Describing Noise

[Bloated Slutbag]

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

In fairness, FdW worked fairly closely with Merzbow, or with Merzbow source materials, and I would have assumed he was referring to a fairly specific set of sounds/ideas he would associate with the project. For me, it would probably come to something like, threading the needle between the composed and the improvised, with an ear for the broken, and with consummate artistry. But that's just me. Leaving out the more plainly euro-influenced derivations, like Pornoise, the sound is for a good and crucial decade (late 80s to late 90s) almost instantly recognizable.

Meant to come back to this, just for fun-

semantic density

This all (especially the chart you linked) make a lot of sense.

The guy who made that chart is a bit of an ideologue (and cartesian-plane-'o-phile) concerned with how information (knowledge, power) is or might be transferred. So potentially of interest to a wide range of overlapping concerns, often picked up in the fields of education. The education-oriented are invited to apply a "semantic wave" that is supposed to demonstrate how disseminators can start by grounding abstract ideas and progressively bring their audience up to a level of understanding that rhymes with the "agency" that's been a buzzword in education for over twenty years. The wave works by encouraging the audience to make connections that shape context, and for me would only reinforce the context dependency of, for our purposes, noise descriptors.

If this sounds a bit too abstract, here's an "agentive" proposal: try reading a few pages of PLAYLIST with COMMENTS/REVIEWS*, referenced against the particular releases you've heard for yourself. That's plenty of context to drive a self-derived noise dictionary.

* credit where do: the single best online resource for developing a lexical noise "vocabulary"**

** as there may be many potential vocabularies that might swim free of the (written) word. My only word on this: buggered if I know.

[cr]

I don't want to open a new topic, so I try it with this one. My question is not only about how to describe Noise in general, but how to describe Noise to somebody, who absolutely has no glue, what you're talking about. For example, you have a new girlfriend, and within weeks or months, you meet her friends and so on, and then there comes inevitable question...Well, what music do you like? And always, when I reply with simple words, "I listen mostly to Industrial, Noise, PE, and so on", returning question is..."What is Noise? What the fuck you're talking about?" So how do you describe this to other people, who just like and know the music, which plays on the radio, f.e. contemporary pop music? I mostly take the easy way, and say to them: Just search for Merzbow on Youtube and you'll see... Few seconds in and they just twist their eyes and shut their ears, haha. Always funny.
So, how do you describe, what you're listening to, to somebody, who possibly never even heard the term "Noise"?

If it's too much off topic, just forget about it. Thanks.

[Balor/SS1535]

I don't want to open a new topic, so I try it with this one. My question is not only about how to describe Noise in general, but how to describe Noise to somebody, who absolutely has no glue, what you're talking about. For example, you have a new girlfriend, and within weeks or months, you meet her friends and so on, and then there comes inevitable question...Well, what music do you like? And always, when I reply with simple words, "I listen mostly to Industrial, Noise, PE, and so on", returning question is..."What is Noise? What the fuck you're talking about?" So how do you describe this to other people, who just like and know the music, which plays on the radio, f.e. contemporary pop music? I mostly take the easy way, and say to them: Just search for Merzbow on Youtube and you'll see... Few seconds in and they just twist their eyes and shut their ears, haha. Always funny.
So, how do you describe, what you're listening to, to somebody, who possibly never even heard the term "Noise"?

If it's too much off topic, just forget about it. Thanks.

This is something I have thought about too.  For a while, the explanation that I tried was "it is exactly what you think it is," assuming that the first thing that comes into their head would be something like TV static or a car crash.  However, I have realized that that approach does not work too well...  My new definition for these purposes is "artistic compositions of non-musical sounds."  Surely that has its own problems/limitations, but it seems to have worked reasonably well.

[re:evolution]

I don't want to open a new topic, so I try it with this one. My question is not only about how to describe Noise in general, but how to describe Noise to somebody, who absolutely has no glue, what you're talking about. For example, you have a new girlfriend, and within weeks or months, you meet her friends and so on, and then there comes inevitable question...Well, what music do you like? And always, when I reply with simple words, "I listen mostly to Industrial, Noise, PE, and so on", returning question is..."What is Noise? What the fuck you're talking about?" So how do you describe this to other people, who just like and know the music, which plays on the radio, f.e. contemporary pop music? I mostly take the easy way, and say to them: Just search for Merzbow on Youtube and you'll see... Few seconds in and they just twist their eyes and shut their ears, haha. Always funny.
So, how do you describe, what you're listening to, to somebody, who possibly never even heard the term "Noise"?

If it's too much off topic, just forget about it. Thanks.

When this happens I start from the presumption that most people who ask that sort of question are merely being polite and don't actually want to be dragged down into some obscure music rabbit hole. I usually simple describe it as: 'abstract and experimental non-commercial music, that most would not even classify as music'. Usually that is the end of it as the person asking the original question does not continue asking any further questions. But if there is some interest and some level of knowledge I see where it goes from their response.

This happened recently when speaking with an American / New York guy now living in Melbourne and who has a cabaret/circus/burlesque background. When I gave my vague description, he immediately said: "you mean industrial music like TG?" which I was completely taken aback by. Turns out he was/is friends with Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jane (having first met Lady Jane through his performance background), and proceeded to tell me about having a chance to dig through Gen's extensive archive in an attempt to get it into some sort of order. It was an illuminating and unexpected conversation.

[cr]

When this happens I start from the presumption that most people who ask that sort of question are merely being polite and don't actually want to be dragged down into some obscure music rabbit hole. I usually simple describe it as: 'abstract and experimental non-commercial music, that most would not even classify as music'.

Yes, that's true. People merely being polite, but without real interest...and so I also say "Oh, I like experimental music". When that's not enough, I bring the Merzbow YT suggestion. But then, the discussion is over most of the time, haha.

[JLIAT]

Describing noise(s) – interesting. There is the 'academic' problem with semiotics (sorry) where in England dogs 'Bark' or go 'Woof' but in other countries : Balinese – kong, kong: Tamil – wal wal: etc. Or better (less academic) this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVon8qgGSbE   Al Murray describing Hell in different accents 1:39 in English - 2:52 in French 3:33 American etc. So maybe these descriptions re Luigi Russolo's categories sound more lyrical in Italian than other languages / accents. So describing noise can be difficult, though it is tempting to do just this in a review, despite the fact that normally there is a bandcamp link for the reader to hear for themselves, which , for me a least, makes reviewing difficult, and with the advent of smart phones makes even describing noise to strangers easy.

As for a more 'objective' description, I got into a mess by using standard deviation and signal to noise measurements, as did Nick Collins in a much more refined use of SuperCollider- his ideas seemed to to be unwelcome amongst academics. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/31898/622950.pdf Page 79 onwards- Merzbow et al.