From
my Electronic Music course : a few parting comments on listening and
putting the sonic object first. Apologies for the grammatical
weirdness in places - I like to give an off the cuff talk as the
last lecture of the year & this was one of those. This one
was given to the
superb
group 7 class of Audio Recording Technology at Vanier College, February
21, 2007.
-PM
Listen
I'd
like to take this opportunity to give you some parting advice, not as
your long-suffering audio teacher, but simply as one musical person to
another :
Listen.
All else in your careers, and in your lives as
musical people, is contingent on this.
The
sonic landscape is a busy one these days. Take the trouble to stop
where you are periodically, and listen. Close your eyes if you have to.
Take a sonic inventory of the world around you.
Right
now, I'm standing in front of the class. I can hear you guys breathing
and fidgeting a bit. I can hear the fans from the computers, and some
of the incessant chatter and coming and going in the hallway outside.
Is this room quiet? All of this sound in a 'quiet'
environment like a studio.
Even
when we sleep we hear. Those of us who live in big cities are
constantly bombarded by noise. These sounds are relentless and are
often remarkable solely for their amplitude.
For
many years it was assumed that losing one's hearing was a natural
consequence of getting old. Research has shown that this is simply not
true. Our loud society causes us to go deaf. Many people in our
urbanized society get hearing damage, not just from exposure to loud
music, but simply from the constant loudness around them.
Human
hearing is fantastically sensitive at birth, and if you protect your
ears, you will hear well long into your old age, barring unforeseen medical complications
of course.
You know, studies have been done to illustrate the
link between exposure to violence and subsequent desensitization
to violence. Is our culture desensitized to sound? Are you as an
individual? Think about it -
sound was once sacred.
Seek silence. Rest your ears. Listen.
Then - and only then - create.
On
a practical level, I think it helps to take some time to get out of the
city once and a while. While I suppose you may draw a certain degree of
Romantic solace from pastoral landscapes, the real reason is pragmatic
: the city is never quiet. Your mind must be free of distractions to
hear your own sounds. A good studio works equally
well, but this is much cheaper and less stressful.
Take an SPL
meter to where you live, even at 2 A.M., and measure the ambient noise.
It's ridiculous. It can lead to music becoming derivative, because
unique sounds are hard to grow when they're constantly being intruded
upon by the sounds of others.
This
concentration is particularly useful on a timbral level. You need
silent time to imagine the textures, the harmonic content, and the
envelope of your sounds. This is doubly important in electronic music,
for obvious reasons. You must imagine the music, very concretely.
On
a conceptual level, silence is also massively important. Until a piece
is written out and played, or realized as a recording, it exists only
as a sonic impression in your mind. Many of you have told me that you
are striving to write longer, more involved works. This is difficult.
You
can't really write big things until you are capable of holding big
things in your head. One useful trick I used to do when I was studying
is this : try to memorize a few bars of music a day. Really hear it in
your head, remember every note, every dynamic, every articulation. Over
time, the ability to store musical information in your head will become
much easier. After a year or two of this, you'll be able to do it
automatically.
I
also think you shouldn't worry too much about the listener when you
compose. I don't think you should ignore them completely, but pandering
is pointless - we have top 40 for that. Personally, I believe in
meeting the listener halfway - but no further. Write for those who take
the effort to meet you and your work halfway. What that audience lacks
in quantity, they more than make up for in quality.
This
isn't so much a case of the composer finding an audience as it is the
audience finding a composer. Making your pieces structurally coherent
will give the careful listener what they need to get into your work, no
matter how weird other aspects of it may be.
Just
as not all musicians are equally capable, you must remember that not
all listeners are equally capable. All people can be influenced by all
music, that is to be expected, but some simply lack the sensitivity to get
music. I don't know why this is. Perhaps it is the interpretation of
music in non-sonic ways. This is a mistake that keeps the listener from
genuinely touching or being touched by the sound. These external things
become a barrier to the experience. This isn't a question of
understanding technique either - I've seen music professors who suffer
from this too.
Depending on your temperament
and style, your pieces will fall somewhere on the continuum between
pure abstraction and program music. You'll have to find that point for
yourselves. But the sound stuff is the real thing. Neither mere
technique nor the extramusical loading of your pieces will give them
meaning. Music is a meaning unto itself.
One of my teachers once commented on the Zen of
music - you either get it experientially or you don't, and no amount of
talk
can change that. And yeah, I'm aware of irony that I've just spent all
this time talking you about a basically non-verbal concept.
Experience sound - directly.
Remember to listen.
SPL
= Sound Pressure Level. A device that measures the amplitude of sound
in decibels.
© 2007 Patrick McNeil / http://www.patmcneil.org
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