Describing Noise

[Balor/SS1535]

Something that has interested me for a while is the way that we describe noise and noise music.  By this, I mean the words that are used to describe the sounds.  I feel like I have read too many short reviews saying that a tape or album "rips," so I thought it would be interesting to collect some alternatives - besides, most noise does not sound like ripping at all!

Luigi Russolo, in "The Art of Noises," lists six groupings of noises:

1: roars, thunderings, explosions, hissing roars, bangs, booms
2: whistling, hissing, puffing
3: whispers, murmurs, mumbling, muttering, gurgling
4: screeching, creaking, rustling, humming, crackling, rubbing
5: noises obtained by beating on - metals, woods, skins, stones, pottery, etc.
6: voices of animals and people - shouts, screams, shrieks, wails, hoots, howls, eath rattles, sobs

I also remember coming across a noise blog a long time ago that attempted to put together a dictionary or list of words for describing noise.  Does this sound familiar to anyone?  I would really like to track it down again.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Perhaps you mean Soddys "terminology"?
Check this topic:
http://www.special-interests.net/forum/index.php?topic=77.0

[Balor/SS1535]

Perhaps you mean Soddys "terminology"?
Check this topic:
http://www.special-interests.net/forum/index.php?topic=77.0

Sorry for the repeat topic!  I have spent so much time digging through the old threads here, but I somehow managed to miss that one.  I am going to read through that now.

I don't think the blog I remember was Soddy's.  That rating system sounds very interesting, but the site I was thinking of was much more simplistic.  More like a dictionary.  I think there was also an invitation for others to share new terms as well.

[Soloman Tump]

Well its a 13 year old topic so you can be forgiven for not finding it....

RAWNESS 8.5

[FreakAnimalFinland]

And as side note, one doesn't have to worry about if something has been formerly discussed. Topics can be opened and discussed and if it fits to something already exiting, moderator can combine topics.

I fully realize, that not being native english speaker, descriptions I use, tend to be basic. Expect a lot of brutal, ripping, fierce and rugged, haha.. However, many times I see fairly simply terms such as menacing, brooding, jarring,... and I am tempted to see dictionary, just to make sure of the nuance of the word. In Finnish language, being such a brutes, we have quite limited vocabulary. English has like three times as many words as Finnish language. It is still easier to describe in your own language, than think how the rest of people understand terms as ...

Even in Soddy's noise dictionary, I didn't think Density in way that he describes it.
According to Soddy: The overall depth and complexity. The degree to which the abysmal depths of noise are both hinted at and permeated. The sense of being sucked into a bottomless chasm of unimaginable diversity and motion. Skin Crime scores it big, early Masonna barely registers.

While for me, dense would mean literally scientific measure. Such as:
Density is a measure of mass per volume. The average density of an object equals its total mass divided by its total volume. An object made from a comparatively dense material (such as iron) will have less volume than an object of equal mass made from some less dense substance (such as water).

Meaning, fully saturated, thick slab of MASS (regardless of its consistency, is it complex or deep), appeared to me as DENSE. Dense, even when being one singular sound. Dense, like some particular OVNM, some of The Rita or such for example. It is like situation where no more mass could fit into the sound. As opposed to.. Merzbow Ecobondage? A lot of depth and things going on, but for me it is not dense at all. Airy, spacy, lots of room left what could be filled to make more mass per volume. That is, if you have emphasis on "sound", not the composition! That is something I learned of Soddy's state of mind in the "noise stereotypes discussion", that this is probably key element why we had seen some things different?

So suddenly talk of noise becomes quite interesting, even small change of emphasis can change how terms are applied or noise heard?

[Balor/SS1535]

And as side note, one doesn't have to worry about if something has been formerly discussed. Topics can be opened and discussed and if it fits to something already exiting, moderator can combine topics.

I fully realize, that not being native english speaker, descriptions I use, tend to be basic. Expect a lot of brutal, ripping, fierce and rugged, haha.. However, many times I see fairly simply terms such as menacing, brooding, jarring,... and I am tempted to see dictionary, just to make sure of the nuance of the word. In Finnish language, being such a brutes, we have quite limited vocabulary. English has like three times as many words as Finnish language. It is still easier to describe in your own language, than think how the rest of people understand terms as ...

Even in Soddy's noise dictionary, I didn't think Density in way that he describes it.
According to Soddy: The overall depth and complexity. The degree to which the abysmal depths of noise are both hinted at and permeated. The sense of being sucked into a bottomless chasm of unimaginable diversity and motion. Skin Crime scores it big, early Masonna barely registers.

While for me, dense would mean literally scientific measure. Such as:
Density is a measure of mass per volume. The average density of an object equals its total mass divided by its total volume. An object made from a comparatively dense material (such as iron) will have less volume than an object of equal mass made from some less dense substance (such as water).

Meaning, fully saturated, thick slab of MASS (regardless of its consistency, is it complex or deep), appeared to me as DENSE. Dense, even when being one singular sound. Dense, like some particular OVNM, some of The Rita or such for example. It is like situation where no more mass could fit into the sound. As opposed to.. Merzbow Ecobondage? A lot of depth and things going on, but for me it is not dense at all. Airy, spacy, lots of room left what could be filled to make more mass per volume. That is, if you have emphasis on "sound", not the composition! That is something I learned of Soddy's state of mind in the "noise stereotypes discussion", that this is probably key element why we had seen some things different?

So suddenly talk of noise becomes quite interesting, even small change of emphasis can change how terms are applied or noise heard?

I don't quite like Soddy's definition of "density" either.  Something like "overwhelming" might fit better for what he is getting at there.  When I hear that word and relate it to noise, I would think of it in the same way that you do.

Interesting point about sound versus composition too.  I think that for someone like The Rita, those would almost be the same thing?  In good HNW, I would think those should both be the same thing.

Following on your last point, another thing that I have find interesting is describing noise by analogy.  In the N. "Resignation" set, there is a small insert with only a few sentences of text.  Regarding the first two albums in the comp, it talks about how they were inspired from considering medical institutions from an "aesthetic" perspective.  Just that simple introduction, though, was enough to really bring out the expressive aspects of the albums that I would not have thought about without them - the synths mimic the sounds of medical instruments with a cold sterility.

[Bloated Slutbag]

This here's my replacement rant for the deleted r1

Interesting to see the more "technical" (or decontextualized) aspects of Russolo's ideas boiled down into six distinct categories of sounds. As already I can see some sorry sod starting to take issue with some of the words chosen- or rather, the words chosen by the person who translated L'arte dei Rumori! And the issue would likely start with the somewhat arbitrary nature of the distinctions. But after all, that's part of what words are charged with doing; making those distinctions. Put enough words together and a convincing case could potentially be made for why screeching might be placed alongside humming. (Leaving aside how electronic amplification would since have muchly fucked up the equation- in a good way!)

Still it may prove an interesting academic exercise to attempt to boil down or isolate certain distinct or precise meanings into decontextualized nouns, verbs and adjectives. Consider for instance the nominal semantic density of a word like harsh. Or dense for that matter.

The thing is, what the noisemaker is presenting is necessarily vested with meanings, ideas, ideologies, intended or not, consciously or not. Such was the memorable Bananafish challenge to Mayuko Hino, where she was kind of cornered* into coughing up the word "oppositional" to characterize the social or political overtones running through everyone's favorite cosmic coincidence control center.

I suppose one question we could ask is whether the explicit (even didactic) attachment of specific ideas to sounds is effectively mucking things up or making them more "coherent". And then to the question of what is meant by coherent, which we may recognize as an often positively evaluated quality in the fields of art (many other more and less attendant fields notwithstanding!).

I freely acknowledge that r2 is probably even more OT than r1. Will try to resist the urge to delete this one.

* Keeping in mind that, as far as I'm given to understand, Bananafish retrofitted the interview format onto a straight block of translated text. So no cornering per se, more clever bit of wordsmithing, if my later understanding could be said to displace the original. Not entirely sure that it can or even should...

[MyrtleLake]

Silly semantics, this thesaurus-offering topic.

Reviews are best when offered in revelatory metaphors which reveal what is otherwise latent within a recording--whether by particular sound execution, intention or personal perception. Some contextual, cultural placement for its arrival is not required but makes for the meaningfully lasting commentary.

[Bloated Slutbag]

I resemble that remark!

Not failing in the meantime to acknowledge the perpetual love-hate relationship with the presumed meaningfully lasting. (He said, with acknowledgements that for last x years the folks back home have reserved the meaningfully lasting descriptor "silly" for all my preoccupations of the audiophilic persuasion.)

Getting the latent shit is all good and well, but how bout just getting...anything at all? That'd be a good starting point. I'll get there, some day.

[Atrophist]

In Finnish language, being such a brutes, we have quite limited vocabulary. English has like three times as many words as Finnish language.

That's not necessarily an advantage, however. English is a pretty standard Low Germanic dialect, it just has a couple of layers of Pig Latin on top. ;)

This means that English words aren't necessarily transparent, even to native speakers. You'll be able to understand a Finnish word, or at least guess its meaning, even if you've never heard it before. With English words, native speakers won't always be able to do the same, even with words that have been a part of the language for centuries.

An example: an old professor of mine (an American, linguistic genius who could — I'm not exaggerating — speak about 20 languages fluently, and was also the only non-Finn I've know who could speak Finnish without an accent) once told how he struggled when learning phonetics. That is, the study of what speech actually is and how sounds when speaking are actually produced.

For an English-speaker, you need to explain what the larynx is. A Finn can guess what kurkunpää is. So my prof decided to learn the parts of the larynx in Finnish. Because simply looking at diagram, it became obvious which one was rengasrusto, which one was kilpirusto, which one kannurusto, etc.

Anyway, on topic, I feel like a lot of this could be explained also in conventional musical terms, or terms of audio production. Although I guess I must admit that I'm pretty clueless with that standard terminology, too. I've just about understood what overdrive and saturation are, although I could not tell you which is which by hearing them. I guess I can predict what will happen when you turn up the "presence" knob on a guitar amp, but could I describe it in words? Hell no. Etc. Etc.

For me, an important idea in noise is texture. I guess it's a given that noise should be rough rather than smooth, but how exactly? I once told a friend that I wanted a track I was working on to sound harsomainen, which Google tells me is "gauze-like". But will you ever find two people with a similar understanding of what that word actually means?

[TS]

For me, an important idea in noise is texture. I guess it's a given that noise should be rough rather than smooth, but how exactly? I once told a friend that I wanted a track I was working on to sound harsomainen, which Google tells me is "gauze-like". But will you ever find two people with a similar understanding of what that word actually means?

In my circle of noise-interested friends, there there has developed a certain vocabulary for describing noise, in which we agree on what certain words like "textural" would mean. But that only works because there's an agreed upon meaning for those words in relation to noise. Even then, it's difficult. A word like "textural", doesn't tell you what kind of texture you are talking about. There's a difference in my mind between a leathery, organic texture and say, a rubbery texture. I think "gauze-like" is a nice word for certain sounds, I might steal it.

[Balor/SS1535]

This here's my replacement rant for the deleted r1

Interesting to see the more "technical" (or decontextualized) aspects of Russolo's ideas boiled down into six distinct categories of sounds. As already I can see some sorry sod starting to take issue with some of the words chosen- or rather, the words chosen by the person who translated L'arte dei Rumori! And the issue would likely start with the somewhat arbitrary nature of the distinctions. But after all, that's part of what words are charged with doing; making those distinctions. Put enough words together and a convincing case could potentially be made for why screeching might be placed alongside humming. (Leaving aside how electronic amplification would since have muchly fucked up the equation- in a good way!)

Still it may prove an interesting academic exercise to attempt to boil down or isolate certain distinct or precise meanings into decontextualized nouns, verbs and adjectives. Consider for instance the nominal semantic density of a word like harsh. Or dense for that matter.

The thing is, what the noisemaker is presenting is necessarily vested with meanings, ideas, ideologies, intended or not, consciously or not. Such was the memorable Bananafish challenge to Mayuko Hino, where she was kind of cornered* into coughing up the word "oppositional" to characterize the social or political overtones running through everyone's favorite cosmic coincidence control center.

I suppose one question we could ask is whether the explicit (even didactic) attachment of specific ideas to sounds is effectively mucking things up or making them more "coherent". And then to the question of what is meant by coherent, which we may recognize as an often positively evaluated quality in the fields of art (many other more and less attendant fields notwithstanding!).

I freely acknowledge that r2 is probably even more OT than r1. Will try to resist the urge to delete this one.

* Keeping in mind that, as far as I'm given to understand, Bananafish retrofitted the interview format onto a straight block of translated text. So no cornering per se, more clever bit of wordsmithing, if my later understanding could be said to displace the original. Not entirely sure that it can or even should...

This all (especially the chart you linked) make a lot of sense.  The more encompassing that a noise "dictionary" becomes, the more that it runs the risk of being too abstract to actually apply in a specific case - especially if the definitions of included terms have to be understood independent of all examples.

If all noise is vested in particularized contexts of meaning, like you mention, then it might make more sense to only describe specific releases/projects in isolation?

[Balor/SS1535]

Reviews are best when offered in revelatory metaphors which reveal what is otherwise latent within a recording--whether by particular sound execution, intention or personal perception. Some contextual, cultural placement for its arrival is not required but makes for the meaningfully lasting commentary.

This is a good point as well.  Two people coming from different contexts can use essentially the same gear, but come up with noise that still "sounds" or "feels" different as a result of the background context they had in mind when creating it.  I wonder, though, how you might then review something like RRR's recycled tapes, where effort has gone in on the part of the label to remove many of the aesthetics/background context apart from the name of the artist?

[Bloated Slutbag]

If all noise is vested in particularized contexts of meaning, like you mention, then it might make more sense to only describe specific releases/projects in isolation?

Yes. The only (very slight*) issue there being the utter absurdity of the proposition, even pre-internet. I keep circling back to "sounds like Merzbow" and thinking, that goddamn FdW, he was onto something.


* okay, possibly slightly more that "slight"

[Balor/SS1535]

If all noise is vested in particularized contexts of meaning, like you mention, then it might make more sense to only describe specific releases/projects in isolation?

I keep circling back to "sounds like Merzbow" and thinking, that goddamn FdW, he was onto something.

Haha - yes, and which of the 550 or so releases by Merzbow do you mean here?