spatiality of sound in noise and such music/sound

[n a a r a]

Hello everybody reading this! After stalking the forum for ages, I made an account and here we go. In this thread I'd like to discuss the matter of spatiality in noise and such forms of sonic arts, since I think it is one of the key features of the genre. I have a background in basic rock band music and songwriting, and only within recent years I've come to think of the different spaces created in the shows and records. I claim the typical rock/punk/metal/whatever musician doesn't put that much effort to this aspect of music. This is mainly because these types of music have so set tradition of mixing in a certain way. In noise and experimental electronic underground music, however, one's hands are free to a greater extent.

One tool to think the spatiality is to separate the different spaces the noise happens, for example:

- the actual space where the noise maker works, for example a rehearsal room or one's bedroom
- the heard space that is created with spatial effects and recorded material; the created musical space
- the space field recordings were recorded, for example a studio or a junk yard
- the venue the live shows take place; how is the space used, how are the speakers placed etc. – a space shared by the noise maker, the technician mixing and the audience
- the spaces you listen to the recordings
- the mental spaces the noise takes you as a maker or a listener
- the scene; or the shared space people discuss noise and share their thoughts, for example this forum
- etc

As a noise listener (and a maker, too) I enjoy spatially conscious material very much. One example of this is feedback created with speakers and microphones; it is playing the space itself in a sense, becoming aware of the room tones and so on. It is also very interesting to observe the simultaneity of the spaces, especially in stuff that has some field recordings in it.

Feel free to share your thoughts on the subject! It'd be especially cool to hear what noise makers think about the spatiality in their work.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

This is something I pay attention when both listening and especially when making.
I think it is connected also to sound source being "concrete".
A lot of electronic music, that is not amplified, and recorded in space, simply does not have the same sense of space. It is just the electronic signal inside the format. No sense of space or volume, until you adjust it from the volume button & pair of speakers.

Some other types of sounds, have a sense of size, space, loudness, build within the sound. Therefore, my decades long passion for seemingly "old" metal junk crushing, is often tied to its sense of loudness and noisiness. Same for feedback. Even if these may be illusions and volume of recording was not -that- loud. Even the utmost distortion doesn't appear to me a LOUD. It is just signal inside gadget, perhaps overdrive of cassette, until it is blasted out from speakers.

To record situation what sound loud, is not always easy. Often loudness erases a lot of nuance and detail that actually make noise interesting. Yet when succeeding to capture both, that is among my favorite ways of noise. Physicality, happening in specific space, that you can sense. Not just abstraction of white-noise-generator hissing.

Another thing, I like, is the combination of kind of surreal mix of space that can not exist. Not just room recording, but blatantly "unnatural" mix of noise. Where stuff like mentioned above, that has very physical, concrete and clear in form, meets unrelated space or "spaceless" sound.

In mixing methods, I would qualify this "imaginary" / "surreal" space very relevant. Where listener is the element. Such as, your brain functioning as mixer. I guess there must have been topic about it somewhere. Quite common practise, where left and right channel feeds sounds that your brain sort of mixes together. Sometimes method used is based on having two seemingly same sounds, yet different, and in headphone listening they merge as one. I was using method long before being aware it was used in more "psychological experiment".

I have friends who have passionate dislike for things like reverb effect. Artificial sense of space. I don't often associate delay or reverb effects to even simulate real space. Seems more of blatant effect, that barely creates the illusion. When they break the sense of "real space" - such as dry electronics or quiet acoustics are combined with artificial space used in vocals or other sounds, I am not annoyed at all. I tend to like also the "unreal", or even "surreal" feel too. Where space exists in various levels and not just band perforing in strictly limited real location.

[Andrew McIntosh]

A lot of electronic music, that is not amplified, and recorded in space, simply does not have the same sense of space. It is just the electronic signal inside the format. No sense of space or volume, until you adjust it from the volume button & pair of speakers.

In the past few years I've grown to quite like that sound, after years of being an analog purist. It has a cold, immediate and direct effect, I feel.

But not sure how good it is for Noise, for which I prefer a gluggy, messier, more further-back kind of sound.

[n a a r a]

I have friends who have passionate dislike for things like reverb effect. Artificial sense of space. I don't often associate delay or reverb effects to even simulate real space. Seems more of blatant effect, that barely creates the illusion. When they break the sense of "real space" - such as dry electronics or quiet acoustics are combined with artificial space used in vocals or other sounds, I am not annoyed at all. I tend to like also the "unreal", or even "surreal" feel too. Where space exists in various levels and not just band perforing in strictly limited real location.

Thanks for in-depth thought-sharing! I think the most interesting intersections of spatiality of sound lie in the in-betweens: the dry combined with the wet, the realistic field recording merged with the "unreal". I think making noise is essentially manipulating the time and the space and therefore the traces of the human hand can and maybe should be audible.

I work in the field of sound design, and directors often use the adjective 'realistic' when they ask for something. I am typically quite frustrated with these requests because it is a) vague and non-specific b) I thought the idea of mimicking the reality has been outdated and irrelevant in art for centuries already. But what I am really interested in is the delving into the borderlands of the real and the unreal, the outer and the inner etc. I'd say it is what I want to do when I work with sound. I have the possibility to combine different spaces together, create new ones or just work in signal only, trying to escape the inherent spatial qualities of sound.

I quoted this very section of the reply because it puts so nicely together modern approaches to space effects (= delay and reverberation FX). It is very interesting to try to record existing acoustics and reverberations and work with convolution reverbs (= reverbs that try to reconstruct existing acoustical spaces digitally) but my main use of space FX is just pouring them in as if seasoning food, listening to what happens and enjoying the ride! I think my approach comes from my lo-fi DIY background – the first reverbs and delays I worked with were so hilariously crappy that no one ever would have thought them as imitations of a real space!

[Major Carew]

A lot of my ideas for spacing in mixing come from working in post production audio for films years ago. A lot of 'rules' and little tricks I was taught I still use now. Still for the life of me though I can't get amps mic'd up right (to my ears anyway, I always end up making even the biggest amps I've tried to mic up sound lifeless or over I complicate things with mixed dry / wet channels) so I tend to use various reverb units instead to create an illusion fo space , unless it's a specific field recording i'm doing where the natural reverb basically makes it.

I work in the field of sound design, and directors often use the adjective 'realistic' when they ask for something. I am typically quite frustrated with these requests because it is a) vague and non-specific b) I thought the idea of mimicking the reality has been outdated and irrelevant in art for centuries already.

Yep, I heard that same question years ago when I had a similar job.Bit of a digression but have those same people asked the other most bloody annoying question I used to get asked when I worked in audio post production? That question being : "Can we have it louder?!" I had a job transferring soundtracks to optical film for archives , cinema etc, and I lost count of the amount of times I was sent to various studios by Dolby to tell a table of twenty 'creatives' why they couldn't have a car exploding as loud as they wanted it in the trailer for the latest Jason Statham blockbuster, or Guinness advert. "You'll destroy the film camera not to mention everyones ear drums, and all the money your firm spent on mixing in a fancy Dolby certified room will pretty much go unnoticed for the sake of a big bang" I would say, but still they'd persist. Dolby would reject their mixes every time and i'd go back, having to explain (with near fuck all knowledge if i'm honest) to them about how the physics of optical film works, and how they still couldn't have it louder. 

The other one I used to get when the same studio would occasionally host bands was...."What, What the FUCK do you mean we can't have stereo bass?" Your body/ears can't read those frequencies in stereo, there's no point" i'd try to explain."Those wavelengths just travel right through you, especially at this volume. Just centre it." They would persist, and you'd go "OK", and then they'd coming back asking why the mix sounded so muddy!

Anyway, sorry for the digression, just your account of film directors using the word 'realistic' with regard to sound made neck tensions & teeth grinding I haven't had for over ten years return in seconds, haha.

[n a a r a]

A lot of my ideas for spacing in mixing come from working in post production audio for films years ago. A lot of 'rules' and little tricks I was taught I still use now. Still for the life of me though I can't get amps mic'd up right (to my ears anyway, I always end up making even the biggest amps I've tried to mic up sound lifeless or over I complicate things with mixed dry / wet channels) so I tend to use various reverb units instead to create an illusion fo space , unless it's a specific field recording i'm doing where the natural reverb basically makes it.

I work in the field of sound design, and directors often use the adjective 'realistic' when they ask for something. I am typically quite frustrated with these requests because it is a) vague and non-specific b) I thought the idea of mimicking the reality has been outdated and irrelevant in art for centuries already.

Yep, I heard that same question years ago when I had a similar job.Bit of a digression but have those same people asked the other most bloody annoying question I used to get asked when I worked in audio post production? That question being : "Can we have it louder?!" I had a job transferring soundtracks to optical film for archives , cinema etc, and I lost count of the amount of times I was sent to various studios by Dolby to tell a table of twenty 'creatives' why they couldn't have a car exploding as loud as they wanted it in the trailer for the latest Jason Statham blockbuster, or Guinness advert. "You'll destroy the film camera not to mention everyones ear drums, and all the money your firm spent on mixing in a fancy Dolby certified room will pretty much go unnoticed for the sake of a big bang" I would say, but still they'd persist. Dolby would reject their mixes every time and i'd go back, having to explain (with near fuck all knowledge if i'm honest) to them about how the physics of optical film works, and how they still couldn't have it louder. 

The other one I used to get when the same studio would occasionally host bands was...."What, What the FUCK do you mean we can't have stereo bass?" Your body/ears can't read those frequencies in stereo, there's no point" i'd try to explain."Those wavelengths just travel right through you, especially at this volume. Just centre it." They would persist, and you'd go "OK", and then they'd coming back asking why the mix sounded so muddy!

Anyway, sorry for the digression, just your account of film directors using the word 'realistic' with regard to sound made neck tensions & teeth grinding I haven't had for over ten years return in seconds, haha.

haha, I'm sorry for these flashbacks! I actually work in the field of performing arts so I have a little different perspective from yours, but your examples are very similar to my experiences: the lack of knowledge and pure ignorance lead to problems in the artistic collaboration. I'd say, in film the gaps of knowledge between the sound ppl and the artistic lead are even wider than in our field because we are not so bound to technical specs, and we have less money involved (no need to lick producers' ass). I think many directors (film and theatre) could really use a 101-course on the sound physics and stuff!

Nevertheless, I feel almost lucky to make noise at home on my own now that the theatres are closed!