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Looper's Delight
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Stephan said: >I often notice (or maybe >just lapse into a particular state) that when in a "noisy" environment >such as a >crowded restaurant, an effort can be made to treat all of the various sounds >(snippets of conversations, clinks of glass and silverware, etc., at various >frequencies) in a detached or homogeneous way. The result is a rather smooth >cacophony that rises and falls with bits of recognizable verbage coming >occasionlly to the surface. It takes a little effort to treat all of the sound >sources in such an environment as totally equal with no intrinsic meaning in >terms of language, etc., but the result is a very interesting and somewhat >exhilarating, "sound collage" experience. > >This is probably brought on by many years of intense listening to music of >various sorts (including my own) I think we're getting back into the realm of "loop religion" here! I've had similar experiences where I tend to zone out by intensely concentrating on and/or suddenly becoming aware of all the surrounding sounds. I realize that this is recommended within Buddhism as an exercise in centering and focus. I'm no student of Buddhism, but I always liked this idea, at least in theory. And I believe that this was the basis of John Cage's experimental "composition" called 4'33" (performer sits behind instrument and remains silent for 4 minutes and 33 seconds -- the point being that all the ambient sounds of the hall [papers rustling, throats clearing, overhead fans whirring, etc.] ARE the music.) But to be honest, I get a little frightened when I realize that I've been driving on an expressway at 75 mph with the windows down and enjoying the "musical content" of vehicles rushing by in the opposite lanes, horns honking, all the pings and buzzes that emanate from my dashboard, etc. It makes me think -- OK, it's great that I can think of this as "music" -- but I should be concentrating more on my driving! I wouldn't want the performance to end with squealing brakes and crunching metal. A month or two ago I was walking down several flights of stairs in my building at work. The steam pipes starting hissing and giving off a fairly strident, screechy sound. But then a second tone arose, quickly followed by a third. Despite the unpleasant texture of the hiss, the resulting chord was really quite lovely. It made me wonder how often this sort of thing occurs. I had the idea that I'd wind up sneaking away from my desk and spending hours loitering in the stairwell waiting for it to happen again. But common sense prevailed and I haven't started this practice. Yet. A rather more pleasant experience occurred last week. I woke up at about 4:30 in the morning because all the birds outside my window were waking up (these birds are LOUD). Usually when this happens I get angry since it's hard to get back to sleep for another hour until they calm down, which is when I'm getting up anyway. But this one morning I sort of slowly drifted into wakefulness, suddenly realizing that each different bird was singing it's own "looped" melodic pattern, which would come around again and again. There must have been six or seven different species of birds, because there was a real sense of order -- one "loop" running and interacting with another, some moments of silence, more "loops" entering, etc. It was a very full sound altogether, and also much more soothing than I'd ever thought possible. I had always regarded the use of bird sounds in recorded music as being extremely trite, but this was music enough in itself and didn't need any human interaction (except for the listening). I don't know that I would ever have come to this realization if I hadn't been involved in looping. So I'm having somewhat of a dilemma here -- am I evolving as a listener to the point where random sound can be as pleasant and meaningful as "structured" music, or am I just losing it big time? James