Building Blocks of Music Vol

Building Blocks of Music Vol 3. NOISE

When we think of noise we tend to think of a social definition, which is basically sound that we do not want to pay attention to. The social definition is rather nebulous, as it can describe true noise (the clatter of garbage cans at 7am on a Saturday morning) or tone (the incessant Reverse indicator of a delivery truck), or even sound we would consider pleasant music in other circumstances (living with a string quartet and listening to the same thing over and over at 2am on a Wednesday). This definition will not do. It is completely subjective, and does nothing to communicate anything about the nature of the sound.

Noise is a random distribution of sound energy, so that no recognizable pattern can be discerned. On our Cartesian grid, think of a bunch of random spikes, like an EKG gone horribly wrong. In its purest state, we have white noise, which is the perfectly random distribution of sound energy throughout the audible spectrum. If we run the white noise through a filter and get rid of certain ranges of sound energy we get pink noise. We can do this creatively and build a piece of music entirely on filtering and changing white noise (find a copy of Joji Yuasa’s Icon: On the Source of White Noise for a stunning example of this).

Generally, though, we hear noise in music as a part of a tone. When we describe a flute as “breathy” we mean that noise is part of the sound. Noise gives an earthiness to sound. Noise can break the monotony of constant tones (that is why snare drums can liven a symphony). Noise can be repeated to establish rhythmic structure (the drums in a march, or in jazz). Noise can have a complex relationship with tone, as in the timpani, so that if the timpanist is playing sharp, the whole orchestra sounds flat. Noise can have a similar relationship with tone in the low notes of a pipe organ to make us quake in terror of the impending horn phrase in Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra.

When we synthesize sounds, we add noise to make them more believable. When we record music, we try to kill all noise that is generated from the machines, the ambiance of the room, the nature of the recording medium. If we want a bit of a recording to have the effect of, say, coming out of an AM radio, we add selective noise to be believable.

Because the sounds of life are noisy, we can take noisy sounds and use them to evoke complex memories. In the middle of the 20th Century, there was a whole school of music called musique concrete that used nothing but sounds recorded and edited to create music. When it worked, it was otherworldly, as it transformed the sounds we are familiar with into a context of structured music or even narrative. To this day there are sections of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry’s work in this direction that haunt me.

Sound effects men do this sort of thing all the time, and have, in fact, altered what we think things sound like. For instance, many people think that the sound of a ricochet is integral to the sound of a gun firing. It isn’t, but has become such a part of the auditory culture that it has to be in the sound for people to accept it. When they made Apocalypse Now they spent a fortune flying recording engineers to remote jungle locations and recording helicopters and guns. The didn’t use this footage, since it was deemed unbelievable. Instead, the sounds were generated in a studio.

If we are to equate the world of pure tone with the otherworldly and the world of noise with the terrestrial, then it is important to see how in the music of an Incarnational Faith the two have an important role. God became man in a noisy world. He was a carpenter. If we see Christ bringing the celestial harmonies in their purest form in his Divine Nature, we must see the terrestrial noises as being intimately attached to His Human Nature. A Puritan music would be entirely synthesized with sine waves. A Catholic music (I am thinking the Baroque in particular, but all genres and styles), is full of gritty violins, windy organs and reeds, clattering percussion, breathy voices, even pianos once in awhile. It bridges the gap between Heaven and Earth, Man and God. It aspires to the high Heavens, but it does so with the means of making music we have on Earth. If we say that music is good, we are saying that it is inherently Catholic. It might be played and written by all manner of men, but that which is good music is Catholic music, insofar as it is good.

Around the time of musique concrete, which was centered in Paris, the Germans in Cologne were playing the Puritans, fiddling with oscillators to yield totally controllable tone-based music. They called this elektronische Musik. There was a young Catholic musician, however, who had spent time in both places. He studied under the great Catholic composer Olivier Messiaen and worked in Cologne (OK, I hate spelling it this way, but the umlaut is being flaky on blogger). Now I have no idea what manner of Catholic this fellow was at the time. He certainly had some funny ideas in the 60’s and 70’s, but I think he has come back to his roots in a way. However, his formation was certainly Catholic, and he is a bright man who would understand the implications of all of this. Anyway, this young German Catholic composer bridged the gap between Paris and Cologne, and created some of the most incredible electronic music ever made. He even wrote one of the most important pieces on the theory of electronic music and the balance of Tone and Noise makes up a quarter of it. Of course, the composer I am referring to is none other than Karlheinz Stockhausen.

As I mentioned earlier, we will tackle Stockhausen’s essay later, but first we must look to the next Building Block: the Interval.