Noise and Starting From Scratch

[Leewar]

Every day it seemed, there was an announcement of some dick who'd set his Boss Death Metal pedal to stun for half an hour, recorded it, then proclaimed it to represent pure nihilism or his "obsession" for women's tights or some crap.

To this day i still find the use of the word "Obsession" in promo blurbs so tedious im immediately put off listening to or buying it.

[Commander15]

Every day it seemed, there was an announcement of some dick who'd set his Boss Death Metal pedal to stun for half an hour, recorded it, then proclaimed it to represent pure nihilism or his "obsession" for women's tights or some crap.

To this day i still find the use of the word "Obsession" in promo blurbs so tedious im immediately put off listening to or buying it.

Not long time ago i remember seeing this promo blurb for some HNW bandcamp release that was about obsession of big spiders fucking humans.

[Andrew McIntosh]

Thinking about this a little further - does anyone remember a video in which two US Noisepervs (can't remember who right now, I think one of them might've been Stimbox?) are talking about what they do, basically interviewing each other, and one of them made the comment that when someone asks to see his live set-up, he's got no problem showing it to them, because as he told it, even if someone took every exact same pedal he had and set them up the exact same way, that person would still get a different result.

The thing about that is, I don't know if something like that has ever been tested. It might be interesting - setting up a live rig and having different people play it, to see what comes out. I wouldn't be surprised if something like that has been tried, but still.

I'm inclined to believe that the sound generated would be more or less the same but the "playing" would vary. Someone could go all cut-up crash-bang-whallop, someone else would drone, someone else would maybe just want to concentrate on one particular aspect. But unless there was a swapping around of the effects, or a removal of some, I'm inclined to believe there wouldn't be that much different.

But I could be wrong.

[Leewar]

Every day it seemed, there was an announcement of some dick who'd set his Boss Death Metal pedal to stun for half an hour, recorded it, then proclaimed it to represent pure nihilism or his "obsession" for women's tights or some crap.

To this day i still find the use of the word "Obsession" in promo blurbs so tedious im immediately put off listening to or buying it.

Not long time ago i remember seeing this promo blurb for some HNW bandcamp release that was about obsession of big spiders fucking humans.

At least thats a slightly different take on the aforementioned womens tights/stockings/high heels twaddle.

[Commander15]

Every day it seemed, there was an announcement of some dick who'd set his Boss Death Metal pedal to stun for half an hour, recorded it, then proclaimed it to represent pure nihilism or his "obsession" for women's tights or some crap.

To this day i still find the use of the word "Obsession" in promo blurbs so tedious im immediately put off listening to or buying it.

Not long time ago i remember seeing this promo blurb for some HNW bandcamp release that was about obsession of big spiders fucking humans.

At least thats a slightly different take on the aforementioned womens tights/stockings/high heels twaddle.

Or serial killer / giallo stuff.

[piisti]

All coming texts is just my mind floating: this breaking the sound is final back to me, something you( read I) couldn't handle before going through everything else. You have to understand a lot of genres to get this point. Have to have accomplished to understand this final version of sound. There is no shortcuts. If you have to tell someone what is distortion pedal you are in a wrong table.

But(!) There really is a room and time for dinner with hairy-back guys who give you a tips with mics, distances, etc. But it is maybe someday when you're in a deep enough.  Start to do something is with gears only gives an others only cheap second hand pieces. There is nothing wrong with bandcamp projects to me. It is easy way to spread the sound. If someone spend some money to release your tape...you are noticed. And some more will noticed you. Keep on grunting. Leijonilla välipäivä.

[Strangecross]

Thinking back to when I started out... it does not matter if someone is asking what to use to sound like The Rita or whoever, so long as what they have in mind is that what they actually would like is the puzzlebox from Hellraiser- imaging sounds beyond the possibilities of gear.

[punishinglight]

I know I am a bit of a socially retarded outsider, but I get all the points in this thread. Experimentation is the name of the game, and this is a fairly mature art form so it does take a level of maturity to tackle. I'm aware that over the course of trying to figure things out I've made a lot of admittedly weak or straight up bad material, but I am proud to say that I can't remember asking anyone for gear recs and have never striven to carbon-copy people that inspire me. Art is -the- path of self-discovery, so copying people seems antithetical. I enjoy listening to artists who inspire me because I can hear they use the gear I like to use and hearing how they use it gives me ideas in how to use it for my own work because in my mind, we are trying to express similar things but are individuals who will have our own flavors in the end. I will say that after playing a decent amount of "midwest harsh noise" shows it left me a bit disillusioned with the whole thing because most people's gear setups look identical and everyone just wants to trade "good set dude"-s. I am currently still working towards the sound that inspired me to make non-traditional music, and although it kind of bums me out it's taken so long I do have a realistic perception at this point in my life that this stuff is not natural to most people and does take work to make quality material. Hearing people use the same gear and sounds over and over only inspires me to continue down the long clumsy path towards self realization.

I agree that "noise oriented" gear is also a little silly, because that was what I started on, but it's kind of come full circle and I enjoy hearing experienced artists who can use that gear and still make potent work. Key word being experienced, because if it's a newbie I tend to find it uninspired and I know they don't know the character of their gear is super audible. In this area I am only dealing out judgment in areas I have personally waded through. Something else that has inspired me to stay original is reading comments on this forum that experienced guys can hear XYZ so I would never want to do something where some old head will write it off as "contact mic through fuzz pedal" tripe. Unfortunately it does seem like the majority of people nowadays value scene-comraderie over originality. Which I guess you could chalk up to different strokes for different folks. Maybe they're just doing it for fun or as a group hobby. Doesn't speak to me personally and tends to add more resistance to my determination towards self-realization.