Studies in Noise (2024)

Track LIST:
Study in Noise No. 4 - At a Tram Stop (2'13")
Study in Noise No. 5a - In My Bedroom, 2024 (18'00")
Study in Noise No. 3 - From My Bedroom Window, 2023 (12'20")
Study in Noise No. 6 - From an NPR Interview (4'13")
Study in Noise No. 5b - In Tartu Town Square (15'45")
Study in Noise No. 7 - In the Bishop's Garden (10'55")
Study in Noise No. 8 - On the News // From Nature (7’13”)

from the liner notes:

Field recordings on No. 4, 5a, 3, 5b, and 7 by Murray Robertson

Audio in No. 6 is from the interview “In a collection of 40+ interviews, author Adam Moss tries to find the key to creation” By Ari Shapiro, Michael Levitt, and Mallory Yu

Audio in No. 8 is published by various news sources and internet commentators…

  • ABC News (Australia)

  • ABC News (USA)

  • Channel 4 News

  • Gianmarco Soresi

  • Guardian News

  • Horses

  • HasanAbi

…as well as sounds of the Palestine Sunbird (Cinnyris osea) downloaded from https://xeno-canto.org

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About the synthesis

          In these pieces, I explored the potential to use one singular process to make the music. The line of code in CSound: butterbp (short for Butterworth band-pass). The physicist Butterworth developed algorithms that filter without resonance (with a flat response in the band). I took these filters, and set the bandwidths to extremely small units, leaving only a perceived pitch. The source sound is also a big part of the composition, affecting the resulting pitches and timbres greatly.

I wanted to use this sound on the world around me and found that while I could create these long meditative tracks (a la R. Murray Shaefer’s “soundscapes”), I could also create these intense events that pulled apart singular events or ideas. By filtering a sound file down to individual notes, a sort of “music” can be played and still reflect all the inflections and nuances of its source sound. By layering the original file underneath this music, we can listen to how the noise of the world is enunciated by this filter “instrument.”

This collection is the most successful of 8 Studies (omitting No. 1, 2, and some renderings of other compositions).

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The album can be purchased for streaming and digital download from my BandCamp page (click the player above) or use this link.