![]() How, then, does one filter out the unwanted public sounds (noise pollution) from all of the existing sounds in order to hear clearly? Humans do not have a switch or "earlids" to turn off the ear's listening. As the noise of the mass media and the surplus of sound bites compete for entry into our consciousness, is it possible for a composer to hear, for example, an original and creative music? We could argue that there is no "original" music, that all composed music comes from music or sounds that already exist. The sounds from everyday life in the twenty-first-century are not all that healthy and in fact can create hearing loss and mental confusion. Take a walk in a busy suburban mall and you will hear a good sampling of the electronic media noise which I find extremely distracting. Listening to those sounds and recreating them with instruments into the first organized music became an abstraction possible only for the human species.īut the sounds of the twenty-first-century (computer hum, modems screeching, TV's and radios blaring, car stereos with massive bass boosters, oven-toaster-microwave buzzers, refrigerator hums) have accumulated to such a volume that they have become a "distraction" and can actually damage our ability to listen and think originally, deeply, and clearly. ![]() From these sounds of life came a sense of rhythm and pitch. In past millenia of mindful human listening, it is possible that all the sounds of nature and of everyday living (cooking, children crying, building a house) were the first musics therefore, they were the most familiar and probably the most pleasant sounds. The sonic continuum of "easy" versus "difficult" listening changes over time. This usually means that I prefer to listen to a wide palette of sounds balancing the extremes from the full sonic spectrum. And if my activity is solely to listen with all of my attention, then I prefer music that is complex, rich, and unpredictable. Thus, my activity dictates the background music. And, if I am recording my music, I want there to be absolute (or virtual) silence. There are times, though, when I prefer not to hear the noise of machines, but rather to hear silence or to turn on my favorite "easy" listening music (which I admit is NOT my music!) For example, a constant noise makes it easier for me to concentrate when I'm composing music-yet Tony Bennett is good to listen to while doing housework or eating dinner. Personally, I find organized or "consonant" noise of machines very pleasurable, in fact more pleasurable at times than a symphony composed by Beethoven. Of course, all listeners have different thresholds for pain and pleasure, so the definition of what constitutes noise is subjective, and the balance between the two extremes is one of the secrets to a good composition. Sometimes it is necessary to create so-called "ugly" or "displeasing" sounds in order to reveal reality. Image 1.1 "Wak Auf"- Elise KermaniĬomposition does not need to be about creating pleasure. Noise, on the far right of this spectrum, is a phenomena which (for the purposes of this article) could be considered to be highly unorganized and physically and psychologically displeasing or damaging.Īll sounds from the left to the right within the sonic spectrum-from a Mozart symphony to the hum of your computer-are capable of being part of music composition. In the middle of this continuum is "sound," which could be described as less structured than music but more structured than noise. In thinking about the words "music," "sound," and "noise" I realized that my music composition "Wak Auf" relates to all three words in a sort of continuum that I am calling the "sonic spectrum." On one end of the spectrum I have put the term "music"-to describe what most people refer to as being agreeable, structured, tonal, consonant, melodic, familiar, commercially viable, etc. (physics) any disturbance, especially a random and persistent disturbance, that obscures or reduces the clarity or quality of a signal. ![]() Noise-a sound of any kind, especially when loud, confused, indistinct, or disagreeable. Sound-a vibratory disturbance in the pressure and density of a fluid, or in the elastic strain in a solid, with frequencies in the approximate range of 20 to 20,000 cycles per second and capable of being detected by organs of hearing. Music-the art of organizing tones to produce a coherent sequence of sounds intended to elicit an aesthetic response in a listener. I would like to start with some definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary:
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