What does Noise mean to you?

[Gearmond]

eventually once you've heard say... MBV's Loveless a few times, that noise disappears. Because you've learned how to listen to it.

counterpoint: first time i listened to loveless, i got that right away. maybe because i went a bit of a roundabout way of finding it, and heard other things do similar ideas, but i wouldn't really call that noise per se.

then again, i heard a guy sanding a building and it made a perfect 5th, and i called that noise, so idk.

[Ghost Hip]

eventually once you've heard say... MBV's Loveless a few times, that noise disappears. Because you've learned how to listen to it.

counterpoint: first time i listened to loveless, i got that right away. maybe because i went a bit of a roundabout way of finding it, and heard other things do similar ideas, but i wouldn't really call that noise per se.

then again, i heard a guy sanding a building and it made a perfect 5th, and i called that noise, so idk.

I'm not calling it noise, that was just my experience with Loveless; listening to it knowing something was there and then it finally clicking (interestingly enough it was while driving at night with heavy fog). If you are unfamiliar with their music then it can be difficult to see it as music because of what may be perceived as "noise" overlaying it. I am willing to bet you got Loveless right away because you've already had similar listening experiences (be them musical or not) before hand that gave you the ability to listen and understand it. Hell, maybe even visual or other sensory experiences might've helped you relate to the music faster than someone else.

[Adoom]

Everything. I'd buy it flowers.

[snipelfritz]

Everything. I'd buy it flowers.

There's always the subjective answer of noise is any sound that's not broadly considered musical. So that would include musique-concrete such as:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVzij4HF4wM[/youtube]
"Collected" sounds that are constructed in a musical fashion.

or
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7P_G6e7YTo[/youtube]
synthesized sounds created in a what is artistic in a non-musical way

To me: Noise is an experimental element of music. That is there is something "random" or uncontrollable by the artist (that isn't to say it isn't interactive). Something like unreplicable sound chaos which has been unleashed. That said, noise can be something deliberate or accidental, desirable or not.

[sylnau]

Lovely noise
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdmWJPMKm_Y[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_JHjUFfOs8[/youtube]

[Chankgeez]

(Thread is continuing to get even more and more awesomg.)

In an interesting development, I saw a band tonight (who will remain nameless for their own protection) and they started their set off playing some sounds from an iPod. While these sounds were playing they slowly made their way up to the stage and got ready to play. They stretched and slowly donned sunglasses, etc. I found this funny for about a minute. It went on like this for about five minutes. Not funny. To make matters worse, their first "song" was a continuation of sound making, albeit now with actual instruments instead of pre-recorded. They were a good band and I enjoyed some of what they were doing, but we got off to a bad start. Their not knowing when to drop the noisy joke left a bad taste in my mouth. I hope they read this thread and realize they're not as funny as they think they are.

[bigchiefbc]

When I think of noise, the first thing that always comes to mind is ATR's Live at Brixton Academy. It was my first real exposure to pure noise "music". It is one of the angriest pieces of music I've ever heard.

I love creating noise pieces, but I find it incredibly hard to do well. It seems counter-intuitive, but it is extremely difficult to take random unstructured noise and have the result actually achieve a musical feel or vision.

The only one I've ever been really happy with was the one I did for the Talkbass Noise Comp. I ran my bass into a compressor cranked all the way up, hit an open E and then just let it feedback for about 5 minutes, while turning on various fx. Eventually the feedback and fx took on a life of their own and starting making their own noises. The result was amazing.

[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/bigchiefbc/the-intumescence[/soundcloud]

[Chankgeez]

When I think of noise, the first thing that always comes to mind is ATR's Live at Brixton Academy. It was my first real exposure to pure noise "music". It is one of the angriest pieces of music I've ever heard.

I love creating noise pieces, but I find it incredibly hard to do well. It seems counter-intuitive, but it is extremely difficult to take random unstructured noise and have the result actually achieve a musical feel or vision.

Ha ha. Funny. ATR were a wild group.

bigchiefbc, your comment reminds me that it's interesting how people have preconceived notions of what certain genres of music should be (and how people like to categorize things). I think many people tend to think of Jazz as a mainly improvisation medium. That's only sometimes the case. There's improvisation, but maybe it's within a certain framework. Take soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy for example. He started off playing Dixieland before he moved on into the avant-garde. (Particularly pianists Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor.) For a brief period he experimented with totally free improv. It didn't last long. He found it limiting and abandoned it in favor of a more highly composed conception. He found that in free improv there was really only a very finite amount of things to play before running out of ideas. He started repeating himself. I think that there's a similar thing going on when people make "noise" pieces.

Conversely, I've heard some improv pieces that if somebody hadn't told me were improvised, I would've thought they were pre-composed.

[bigchiefbc]

When I think of noise, the first thing that always comes to mind is ATR's Live at Brixton Academy. It was my first real exposure to pure noise "music". It is one of the angriest pieces of music I've ever heard.

I love creating noise pieces, but I find it incredibly hard to do well. It seems counter-intuitive, but it is extremely difficult to take random unstructured noise and have the result actually achieve a musical feel or vision.

Ha ha. Funny. ATR were a wild group.

bigchiefbc, your comment reminds me that it's interesting how people have preconceived notions of what certain genres of music should be (and how people like to categorize things). I think many people tend to think of Jazz as a mainly improvisation medium. That's only sometimes the case. There's improvisation, but maybe it's within a certain framework. Take soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy for example. He started off playing Dixieland before he moved on into the avant-garde. (Particularly pianists Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor.) For a brief period he experimented with totally free improv. It didn't last long. He found it limiting and abandoned it in favor of a more highly composed conception. He found that in free improv there was really only a very finite amount of things to play before running out of ideas. He started repeating himself. I think that there's a similar thing going on when people make "noise" pieces.

Conversely, I've heard some improv pieces that if somebody hadn't told me were improvised, I would've thought they were pre-composed.

You just made me think of Bitches Brew, which is definitely my favorite jazz album. It wasn't totally unstructured and free improv, but the songs only had a very very basic framework before they started playing. Most of the musicians basically were only told the key and the tempo count and the general feel, and then they hit record.

[Chankgeez]

I love Bitches Brew. Bennie Maupin's bass clarinet is just so awesome.

Yeah, that music was assembled by Teo Macero from the raw tapes of those sessions. So awesome. So ahead of its time.

I don't even think Miles was around when they recorded some of that stuff. Those MIles box sets have great liner notes with tons of info.

[Gearmond]

For a brief period he experimented with totally free improv. It didn't last long. He found it limiting and abandoned it in favor of a more highly composed conception. He found that in free improv there was really only a very finite amount of things to play before running out of ideas. He started repeating himself. I think that there's a similar thing going on when people make "noise" pieces.

Conversely, I've heard some improv pieces that if somebody hadn't told me were improvised, I would've thought they were pre-composed.

lol i actually have that album, Holy La, and its actually pretty shit for free jazz. idk why people laud it for anything more than the novelty of someone unfamiliar to the genre coming in and making something completely typical of it.


but this actually touches on something really important that free improv and noise fall into a lot which is the paradox of ultimate freedom ultimately sounding the same as everything else. and its kind of the... mix all the colors and you get brown ... kind of thing. like if you give someone all the tools and all the wood in the world, they'll probably just smash it for fun.

this isn't a flaw of the medium per se, so much as an attitude espoused by it's practitioners in that freedom should be something completely primal and base when thats completely untrue. free improvization, to me, is a bit of a misnomer because i think it should be logically possible to make tonal free jazz even when you don't explisitly say something like "ok guys, dont be atonal, but improvise freely".

theres also the other hand where shit like serialism and Anthony Braxton and some Joe Maneri being so highly composed that unless you study the piece, it sounds like musical jibberish that might come off as nothing more than more geometric free improv.

so even though you're "using every color on the palette" you can only make so many shades of brown.

[snipelfritz]

Lurve some free jazz, but yeah, it does have it's limits. Musical intuition will always be based on/limited to what you and your fellow musicians are familiar with.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66MJ-KOFBFQ[/youtube]

Conversely you have Sun Ra, whose music sounds completely alien (yes I used that word deliberately) and sounds like there is no possible way one mind could have created it all, but is actually prescribed to such a level that he even liked to find people unfamiliar with music and teach them how to play an instrument just so he'd be able to build a band that had the exactly mindset he wanted.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwEagL1zenI[/youtube]

[sylnau]

^ Sun Ra

At the moment Rangda:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfrSIcqhap0[/youtube]

[Chankgeez]

Yeah, all those guys are great, syl. I especially love Corsano and his bigass cymbals.

lol i actually have that album, Holy La, and its actually pretty shit for free jazz. idk why people laud it for anything more than the novelty of someone unfamiliar to the genre coming in and making something completely typical of it.

That's not even the stuff I was thinking of. The Holy la is fairly straight ahead compared to some of the stuff he was playing in the mid Sixties:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzflTGm7neI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll7dkLWRyD8[/youtube]

I like it more than a lot of Steve Lacy's music, but I then I really love the South African rhythm section that plays on it.

[MEC]

I've always liked the quote in sylnau's sig:

"Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?" --John Cage

I'm not sure what it has to do with this thread but I like it.