Unwanted Sound

April 21, 2024 12:04 AM

Implicit in the art of noise is a promise of resistance. For millennia, music has been a medium of control; noise, it follows, is a liberation. from What is Noise? by Alex Ross [The New Yorker; ungated]
posted by chavenet (23 comments total)

Great writing (will need a few goes to absorb it tho'), thanks for post. I was taken by the sound of the writers' recollection of their "widely unheard radio show". They're as intolerant of unwanted sound as myself. I once went to a neighbour and told them to turn their dog off - I still recall their shocked look.

Stereo noise drives me mad (I don't own a tv or stereo - and only listen to music on headphones, often going months without listening to anything). A local EMP (that left my computers intact) would be welcome but might draw attention from the denoised.
posted by unearthed at 1:32 AM on April 21 [2 favorites]

The other day I attended an aquaintance's concert of "New" music. They're praised for their "clarity" ("despite it being atonal music" left unspoken). The composer is also the nicest, most generous human, whom I love. It was some of the finest playing I ever heard. I've listened to new music before so I didn't go in blind. Still hated it .

Accuse me of clinging to a conformist comfort zone all you want and tell me to "go to your melodic stuff" (I mean that'd be cheap: the author of TFA was also quick to point out they enjoy all kinds of music). IDK about liberation though. It may have seemed like it to Schoenberg but isn't it now just another rarefied cultural asset for elitists to distinguish themselves by their aquired taste? One of those weird small publically funded worlds of didactic (or dictated) culture that isn't actually enjoyed by most of the public?

Maybe the best I can do is have a little laugh to myself calling it CIA music (cf. "Who paid the piper") Best about the concert was when each time the sound of shouting children, playing outside during a hot sunny day, wafted in and visibly annoyed listeners.
posted by yoHighness at 4:42 AM on April 21 [3 favorites]

I keyed on the author’s distinction between wanted and unwanted sounds as a personal definition of noise. That seems true to my own experience. For instance, my current home is full of environmental sounds that drive me up a wall (ergo: noise) which my spouse seems not to so much as notice, let alone be bothered by. It reminds me a bit of an offhand definition of “weeds” being “plants growing where you don’t want them.”

When it comes to music, there is definitely a part of me that is attracted to things that others would consider unlistenable. For me, I think it’s always been the actual difficulty involved in the listening that is the appeal. The requirement to listen deeply and (hopefully) find the artist’s point. Their “voice,” if you will.

The author mentions Cecil Taylor. I figuratively leapt when I read that, as Taylor is an absolute joy for me to listen to, while pretty much no one else in my life can stand it when I put a Taylor album on. It’s complete noise to them. I vividly recall my first listen to Taylor’s music and being utterly confused, yet also feeling like there was something important going on in there I needed to hear. With repeated listenings, I was able to find that kernel which, in turn, revealed the world inside Taylor’s music. It’s still always very demanding and challenging stuff, but now I can clearly hear the artist’s voice in there, and love hearing what he has to say. It’s quite a journey.

I think there’s a similar sort of journey involved with a lot of art, as well. I could sit for hours enjoying, say, a Pollock, while most folks might just give a glance and walk on.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:35 AM on April 21 [9 favorites]

I was briefly a volunteer at an organization that searches out and 'certifies' places for their freedom from human-made noise. Their main criteria, besides a low overall sound level, is that there are no discernable unnatural sounds for at least 15 min at a time. I stepped back when I understood how rare those places are, within 2 or 3 hours drive of most urban centers. Even at the edges of that range, you're likely to encounter that. A chainsaw. A dirt bike. Hammering. Outboard motor. Truck rumble from a distant highway. The drone of a single-engine airplane carries for miles.

I'm not crazy about most atonal music. There has to be some point of order, like a melody, a progression or theme, a rhythm pattern. But I do like great sound design, like a good movie soundscape, or an art installation; that can approach being a musical composition.

I don't have any patience for unnecessary noise. Leaf blowers are the worst. Buy a fucking rake.
posted by Artful Codger at 6:40 AM on April 21 [11 favorites]

Let me reference here my all time favorite Metafilter comment (from 2008, and it still resonates with me.)
I thought about it again as I read this thread and contemplated the music that doesn't move or or I don't get.
Thanks again FourCheesMac, where ever you may be.
www.metafilter.com/71003/This-Band-Rips#2089308
posted by cccorlew at 6:47 AM on April 21 [11 favorites]

I'd heard that 'the rest' is noise. Both the musical notation and the stuff outside some gate-kept canon.
posted by k3ninho at 7:09 AM on April 21 [1 favorite]

Is there any escape? from noise?

(I liked the article; thanks for the link!)
posted by Slothrup at 7:16 AM on April 21 [4 favorites]

I didn't like the article, it reads like a list amplified by machine learning. Mind you, I'll likely check out the recommendation for Merzbow.

The brutish chords that stomp through the second section of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” pack seven of the twelve notes of the Western chromatic scale into a confined space: as a result, pitch becomes a blur.

No, sir. I've listened to enough western 12-note chromatic scale stuff that The Rite of Spring uses them masterfully, just like suspended 9th and 13th notes appear in other music and extend the tension-resolution balance of the work.
posted by k3ninho at 7:31 AM on April 21 [1 favorite]

soundtrack for the thread
posted by flabdablet at 7:37 AM on April 21 [3 favorites]

Yesterday, I spent a couple hours watching what was labeled “electronic noise”. Live performances in a small concert space. It’s a monthly event called Godwaffle Noise Pancakes at The Center for New Music here in San Francisco. One of the more dramatic performances was a guy pummeling a half filled plastic water bottle attached to a contact mic. (I know some of you are now smirking.) It was an experience, a powerful experience. And that’s what art is supposedly about. A person, the artist, creates something for others to experience.

We are basically discussing just sound. There is intentional sound - music, car horns. Unintentional sound like leaf blowers, Republican speeches, etc. Both of these combine with both intentional and unintentional listening. I really enjoy the beautiful rhythms and sounds of a copy machine doing a big job. I choose to listen to it as music. Noise is just sound that we don’t want to hear. And sound being just pressure waves in the air around you, sometimes it’s hard to avoid. If you sit back to enjoy the soundtrack for the thread posted by flabdablet and your neighbor started playing Mozart at full blast, then, yeah, that damn Amadeus dude is noise. Once those pressure waves interact with our ears and brains, then they become more than just sound, as they are subjectively labeled as something to listen to like music, or not listen to which is noise.

John Cages’s 4’33” is always relevent in these discussions.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:44 AM on April 21 [4 favorites]

I keyed on the author’s distinction between wanted and unwanted sounds as a personal definition of noise. That seems true to my own experience.

Zoviet France -- 1990 -- in so many words
posted by philip-random at 9:27 AM on April 21 [2 favorites]

Charles Babbage lamented the “organ-grinders and other similar nuisances” who were degrading the productivity of “intellectual workers.”

According to his memoir, Charles Babbage used to go out and yell at street musicians for playing at the cab stand near his house. (At first he tried sending his servants to do the yelling, but that didn't work.) He regularly called the cops on them, and got at least a few musicians convicted for disturbing the peace. His neighbors retaliated by sending musicians to play right outside his window, or even "purchasing worn-out or damaged wind instruments, which they are incapable of playing, but on which they produced a discordant noise for the purpose of annoying me." Sometimes, when he went to summon a policeman to stop the music, he'd be followed by a crowd of street urchins and hooligans, "shouting out rather uncomplimentary epithets. When I turn round and survey my illustrious tail, it stops; if I move towards it, it recedes: the elder branches are then quiet—sometimes they even retire, wishing perhaps to avoid my future recognition. The instant I turn, the shouting and the abuse are resumed, and the mob again follow at a respectful distance." Pity the poor misunderstood genius who can't get a moment's peace!
posted by Gerald Bostock at 9:34 AM on April 21 [6 favorites]

I saw Mr Babbage’s organ grinder troubled brain sitting in a large glass jar at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons in London. I regretted not having at least a harmonica with me to play in its presence.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:54 AM on April 21 [10 favorites]

I've always found it interesting and maybe a bit ironic that a crank barrel organ is kinda like an extremely simplified difference engine.
posted by ovvl at 10:43 AM on April 21 [5 favorites]

I feel for poor Babbage. During the pandemic, I “accidentally” moved in across the street from a pentecostal church. (I knew it was there, but didn’t think about what it would mean for the sonic environment, since they weren’t holding services.)

Let me tell you, I thought I had an open mind musically. Dissonant, experimental, challenging, great, bring it on. I mean, I even enjoy the Shaggs from time to time. But some days the sound of a dozen enthusiastic choir members belting it out and struggling to even hit a unison despite weeks of practice on the same song puts me on edge like no noise music ever could. Life will always find a way to annoy you if you let it.
posted by mubba at 11:47 AM on April 21 [3 favorites]

>Is there any escape? from noise?

For the uninitiated.
posted by mikeand1 at 11:48 AM on April 21 [2 favorites]

More Noise Please
posted by mikeand1 at 11:49 AM on April 21 [1 favorite]

There is intentional sound - music, car horns. Unintentional sound like leaf blowers, Republican speeches, etc. Both of these combine with both intentional and unintentional listening.

Sometimes a little orchestration can help.
posted by flabdablet at 6:03 PM on April 21 [2 favorites]

I like noise "music". Not a fan of unwanted noise.

The article felt like a barely organized rehash of every mediocre article about noise I've ever read. It always strikes as odd that writing about an art form as unstructured as noise always seems to hit the same tired old cliches.

Stravinsky? ✓
"Metal Machine Music"? ✓
Cage? ✓
Krakatoa? ✓ (albeit a self aware reference)

When describing noise music to folks, I usually liken it to staring at a fire or a white water river. But for your ears and proprioception.
posted by alikins at 6:52 PM on April 21 [3 favorites]

Arseny Avraamov's and his symphonies for industrial workers come to mind — they're noisy and musical.

Symphony of Industrial Horns
Symphony of Factory Sirens
posted by nikoniko at 11:44 PM on April 21 [2 favorites]

I usually liken it to staring at a fire or a white water river

¿Por qué no los dos?

(hit the Full Screen button on the fireplace page after starting paired playback)
posted by flabdablet at 2:15 AM on April 22 [1 favorite]

What Is Noise?
Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 9:16 AM on April 22 [1 favorite]

I'd always had an arms-length curiosity about dissonance / noise music, but a "normal" tolerance for incidental / environmental noise as well. Then I read Sonic Life by Thurston Moore (I know, Thurston Moore) and I have to say, it reframed a lot of it for me. I wouldn't say it made anything more listenable per se, but it helped put a lot of noisy stuff into context, and got me interested in a lot of music I had kind of written off. So in that sense it made the experience of noise in music more interesting and pleasurable at different points.

But yeah, certain sounds still make me crazy (our vacuum cleaner, "vocalized" sneezes, certain sirens). There's so much noise in a typical inhabited environment that silence has actually come to register as a very pleasant sound for me (thanks John Cage and Paul Simon I guess?).
posted by Rykey at 11:02 AM on April 22