the last decade has been characterized by attention deficit disorder, Adderall, crystal meth and serotonin reuptake inhibitors? Ha, and fasten your seat belts because this ride has only just begun.

And it makes me think that given the sheer number of stimulants available –media and otherwise– we live in a day in age when it may never be too early to teach our children patience, yoga, zen, and other skills necessary to sometimes sitting still and doing absolutely nothing at all.

Dial C for Coda

I was cycling though some of the musicology blogs I like to read from time to time and was surprised to learn one of the most popular in the field, Dial M for Musicology, has closed up shop after a four year run.

That's a real shame for those of us who rely on such blogs to feed our own knowledge base, so I'm sorry to see it go. But if this is the first time you've heard of Dial M, you're in partial luck, as the archives will apparently remain online for a still undetermined length of time.

In the meantime, thanks to Phil Ford and Jonathan Bellman for the good reads. Mission accomplished, as they say. There are flowers waiting for you in the wings, and a limo for each of you is waiting outside with a well stocked mini bar.

Hip Hop with Everything Please

When Hip Hop exploded in the eighties, I didn't think of it so much as urban music, but as a great enhancement to culture –it gave America flavor, and it proved the perfect sauce for everything. Later, I was lucky to find musical compatriots and colleagues who heard the world the same way I did.

That in turn resulted in a bunch of studio rats taking over a downtown million dollar studio and using it to churn out an endless procession of global hip hop symphonies, hip hop blues, hip hop brazil, hip hop liturgies, etc. You name your favorite song or musical genre and we dropped a sampled loop or an electronic rhythm track in it.

–It was like, 'Hello, we're in New York, I'll have hip hop with everything, please'.

At times, when I romanticize the past, and my own career in particular, I like to believe that one reason advertising music became so credible at the end of the Twentieth century, is because my colleagues and I were slashing and burning our way through the history of global music, pillaging the classical canon for commercial purposes, branding financial and technology giants with ethnic folk music, and wielding tons of superbly rolled loops.

And that was my job!

It was like spraying graffiti on Mahler. And we used whatever cutting edge tools and technology we had at our disposal to make every track we created sound modern, not like a jingle.

I got a bit jealous, I admit, when after we had been creating these hybrids for years, I read how some DJ was being hailed as a pioneer by a music magazine because he had layered a blues lick over a loop.

Wow, we had already been doing an awful lot of that. And I had composed and recored my first blues flavored hip hop track to analog cassette in '87! Do you suppose he got the idea from one of our TV commercials, and now it's his idea?

Is that the way it works?

Yeah, actually it is, and now it was his turn.

Funny how possessive you can be about your samples, which, uh, half of them you probably ripped off from someone else's record, ahem, because wow, great orch hit, and enough room on either side to make a clean splice.

But, it was the idea (!), of course; the concept; the 're-contextualizaton'; the resulting collage or mash up or what ever you want to call it, that you own, that allows you at some very fundamental level, to claim the work is also yours. Or if not fully your own, then you consider yourself, at the very least, a collaborator, and perhaps even a prime mover (of ideas).

And at least when we had a go of it, it felt like we had a direct pipeline –via the advertising agencies that hired us– into virtually every American television screen and the eyes and ears glued to it.

But the real funny thing was that in early 2001, after fifteen or sixteen years of producing works atop looped rhythms, I had an epiphany, that loops were dead, because if I was tired of them, then the whole world must be, too.

Well, we know how that turned out boom chick boom chick chick.

Then 911 happened, and I (along with everyone I knew) felt like what am I doing? Looking for a drum hit on an old record or a hard drive, to sell what? Like, why not just bang a drum? Not to mention that quite suddenly creating music for advertising projects seemed like a pretty vapid way to spend one's life.

But skip ahead nearly a decade to the latter half of 2010, and it feels like this whole loopy thing might just be taking off now, and I'm actually liking it.

Or do I feel that way because after a year of teaching Noah, a gifted six year old music student, how to play bongos and use Propellerhead Reason, the software has also rewired my own brain?

Either way, I think no doubt about it, we live in an age of great rhythm, whether by human hand or machine generated. And a lot of it does sounds great.

So, is it just me or is the whole world getting its groove back?

Alien Eye Alien Ear

In an August 2007 Advertising Age article titled 'Why Indian creatives bring great ideas to global brands', author and multinational creative director, Prasoon Joshi, suggested that the fresh set of eyes Indians brought with them to Europe and to the United States, was in fact a valuable skill in its own right. The 'edge' afforded by this skill can be described as the inherent objectivity with which immigrants and other global visitors view a culture different from their own.

For you, a foreign culture might be New Delhi or Mumbai. For an East Indian, Cincinnati is exotic. So goes the theory, with the end result being new out-of-the-box ideas, being so fresh because they weren't constrained by someone within the culture looking at the world with a local (and therefore perhaps jaded) eye. But in fact, they were born of insight from someone looking at the world through the lens of an 'Alien Eye'.

"The familiar becomes a blind spot," Joshi notes. "But when viewed from a stranger's eye, this acquires a new hue. The ordinary seen in a different light is incredible and inspiring."

There is a little here to quibble with. Although, no matter where one is on the planet today, McDonald's, KFC, Pepsi (all served with a big side of America) can usually be found with relative ease (for the middle and professional classes).

But aside from that, I'm greatly impressed with Joshi's observations, because it explains my own relationship as a participant in the creation of some Great American advertising.

I also spent a substantial portion of my childhood growing up over seas, primarily in pre-Internet, developing countries near or below the equator. And it's because of this experience that I have often thought I owed whatever success I've enjoyed producing music, sound design and sonic branding originated from feeling like an 'alien' in the country of my citizenship.

The main reason being, that when I at last arrived in the United States, the 'First World' demanded observation before assimilation (and I'm not sure that I ever have, completely), making me from the start –from high school onward– a kind of amateur social anthropologist, of my own culture, no less. Fortunately, that turned out to be a good background for someone who went on to produce branded music solutions for multinational companies.

So, without a doubt, I think it's likely that what Joshi says about the concept Alien Eye also holds true for the alien ear.

But you don't need to be an expat to cultivate this 'extra sensory perception'. All you need is to believe is that travel (beyond local borders) and cultural immersion abroad is as important to one's musicianship as one's keyboard technique (or whatever instrument you play). Then hop in a car, a boat, on an airplane –a rocket ship, if you can– and act on that belief (if only for a few days, even).

I long for vacations not because I'll get to lay on a beach somewhere, but because I know that a dramatic change of scenery will force a recalibration of my perspective, changing the way I see and hear, as though both the world and self have been once again been transformed by intentional and prolonged exposure to alien DNA, not to mention the sun and the surf.


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Image of inner ear sourced from: Perception Space—The Final Frontier, A PLoS Biology Vol. 3, No. 4, e137 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030137 ([1]/[2]), vectorised by Inductiveload, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic. Collage by Terry O'Gara.

Black Noise, Green Sound and Conscious Ambience

In 2008 and 2009 I discussed the use of relative silence and 'conscious ambience' as potentially potent instruments of sonic branding. Silence is referred in some circles as BLACK NOISE. 'Conscious ambience' is another term I use for a related concept I also call GREEN SOUND.

Some background: In 2006 I was commissioned in a creative consultant capacity to provide some input into the creation of a new environmentally conscious media vehicle. Since my background is sound, after the project was finished, I ended up spending a lot of time considering how the global Green Revolution might affect the way I work –simply because those ideas were so prominent in my thoughts at the time.

One of the basic tenants of the Green Revolution is the urgent request to reduce our individual carbon footprint.

But meanwhile, my recording studio, your recording studio, everyone's studio is a plastic homage to coal, oil and toxins.

No wonder musicians are crazy.

Electronic music may sound like the future to your ears, but it's still an industrial health hazard to third world scavengers foraging garbage dumps for recyclable technology.

Not to mention, that sometimes the sounds we are commissioned to make are polluted or pollutants, themselves.

Too many people want it loud, meaningless and full of crap. If only audiences didn't respond to this kind of stimulation, but they do.

"Can we add something to make it more engaging", is often a coded request for 'more, more, more'.

Comparing aural to visual to messaging, It's interesting how additive actions play out differently between music and graphic. A two dimensional graphic (or 3-D on a flat screen) might catch your eye, but can it ever be said to be intrusive unless the accompanying volume is cranked to an unreasonable level?

No, simply avert your eyes, or turn your back and it's gone.

You can't say the same thing about sound.

I've never been annoyed by something I looked at (although I've been moved by terrible scenes of poverty and tragedy).

The same can't be said of sound:

Sound IS invasive.
Sound IS intrusive.

But in fact, that is the very reason why sound is also such a formidable communication tool.

At yet the same time, the power is greatly diminished with each successive addition of a sonic element. Pump a thousand sonic logos into a room at the same time and the result is NOISE. The same can't be said about the strip mall, or a grocery store aisle. You can call the offending view noise if you want to, because of competing messaging, but it won't make you go blind. On the other hand, too much sound will make you go deaf. If there is a visual comparison to be made, Sound is like a naked lady hitching a ride on the side of the road. You just might drive into a ditch looking at that.

And now, since there are more of us, there will continue to be more messaging. But BIGGER, FASTER, LOUDER won't continue to work in this busy environment.

What is required is a kind of environmentally cognizant sonic initiative. After all you don't need to scream at the angels in order to get your prayers answered.

*

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.

Hollywood Pink Noise

In a March 2, New York Times article, titled Bringing New Understanding to the Director's Cut, Natalie Angier reports the findings of a new study published in Psychological Science, titled: Attention and the Evolution of Hollywood Film (by James E. Cutting, Jordan E. DeLong, and Christine E. Nothelfer of Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley). The study produces new evidence that "films have evolved to resemble the natural rhythms of the brain."

I found Ms. Angier's report interesting, so I decided to seek out and read the original study myself.

From the paper's abstract:

"Reaction times exhibit a spectral patterning known as 1/f, and these patterns can be thought of as reflecting time-varying changes in attention. We investigated the shot structure of Hollywood films to determine if these same patterns are found. We parsed 150 films with release dates from 1935 to 2005 into their sequences of shots and then analyzed the pattern of shot lengths in each film. Autoregressive and power analyses showed that, across that span of 70 years, shots became increasingly more correlated in length with their neighbors and created power spectra approaching 1/f. We suggest, as have others, that 1/f patterns reflect world structure and mental process. Moreover, a 1/f temporal shot structure may help harness observers’ attention to the narrative of a film."

In other words, modern films appear to share a common construction that significantly parallels a 1/f or pink noise pattern. Pink noise is said to occur when "each octave carries an equal amount of noise power." And apparently, pink noise over a limited frequency range is ubiquitous throughout nature. (Wikipedia: Pink Noise). For the purposes of the Cornell/Berkeley paper, it should be noted, we are not talking about an audio signal, as we are a pattern.

The paper's authors write:

"The causes for 1/f patterns across the sciences are unclear, but it is now increasingly accepted that there are many such causes (Newman, 2005). In vision, Field (1987) found 1/f spectra in natural scenes, and Graham and Field (2007) found them in artworks. These results reflect the structure of the human visual system. Again, Gilden et al. (1995)—as well as Pressing and Jolley-Rogers (1997) and Van Orden, Holden, and Turvey (2003)—found 1/f spectra in reaction times, and Monto, Palva, Voipio, and Palva (2008) found evidence for their neurological underpinnings. These results seem to reflect the organization and structure of the human mind. Hollywood film might seem far removed from, and not amenable to, this kind of analysis, but we thought not. The 1/f temporal patterning has been found in speech and music (Voss& Clarke, 1975), so film seemed to be another good place to look. Further, we thought we might be able to trace its evolution in film."

And later, explaining their method:

"Our unit of investigation was the shot. Shots are the smallest film units to which viewers are asked to direct their attention. Shot form is sculpted by directors, cinematographers, and film editors. The purpose of that form is to control the viewer’s eye fixations and attention, and filmmakers do this fairly well (Smith, 2006). Shot relations are sculpted by the film editor to promote the narrative (Dmytryk, 1984; Ondaatje, 2004), and these relations create in the viewer what Hochberg and Brooks (1978, 1978) called visual momentum, the impetus to gather visual information. In other words, the rhythm of shot sequences in film is designed to drive the rhythm of attention and information uptake in the viewer. Perhaps the success of these rhythms reflects what Kael (1965) meant by “losing it” at the movies."

I'm not a scientist, but being a commercial music producer, it occurred to me that if modern movies indeed exhibit 1/f patterning, then maybe it is a result of their directors and editors using TEMP TRACKS as tempo maps to facilitate the editing process and 'drive' picture, which has long been an industry practice.

I may be mistaken but I think it may be said that the authors of the study appear to have treated film as a primarily –or singularly– visual medium. As a result, the utilitarian role sound plays in movie making remains unrecognized by the study. Of course, I'm not simply referring to the final musical score created after the fact, but music's use as a pre and post production tool. Those who arrive new to the craft may not realize that directors and editors frequently cut image to temp tracks, and sometimes pre-scores (especially in the case of licensed songs), thereby locking visual edits and actions to pre-existing musical cues; syncing visual events to musical events; rather than the other way around –music to film– which is the common perception (and perhaps traditional method) of how films get made.

Though I can only report on my own experience, there is much anecdotal evidence to support the argument that movies are increasingly being constructed using temp tracks. The process has been going on for decades, but it has become even more common as returns make it clear movies are investments vehicles for those who produce them as much as they serve to entertain the rest of us (i.e., producers who want to guarantee a picture's success will model a new feature on an existing feature, including the score, right down to very last musical cue).

The result is moving picture that is not simply scored with audio as part of the finishing process, but rather a series of images –what the study defines as 'shots'- that are first locked to a predetermined musical pulse, the same way dancers follow music, the same way a band follows its drummer, and not the other way around (usually). In effect, it may be said that the film footage is used as a medium to score the temp track with visual information. Only once that is accomplished is an 'original' score considered. But even when a score is created after the cut is deemed final, it is expected that the new 'original' score will also be modeled on the musical mapping established by the temp track.

It is not quite clear to me if the scientists who produced the study believe 1/f patterning in film an unconscious advancement, or the result of an increased skill set, or if they have any opinion on that matter (beyond their discovery and observation of the phenomena).

Either way, I believe that if modern movies do exhibit 1/f patterning, as James Cutting and his colleagues suggest they do, and no doubt their findings are without error, then maybe it is a direct result of these films being formed upon another construct that also 'resembles the natural rhythms of the brain' – i.e. MUSIC, specifically in its application as a temp track (and tempo map) during the editing process.

* * *

MARCH 3, 2010 UPDATE:

Follow up to my blog entry of 3/2/10 (Hollywood Pink Noise), regarding findings published in the report, Attention and the Evolution of Hollywood Film (by James E. Cutting, Jordan E. DeLong, and Christine E. Nothelfer of Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley):

As it happens, Professor Cutting was kind enough to write a response regarding the hypothesis presented in my article. I've received his permission to reprint an excerpt from his response here for the benefit of Critical Noise readers who are following this topic. As follows:

"The problem with your account as I see it, however, is that the musical pulse (from temp tracks) that can be used to guide shots (and adjusting their lengths) seems likely only to shorten or lengthen some local shots within or across scenes by no more than a second or so. The 1/f pattern that we found is dependent on correlational structure not only among near-adjacent shots but out to relations across 256, 512, and 1024 successive shots (and across many tens of minutes of film) where music and vocal rhythms would be vastly different across such reaches of film. What we found is not due to just a local pattern. Thus, my strong suspicion is that the effect you suggest would likely effect the power spectrum (what we measured to get the 1/f pattern) only in the range of near adjacent shots.",

–James E. Cutting
Professor, Department of Psychology, Cornell University
(March 2, 2010)

* * *

As a result, it has occurred to me in hindsight that although greatly inspired by Professor Cutting's findings, the 1/f pattern I actually founded my hypothesis upon is perhaps different and separate than the one observed and recorded by Cutting and colleagues –if indeed, the basis of my hypothesis can even be said to follow a 1/f pattern.

In essence:

Does the consistent delivery of (emotional) stimulus via a cinematic medium (produced in part by the use of temp tracks and tempo mapping), itself form a 1/f pattern?

For another day and another study, I suppose.

Terry O'Gara

Sound of the Year – 2009: Auto-Tune

Photo Credit: Clyde Robinson

A little over 10 years ago pop singer Cher released her 1998 hit, “Believe”. It was remarkable not simply for its success on the charts, but because it presented the public with the first widely heard effect called by the name given the device by its manufacturer: Auto-Tune.

Since then other devices which produce similar results have entered the market, but they all serve the same general purpose: pitch correction.

Artificial Pitch correction by studio technicians is not new, but its ease of deployment was. Prior to the introduction of these devices and software solutions, one way producers and engineers would correct a wobbly vocal performance would be to sample an entire vocal line from analog tape, then chop each line up into its component words or even syllables, and then manually trigger the vocal performance back onto tape, using the pitch modulation wheel of a synthesizer in real time  to  align and conform a pitchy performance into a stable, recognizable key.

The result was a pitch perfect performance –the equivalent of Photoshop retouching for singers. Except that over time, what started off as a transparent, corrective effect became a highly recognizable novelty effect when used to extremes, slamming off key performances into a rigid pitch grid that in turn transformed an organic performance into something resembling a robotic vocoder effect. Less retouched, so to speak, and more re-made.

Those who think musical performances should represent reality despise the effect, of course, suggesting those singers who use it can't actually sing. However, young music fans love the novel effect. There is a semiotic paper to be written here on why a new generation prefers its singers to sound synthesized and soulless.

Are we entering an age when we feel less than human? Or to attempt a positive spin on it, with mobile phones stuck to our ears and screens increasingly providing us a 24/7 pixelated lens to the world, maybe we actually feel more like cyborgs than humans, and therefore, no surprise, the general public's taste in music has evolved to reflect this transformation upon our psyche and the contemporary digital zeitgeist.

Whatever the reason, the use of Auto-Tune, whether employed only for pitch correction, or to distort and otherwise transform a performance, has become so ubiquitous, that it is arguably now nothing less than the sound of our times.

And that’s why Auto-Tune is the 2009 Critical Noise Sound of the Year.

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HOW THE SOUND OF THE YEAR IS SELECTED:

The Critical Noise Sound of the Year goes to that sound source, event, entity, happening or concept which so effectively produces wide response and reaction, whether intentional or not, such that it stirs collective emotion, inspires discussion, incites action, or otherwise lends itself to cultural analysis and resonates across the globe.

Prior Sound of the Year winners include The Housing Implosion (2008) and Mother Nature's Howl (2005)

Can Jazz Be Saved?

In the August 8, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Terry Treachout, the Journal's drama critic, asks 'Can Jazz Be Saved?'

Treachout begins:

"In 1987, Congress passed a joint resolution declaring jazz to be “a rare and valuable national treasure.” Nowadays the music of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis is taught in public schools, heard on TV commercials and performed at prestigious venues such as New York’s Lincoln Center, which even runs its own nightclub, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.

Here’s the catch: Nobody’s listening."

As it happens, I addressed the same topic in March 2007, but arrived at a different conclusion than Mr. Treachout. If jazz is no longer at the center of our popular culture, or 'living large' as they say, Jazz is nevertheless alive and it's actually living quite well (Jazz is Dead! Jazz is Dead! Long Live Jazz!, Saturday, March 03, 2007).

Interestingly, Treachout and I do appear to agree on at least one point: Jazz is everywhere. So, if it is true that no one is listening to it, then perhaps the apparent collective phenomenon of selective hearing on a such grand scale is in fact the price of ubiquity.

In other words, the cost of going global, and winning universal appeal, as Jazz undoubtedly has, is ironically measured by a sort of cultural transparency.

Does that sound absurd? Consider then how Rock, in the sixties, was once literally thought of as revolutionary by its fans. Today those same 'revolutionary' songs are being sung by children who think them merely a fun way to pass the time.

Or consider symphonic music, which we are also told is 'dead'. Dead as it may be, it also conversely lives a larger than life in cinema, which arguably makes it more popular than it ever has been, really. And yet, however popular, symphonic music as a genre holds little significance at the gravitational center of the pop universe.

But great trends and their resulting works do not end up devoured by a cultural black hole, never to further evolve, entertain, be heard of or performed again. Rather, they remain like points of light in our consciousness.

Which is to say, though such things may always be admired, they do not always continue to excite or inspire us, not with any consistent measure, anyway. But any inherent beauty can still be tapped and even become transforming if only we choose to linger with conscious intention, because now they are so well a part of us, that that which was once external and novel is now internalized so as to become us.

The jitterbug becomes old hat, but only once it has been assimilated. So does a seventh chord, or E7#9 for that matter.

It happens with people we love; it happens with music we love.

This is part of being human:

Eventually we all somehow learn to take for granted something that is even as massively great as a burning star, not to mention Bach, Ballet, The Beatles, too!

–and certainly Jazz.

MUSIC, LINGUISTICS AND NETWORK THEORY

Music, Linguistics and Network Theory form a magical triangle.

The combined power of the three concepts is as of yet untapped, but Network Theory will eventually develop widespread applications for audio and music, especially in the areas of advertising and commercial media.

So, where to start?

First one must realized that Music, Linguistics and Network Theory are not three distinct ideas, but areas of study themselves linked into a sort of 'small world' network.

That is, the ideas are closely connected, so much so that any distinctions between them are separated by but a few degrees.

• Music and linguistics are both forms of organized sound.
• All functional sound is organized for the purpose of conveying transactional communication via linked 'small world' networks.

One beauty of music is that it presents our ears with a perfect symbiosis of language and mathematics. It is math that performs like language, in the same way that light behaves as both particle and waves.

Musicians have long formed networks, but the sounds composers, music designers and musicians make is itself not yet connected as it can be. Once it is, we will find that we can build intelligently designed audio carriers capable of distributing communications via systems that behave in a manner not unlike other networks made up of independent, living organisms.

When this happens, audio producers will be able to produce distribution networks that can self-program performance material which may at first appear random, but actually possess a discreet intelligence.

Consider a quiet summer night suddenly enveloped by the apparent random song of locusts and apply that to transactional advertising messaging in public venue, say Times Square for instance.

If we combine artificial intelligence with network theory and draw on a portfolio of modern playback systems, such as Hypersonic Sound Technology, which can "focus sound into a tight beam for optimal sound directionality", then the result could very well be targeted communications that nobody hears, except for a limited demographic.

WORDS AND MUSIC AS DATA STREAMS

Words and music have always connected for me. Not just as in song, where lyric is attached to melody, but at a more fundamental cognitive level, where I'm sure both music and speech were born.

Within a given song, there are at least three data streams at play:

1. The social network comprised of musicians (which we are not so much concerned with)
2. Lyrical content
3. Non verbal Audio Encoded Data

No surprise then that if music can be thought of as a stream of Audio Encoded Data, that it must be capable of acting as a carrier of information, beyond the emotional response audiences may get from it.

And by Audio Encoded Data I do not mean coded or digitally compressed audio, but rather the inherent or perceived meaning conveyed by non-verbal sound. It is 'coded' because otherwise meaningless tones have to enter our brains before meaning is perceived, and not every demographic shares the same conventional ideas about sound. Like a foreign language, only those fluent in it will be able to understand it. Fortunately, others are often all too happy to provide a translation.

However I can't write about a piece of music and trust you will share my full emotional experience of it. However, after 'decoding' I will at least be able to convey to you information contained in a given work (not to mention my reaction of it).

For instance, I can say that the thunder was loud and frightening, and you may nod your head, which may suffice. But were you to have heard the thunder yourself, you may have found yourself running for the basement. So the sound of the thing and the description of it do not always produce the same reaction.

But what I find further interesting, is the potential to embed a sound with information beyond its emotive impact, and then the potential to trigger that and a multitude of other communications via some algorithm that mimics the natural ecology.

I do not mean to inspire a method that produces subliminal advertising, but rather to consider how a system might limit its broadcast to only those who want to hear a message, need to hear a message, or are predisposed to hearing it. And all eavesdroppers may as well think that they hear the sound of the ocean or something else, because for all intents and purposes, they don't have the skill set to decode a particular communication, which should therefore render it innocuous audio to all those beyond a given set.

If only via anecdotal evidence, we recognize archetypal sounds, organized sounds, and this thing we call music is extraordinarily powerful because of its capacity to convey non-verbal, meaningful transmissions.

We can take Lyrical Data at face value, regardless of metaphorical intent. For the purposes of this article let us agree that the word, whether spoken or sung, means what it means.

What is interesting is not the words, but how they are employed, especially if several independent, contrapuntal lines are sung by several tandem voices.

In an earlier post I described how as a child I wondered why people conversed as they do, often in monotones, instead of exchanged information via song. It seemed so much more efficient to me to sing, given that two or more people employing identical keys and meters, and engaging in a contrapuntal exchange, could talk to one another and overlap one another, and yet be completely understood by themselves and others.

I still like to imagine the possibility of one day walking into a crowded room and finding fifty or more intertwining inner voices engaged in simultaneous melodic small talk, the result immediately perceivable as a linguistic fugue, a musical tapestry composed of multiple communications, and yet were I to focus my hearing in any one direction, any and all communications would be perfectly legible.

The application of contrapuntal theory to distinct musical and non-musical audio communications is also a fundamental characteristic of Green Sound, whereby multiple independent transmissions carry distinct, legible information, without degradation, or introducing noise into a given environment.

But with or without the spoken or sung word, Music is still capable of signifying language, which is obviously why it is such a powerful communications tool.

SPEECH AS MUSIC

Our daily use of language –conversation– is generally non-melodic sound, and yet performed at a rate dictated by an unconscious rhythm metered out by a neuro biological clock (or metronome).

It seems that both literally and figuratively speaking, everybody is a talking drum.

Even when I read prose, depending on the density of the document, it may strike me that I am holding in my hands nothing less than a symphonic score composed of text. Not quite alive when I first begin skimming the book, eventually the writer's rhythms become apparent, until I am at last engrossed by the work. And as though performing from a score, were I to read the document aloud, the author's own breath, evident in his or her phrasing, would also become my own.

Sometimes I think what little I know about linguistics informs everything I know about music.

I'm certain that the same parts of the brain given to improvisational conversation are tapped when producing improvisational music. When musical improvisations are melodic –and therefore capable of serving as a carrier for language– they are emotive. When the melody is flat lined or removed, leaving only rhythm and harmony, the music is no less emotive, but pattern recognition replaces melody at the forefront of our consciousness and the math is allowed to dance.

I tend to group the musical works I like into three basic categories.

1. Works that induce induce a kind of meditative state such as trance. I think of such music has having a light (cognitive) gravity.
2. Works that lend themselves to providing a platform for physical activity (such as dance) or moving picture.
3. Complex works which shut down physical response, as though doing anything else beyond tapping a finger or toe requires so much effort. I think of such music as having a heavy (cognitive) gravity.

However one thinks of it, when I hear an inspirational sound, I want to describe it. It's these verbal descriptions that reinforce the way I feel about a given work. Music may convey or elicit emotion, but Language allows me to qualify what I feel and in turn, express those feelings, and play a role in allowing me to decode the music, so that others might also receive the same message (via my translation, of course).

Like a given word, a given sound may be the result of an arbitrary choice. But unlike a body of words, it is listeners that usually define the meaning of a given piece of music. Certainly an independent listener may have an immediate opinion about a work, but it is the consensus that has the last word: i.e. is it good? Bad? Cool? Cheesy? Is it the 'Best Rock Song Ever'. Is it a work of genius or the work of a hack?

A given individual might certainly hold an opinion contrary to that held by a group or cluster, but we are interested in individuals who are hubs, conduits for ideas. Our interest is not people whose minds are made up, and who use opinions to shut down discussion, but people with flexible opinions, people who can change minds, people who provide links to others in a network. What good is art of any kind, except as a psychological exercise, if it meets its end at a dead end (of an unyielding brain)?

MUSIC THEORY VS. NETWORK THEORY

A potentially significant element of audio applied or music related Network Theory comes into play when we begin to inquire how groups of people (audiences) all arrive at the same opinion and the same time. A performance ends and everybody either leaps to his or her feet and cheers, or they don't. Sometimes audience members continue an act of applause long after a performance is over. Hence, the necessity to inform fan clusters that 'Elvis has left the building'.

Equally interesting is the effect applause has when it runs back through the network to the performers, sometimes causing them to produce an impromptu performance or encore, not always pre-rehearsed, often better when it isn't. At that point we witness not a performance and an audience's reaction to it, but a loop circulating through the network from performer to audience and back again.

I often think that it is this kind of audience/performer communication loop that could be employed to good effect in a brand/consumer relationship, and that sound would play an integral role in this paradigm.

But does music convey anything but emotion? Isn't that enough? My gut reaction is to say 'No' and 'Not always', but the answer to either question, of course, relies on our definition of music.

Some define music as organized sound. It is, but quite often when we listen to the natural acoustic ecology of a given environment, the result can be music to our ears. Consider the sound of the beach (not just the surf). Consider the sound of the night. Consider what Sunday morning sounds like.

In truth, music is not always sound organized by the composer. It can also be 'found' sound, which is then organized by our brains the moment we receive it.

And it may very well be that in the future we think of music as not simply organized sound, but as audio emissions that conform to a network theory.

If we include pure rhythm and pulse as examples of music, and I think we should, then a snippet of Morse Code is every bit as valid (as music) as composer Elliott Carter's 'Eight Pieces for Four Timpani'.

In fact, Morse Code might even be considered a proximal relative to both American Indian and Haitian Vaudou drumming, because (as with Morse Code), both native drumming conventions use rhythm to communicate information beyond the passive emotional response experienced by listeners who don't understand the language of the drum.

Although most people understand 'the drum', at least when it comes to 'feeling' Morse Code, even if most aren't fluent in its language of sonic dots and dashes. We know that because there appears today not a single televised news show whose main theme isn't arranged around its urgent rhythm.

Which is to say, whether Morse Code, Indian drumming or a jingle:

What enters our ears may be first defined as music (or not), but what actually enters our brains is raw data: sometimes emotive, sometimes numerical, as often as not verbal. And if it is also designed as an information carrier, whose message is not produced as verbal communications, it is capable of being decoded by those fluent or versed in the music designer's particular brand of cryptography.

Which is not so difficult as it seems, because what I mean by 'cryptography' is cultural agreement.

And once we have an agreement of terms in place, then the Music + Linguistics + Network Theory magic triangle acts like conceptual jet fuel.

The fundamental act of listening to music is a whole brain activity. Linguistics allows for infinitely complex communications, and Network Theory provides us with a highly effective distribution model.

Thus the power of the MLN magic triangle is that though it may be a recent mutation, born from combined DNA, it is readily adaptable, composed of both modern communications intelligence and ancient archetype.