Sound Journal

2008-12-08T01:47:00.002-06:00

Well this isn't something that i read this week or anything, but it is definitely audio related.

with the building of my mini-synth, i decided to take up circuit bending as another hobby (like i don't already have enough). A few trips to various GoodWill locations around Austin and I had a few electronic devices to play around with. I found a Elmo and Cookie Monster toy that made a bunch of weird sounds. I took that one apart and messed with the circuit a bit and came up with some strange sounds.

Here is a sound clip i recorded of some of the sounds i made with it:
http://www.woomahodal.com/sounds/elmotoy.mp3

I found some interesting sounds in several other circuits as well. Eventually they could all be combined and mixed together to make some music.

interesting article

2008-11-23T22:44:00.000-06:00

I ran across this article earlier: http://www.blesser.net/downloads/eContact%20Loud%20Music.pdf

thoughts after reading:
each person has an aural space, and the loudest sounds in our aural space dominate our attention (obviously)
we enjoy listening to loud music
music is literally a stimulant, like caffeine, exercise, sex, etc.
There was a study that 'found' that loud music accesses the same part of the brain as 'euphoria' drugs such as cocaine or ecstasy.
Certain low frequency sounds above 90db are responded to by the sacculus in our inner ears. Since the sacculus has neural connections to the parts of the brain that deal with pleasure, we like loud bass.
Listening to loud music literally takes you to another place. well, another virtual place.

So we know that loud music affects certain parts of our brain that have to do with happiness, and that we can reach a certain 'high' from loud music. What we dont know is why exactly.

I'm fascinated by this type of stuff, so instead of questions, i'll just say 2 things i'm going to research in the near future:
1. further, more in-depth information on what happens inside the brain that is affected by music
2. I want to find out more about this statement from the article:

"A half century ago, Roth (1955) reported that undiagnosed hearing loss was the primary cause of mental illness in the elderly, and more recently, Zimbardo et al (1981) demonstrated that simulated deafness in normal individuals produced symptoms of paranoia."

I hope I never go deaf!

2008-11-16T23:54:00.000-06:00

Well, its 11:54 and I almost forgot completely, so I'm just going to talk about something that I did today.

I went to an analog synthesizer 'party' today. I enjoyed it, since I'm a big fan of synths, especially analog ones. There was probably about 30 different vintage synths to play around with. A few people had synthesizers that they made themselves.

out of time!

here's me with someone's minimoog! i want one.

digital music

2008-11-10T22:41:00.000-06:00

I'm always on the lookout for the best possible quality in audio files. Several of my friends can't tell the difference between a 192kbps bitrate mp3 and one that is 320kbps. My roommate swears up and down that there is no audible difference between a 320kbps mp3 and something lossless, like FLAC. We had a blind test where he opened the same song in different qualities, and I had to determine which had the higher bitrate. That was pretty interesting, i got 9 of 10 right (this was with a good audio system, of course). I'm glad I have good ears and can tell the difference between this stuff!

There's nothin like listening to vinyl though.

do you think as the online digital music culture expands and grows, quality of music available will also? I'm betting yes.

single-man synth band

2008-11-02T21:46:00.000-06:00

I ran across a video of the amazing Jean Michel Jarre, demonstrating several of the instruments he used in his album Oxygene (1977). I am absolutely fascinated by synthesizers (especially analog).
Playing musical instruments is a huge part of my life, and has been since about 6th grade. With my other instruments (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, electric bass, trombone, acoustic drums), expression and emotion are expressed with physical movements of something (vibrating strings, drum heads, buzzing lips). With an analog synthesizer, this expression is portrayed through the turning of knobs and the sliding of faders, which essentially controls voltage flow. Jean Michel Jarre does a great job of sharing his emotion with the listener.

The video can be found here: http://www.gearwire.com/ems-synthi.html

Is there any way to make a loop using soley analog equipment?
I'd like to learn more about the process of making early electronic dance music.

2008-10-26T22:55:00.000-05:00

In my .. somewhat limited 'further study' of psychoacoustics, I have read a few very interesting concepts related to how the brain processes the music it hears. Alot of the more interesting things I have discovered seem pretty obvious after thinking about about it for awhile.

An example of this is a section of a book that was talking about timbre, auditory illusions, and how our brains "fill in the gaps."

There are scientists who have been studying whether or not we are all capable of learning any language, at birth. It is our experience with our native languages, and the way phrases are shaped and built within that language that affects the way we perceive emotion and the way we understand other people's emotion. This information get programmed into our neural networks very early in our lives.

Emotion can be conveyed through music using things like phrasing and dynamics, because our brains transfer the data saved from our commonly known speech patterns, and relates it to the music.

One question I have, is why some people enjoy branching out and exploring new musical genres, but some people get stuck on the same music all the time.

-matt

psychoacoustics

2008-10-19T22:13:00.000-05:00

The other day I was reading through some articles on different aspects of psychoacoustics (I think this stuff is fascinating), and I came across a very interesting concept. The idea of 'stereo' is that the music is supposed to psychologically seem to have sounds coming from different locations, and sometimes differing distances. In my experience, it is pretty difficult to achieve a stereo setup that accurately recreates the effect. I ran across this website where they talk about an 'eight-fold space' music listening recording setup and listening environment. Basically, you would record each instrument onto its own track, and play it back using 8 identical full range speakers and 8 identical amplifiers, one on each wall and one in each corner of a square room. This is much different from what most people think of when they talk about "surround sound."

Here is the website:
http://timbreproductions.com/pages/mental_psychoacoustics.html
Their website is terrible, but the concept is really neat.

One question, is if this concept is known as something other than "eight-fold" recording.
Also, I was wondering if you knew of any good books/websites with in depth information about psychoacoustics