Silence Please, for the Soundtracks of Our Lives

Sometimes we require silence in order to hear ourselves think –such as in a library.

And sometimes we need to squelch sound in order that someone else's story or message can get through, as in a movie theater, or during the exchange of important verbalized communication.

We're in such a rush to score the whole world that it's easy to forget that arranging opportunities for SIMPLE QUIET or shaping RELATIVE SILENCE may actually prove the most intelligible means for creating a platform to communicate with audiences, customers and users.

One reason for that is that more and more of us are bring our own sonic branding with us, principally in the way of customized playlists.

One way to look at a playlist is the same way a radio executive does programming: Audio content aimed at a target demographic or lifestyle position. So, why shouldn't your personally created playlists say something about your own individual micro brand?

Well, they do.

Of course, if you're wearing headphones or ear buds of some sort, you're not actually broadcasting your brand. On the other hand, you might be the only one listening, but it's as if the whole world is suddenly branded with your music!

On the surface, a given experience might appear to be the same for everyone, but is it really if every participant provides their own custom soundtrack? For instance, such as at a Silent Rave?

Does the film, THE WIZARD OF OZ, provide the same experience to those who watch it in its original form, as it does for those who replace Harold Arlen's score for Pink Floyd's classic rock recording, DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (Dark Side of Oz)?

Among other things, personal soundtracks package the environment around us –and influence the emotion within us– so that we each experience (more than ever) separate realities constructed of our own respectively individual designs.

One can therefore assume that if some hypothetical space will perhaps more often than not be used by people bringing personal media players, then maybe the best audio branding for that environment is silence –unadulterated room tone– or acoustically treated specifically in order to diminish natural sound.

Sonic Branding companies invested in selling audible recorded solutions may bristle at the idea that absence of sound is ever a better choice than a creatively voiced sound option. I would counter that unlike music and sound design houses, or music supervisors for that matter, that Sonic Branding consultants needn't specifically sell sound services, but rather present themselves as providers of branded communication solutions, of which quiet space –or the illusion thereof– via Sound Masking or Active Noise Control or otherwise controlling a natural or prescribed Ambient Noise Level, is as valid an advisement as any (if that is indeed the result of one's analysis of a given project).

ILLUSION THEREOF: What do I mean by that anyway?

Silence is rarely absolute, and the pursuit of it might not be a valid goal except for a studio vocal booth, but allowing a public room or environment to murmur with natural activity, or designing an experience so that one or more natural sound sources are accentuated over others can also be a useful option depending on one's entertainment, experience or communication strategy.

Is the sound of a library actually silence? Or is it the sound of movement through the stacks? Pages turned? The shuffle of footsteps in a reverberant space?

* * *

Click any link below to read all the articles in the six-part July 2008 UNBRANDED series detailing the relationship between Effective Sonic Branding and Black Noise (Silence):

TO BRAND OR NOT TO BRAND?

That is the Question.

Part 1: Non Branding For The Best Branders
Part 2: Sonic Branding or Silent Branding?
Part 3: Websites and Sonic Branding
Part 4: The Sonification of Everything
Part 5: Silence Please, for the Soundtracks of Our Lives
Part 6: Black Noise Branding

Sound Solutions for Commuter Spaces

Manhattan's vast system of subway tunnels and platforms provides many great opportunities for sound, but not always or particularly in the area of information delivery.

But while the notorious reverb that is inherent in those cavernous, underground commuter spaces muddles official communications, it conversely provides us with often inspiring performance space acoustics (if one can otherwise ignore all the other distractions that define such an environment, i.e. platform shaking, 80-decibel trains thundering by us).

This circumstance strikes me as somewhat ironic, too, because in no other equivalent modern space have architects quite so flagrantly rejected any and all methods to tame the arguable problem of interior echoes.

Even concert halls known for reverberant spaces are outfitted with acoustic tiles.

Which is to say: Nothing man-made escapes his control, so why should a subway platform be any different?

Cathedrals and temples take another approach: Their inhabitants communicate whether by speech or music in terms that over the years all agree work with the space. The best church music, for instance, is composed with such reverberations in mind. The most inspiring sermons use a call and response that posit soloist with chorus, a model perhaps learned from the Greeks who employed it in their theatre.

Would call and response work for a transit alert? No, of course not. But one thing we can certainly take away from Medieval chant is the fact they were slow moving, allowing for complete comprehension of lyrical data before returning echoes collided with new incoming information.

Indeed, the many cathedral-like spaces within the subway network offer actively reverberant spaces for the many artists who do perform there, both officially and unofficially.

For those readers who are not New Yorkers, the Manhattan Transit Authority (MTA) has since 1985 hosted an ongoing Artist series called MUSIC UNDER NEW YORK (MUNY). According to the MUNY website, more than 100 soloists and groups are participating in the 2008 program, "providing over 150 weekly performances at 25 locations throughout the transit system."

And it was via the MUNY series that I first stumbled on Daphne Hellman and her group Hellman's Angels, playing the main concourse at Grand Central Terminal. Daphne played jazz and blues on an eighty-five pound gilded classical harp. Not only was it some of the most amazing blues I've heard, it re-framed my perception of the harp, and Daphne and her band felt born of the space.

But does anyone know if the MTA simply gives performers space and time, or have the powers that be ever commissioned music inspired directly by transit? When and if they do, the main concourse at Grand Central Terminal would make a fantastic hall for the work's debut.

However, perfect performance spaces don't always make perfect communication spaces. Reverberations essentially render transit alert announcements unintelligible. The result is often frustrating for commuters.

In one sense then, the Manhattan Transit Authority does indeed already possess a Sonic Brand:

For some, the sound of the the MTA is conveyed differently by each artist sponsored by the MUNY project. It is not then any one song that conveys the MTA brand, but the mere fact of song (in what are otherwise caves), which does so.

But I think most strap hangers would say any message is more often than not rudely squelched every time the PA system delivers a burst of incomprehensible noise. And that in fact, it is the squelch itself that is closer to signifying the MTA brand with sound (that and the squeal of a braking train, the two often overlaying one another in something that resembles caterwauling unison).

What if we can get beyond that problem, though?

At that point, –if the MTA were to actually commission a Sonic Brand asset– the resulting sound would no doubt have to deliver a message of safety, timeliness and confidence or authority. Funnily enough, I actually think a variation of the squealing brakes would work, but it would have to be re-sculpted from ear drum piercing to something that conjures up, say, a shooting star or a comet.

However, Commuter Transit and Information Delivery go hand in hand. We live in an age of small networks. We are inspired not just in how to get from point A to point B, but how to do so efficiently, not to mention economically and ecologically.

Obviously at this juncture, it would be premature to commission an aural image campaign, because any such message would land on the city's collective commuter ears with a dull, inauthentic thud.

Who believes the subway travel is safe? Timely? Comfortable? Efficient?

On the other hand, trains do provide a more or less economical and ecological method of transport relative to individuals in cars or trucks. So, one might very well commission a campaign that ignores the common complaints and announces our client's strength's and positives:

Commuter transit by rail: It's cheap and it's green.

I think we all agree, though, it behooves the MTA to first find a way to address the aforementioned issues, the problem of noise inclusive.

We don't just want to get there on time, or on the cheap. We want our trains to be clean and quiet. And we want important announcements regarding travel conditions to arrive on our ears in full comprehensible clarity.

Anything short of that lacks modernity and feels ancient. Time moves forward. Trains move forward. Our expectations move forward.

So, addressing issues related to sound only:

In the near field, the MTA needs to find a way to quash reverberations –albeit only in designated places– so that commuters can always be certain they can receive clear communication regarding the status of their commute.

Far field, the next commission of trains ought to be designed so that they provide a quieter experience for both passengers en transit and for those waiting on the platforms, whose ears are on the other end of an approaching train.

If and when the MTA can accomplish these two things, then the subsequent marketing campaign heralding the acoustic accomplishment might do well to include a Tonal ID or some other scalable construction born from the study of both sound and semiotics that delivers this message, in order that the client might reinforce –and commuters might acknowledge– the old model has faded out, and a new one has taken its place, one that is efficient, economical and ecological and evolved.

The Tonal ID would also prove a valuable asset for any broadcast advertising strategy, and possibly be conceived so as to be integral experiential asset to the information delivery itself.

One beautifully conceived sound to replace many random, often annoying sounds.

In the meantime, the MTA might consider delivering transit update announcements using communication means that are known to work in reverberant spaces.

Maybe it's time to bring on the yodelers!

Sound Byte: Tonal Rain Falling From Cathedral Space

I would not say it was a religious trip, but when I first visited St. John the Divine, in 1991, I was blessed to be present for a profound acoustic experience. As soon as I entered the Cathedral I noticed an oddly beautiful music drifting through the sanctuary. As I made my way from the back of the nave, I naturally assumed my visit coincided with an experimental rehearsal of some kind.

The music emanated from an unseen location near the altar. It was certainly chromatic, even microtonal, and I could not decide if I was listening to a harp or sitar. Either way, it did not strike me as dissonant.

The melody of the unknown artist moved in un-metered fashion, which is to say, it had no particular rhythm or tempo.

It was New Age but not naive.
It was complex without being overly intellectual.
Fractal-sounding motifs simply floated in the background, like a gentle tonal rain.

Its effect on me was absolutely transcendent. Needless to say, I couldn’t wait to find the source of this incredibly different music.

When I finally I arrived, I stepped upon the altar, and I discovered:

A man tuning a piano.

Guided by the tuner's ears, each awkward tone echoed over the next, until the sum created a constant blanket of sound waves whose only connection with each other, was that each represented an approximate step closer to what you and I think of as being ‘in tune’.

It occurred to me then, as it does so now, that we who live in a post modern age, where musicians often play through computers and effects; where jets and media enable both physical and virtual travel to cultures quite distinct form our own… perhaps now even the public's ears are so open that there really is no longer a distinction between sound and music, but rather –to paraphrase French composer Edgard Varèse– between sound that is well organized and sound that is not.

Sacred Jazz Modern Jazz

If one had attended the Ascension Ceremony for Alice Coltrane at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, in New York City last night, and unwittingly entered that sacred space head filled with boy bands, pop tarts or rock stars; then the performances by Rashied Ali, Ravi Coltrane, Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden and Cecil McBee, among others, would have turned your head off its axis, emptied it of crap and filled it up again with soul-satisfying inspiration.

Actual performances aside, I found it intensely interesting to experience jazz music in a Cathedral space –or what ever that thing is that Alice Coltrane called her uniquely styled be bop. As it happens, the music producer in me never turns off his ears.

Sound engineers and music professionals perceive large floor spaces, tall ceilings and hard surfaces as problematic, because such architecture causes sound to reverberate, and therefore reduces intelligibility. Contemporary music in particular –where every voice pursues a discrete sonic thread, and perhaps even dances along to its own polyrhythm– suffers greatly from reverberation produced distortion. (Assuming one is of the opinion that such music is not inherently made that way, either by intent or error).

That said, composers who write for such venues must necessarily compensate for echoing enclosures. It is no coincidence that music written specifically for church, such as chants and hymns, work as well as it does. That is because those who conceived such music take into account the particular acoustic issues presented by the architecture, and may actually rely on the space’s natural ability to produce reverberations.

Our modern or popular equivalent is the stadium, or sports arena. These spaces also present the same problem to both musicians and listeners. However, as with faith-based composers, popular artists have learned to create music that plays especially well in such venues. Rock bands like U2 certainly bear stadia acoustics in mind when constructing their songs. When the reverberant energy produced by The Edge’s guitar returns from the bleachers, it seems as much a part of the original composition as the source information, so perfectly does it fit within the music’s made-for-stadia form.

However, those who write with smaller or less reverberant venues in mind, might be disconcerted when hearing each note or phrase of their work return corrupted by repeating audible echoes slamming back a moment later from far off parallel walls.

Perhaps some at Alice Coltrane’s memorial service, performers and audience alike, thought as much, too.

However, though the delayed and repeating echoes may have proved problematic for others, they did not spoil the performance for me, but just the opposite. Rather, I heard music contoured by a greatly interesting aural effect. It struck me then that a musician playing in a church may as well be playing through the church, if you can think of the space as an effects unit of mammoth proportions, and if one is talented enough to understand what material works in such a space.

The result was that the distorted echoes of each musical phrase returned off the walls to layer, and therefore accompany, every musician's evolving performance, so that a Rashied Ali drum fill, a Charlie Haden motif or a Coltrane sax passage –to serve as various examples– echoed over an evolving score, and seemingly in time, as if one rhythm or phrase were being consciously looped over another.

This was different, I thought, this music in this setting, hearing it with open ears: and yet, not so different, because the net sonic result so closely resembled the way contemporary music is often made today –with layers and loops, artfully or oddly processed as the case may be.

All of which is to say, this be bop may be old hat to some – but last night, far removed from its usual setting of velvet lined dives around the world, jazz transformed by the mysterious acoustics of St. John the Divine suddenly sounded very new, very modern and very much alive.

And it may be that Alice Coltrane will always deliver us a revelation.


alice coltrane