In my post on Saturday, I mentioned how much this reminded me of when Hurricane Andrew went through Dade County. It turns out, it reminded someone else of that, as well: Bryan Norcross, a meteorologist who was a high profile local figure in the lead up to the storm then. He posted this useful reflection recently. It was validating, as well as nostalgic, to hear his thoughts and comparison of our current national emergency to the disaster in South Florida in 1992. It was also encouraging in that he emphasized our collective capacities, something I remember from the days immediately following the storm: neighbors who had previously been strangers were pooling resources to help folks repair damaged homes, clear streets, and feed each other. And Baltimore has always felt that way to me, with strong grassroots organizations and neighborhood identities that seem to undergird welcoming and active communities.
But, as the daily news proceeds in its drumbeats of dire warnings, I also find myself imagining horrifying outcomes. If disaster brings out the best in people, it can also bring out the worst. Baltimore City, one of the most segregated cities in the US, has vast tracts of poverty that are already grossly underserved by the healthcare infrastructure (as well as education, transportation, food networks, etc.). Given how close to the surface dissatisfaction with support and power structures has proven to be in the past, it's very easy for me to imagine that some of the people in these neighborhoods will feel pressed to express that dissatisfaction and to demand support in painful and destructive ways, as, at the same time, the virus runs unchecked through them. Honestly, this makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is the likely response from the powers that be: rather than attempt to meet the valid demands of the underserved, they will beat them, jail them, and leave them to die -- that is the "worst" being brought out, to my mind.
And Baltimore is not the only place in the US where such conditions exist. Americans in sum tend to treat the poor badly and, at best, misunderstand poverty and what there is to do about it. In cities across our country, enclaves of the impoverished are cordoned off and ignored. Yet, from even the most selfish perspective, it is in our collective interest to attend especially closely to these folks as part of our response to the pandemic: without access to healthcare, they can easily become deep wells for incubating SARS-CoV-2. And then we will blame them for it.
Of course, at this stage, the point is almost moot. There are already fewer hospital beds, ventilators, healthcare providers, etc. than are likely to be needed. Today's situation regarding poverty in the US took centuries to evolve (one starting point that's as good as any is 1619) and it cannot be wisely resolved in a few weeks. Still, to the degree that we can bend the curve on our cultural unwillingness to see ourselves as a collective, we can have a better chance of flattening the curve on the wave of SARS-CoV-2 passing through our national corpus. May these potentially worst of times also bring out the best of us.
Monday, March 16, 2020
Days of the Virus: Settling In
If last week and the first part of the weekend were about facing facts about SARS-CoV-2, then yesterday and today have been about taking action. The last 30 hours or so have been spent, apart from a few breaks for sleep and a walk outside, coordinating my practice to provide care-at-a-distance for my patients -- folks who themselves are having to respond to quarantines and quarantine-like circumstances. Despite what I consider decent planning overall on my part, it has been highly stressful: the software that I expected to use for videoconferencing turned out to be unreliable and communication with my patients about the changes has been less than perfect. The stakes for this are high, too, because of how much I care about my patients -- these are my people, it's my charge to create a space in which they have the chance to get themselves well. I know the nature of the process is that it goes up and down (I tell my patients all the time, "you can't screw this up"), but it's still a challenge to keep from feeling disappointed in myself.
Of course, from a psychological perspective, it's easier to worry about getting the telepsych software set up than about a worldwide pandemic or who among my family and friends won't survive it, so, as defenses go, it's not terrible.
My family is pretty much settled in now. My octogenarian mom, who is pretty extraverted, seems to have made peace with the boundaries needed to keep her safe. My daughter has moved back in with her mother after her dorms closed; she has her old familiar room back and her mom is always well-prepared. We get to talk frequently via videochat and text, but she decided days ago that she didn't want to risk passing the virus to her grandmother, so we're isolated for the duration. Similarly, my stepdaughter has taken the leap to stay full-time with her boyfriend; there's faith on his side, too, as their relationship, which has been flourishing in the most beautiful way, is still young. My wife's business has been conducted almost exclusively online, so that's hardly any change for her in that regard, and her school has transitioned to online classes but is on spring break now anyway. Missing her daughter is hard, as they are very close, but they keep in touch via electronic media almost hourly.
So, we're not done with the transition yet, but it's well on it's way and it's easy enough to see a routine emerging in the next few days. It's helpful to pay attention to that; again, it's a useful defense and, so long as one isn't completely blinkered, a good idea.
Of course, from a psychological perspective, it's easier to worry about getting the telepsych software set up than about a worldwide pandemic or who among my family and friends won't survive it, so, as defenses go, it's not terrible.
My family is pretty much settled in now. My octogenarian mom, who is pretty extraverted, seems to have made peace with the boundaries needed to keep her safe. My daughter has moved back in with her mother after her dorms closed; she has her old familiar room back and her mom is always well-prepared. We get to talk frequently via videochat and text, but she decided days ago that she didn't want to risk passing the virus to her grandmother, so we're isolated for the duration. Similarly, my stepdaughter has taken the leap to stay full-time with her boyfriend; there's faith on his side, too, as their relationship, which has been flourishing in the most beautiful way, is still young. My wife's business has been conducted almost exclusively online, so that's hardly any change for her in that regard, and her school has transitioned to online classes but is on spring break now anyway. Missing her daughter is hard, as they are very close, but they keep in touch via electronic media almost hourly.
So, we're not done with the transition yet, but it's well on it's way and it's easy enough to see a routine emerging in the next few days. It's helpful to pay attention to that; again, it's a useful defense and, so long as one isn't completely blinkered, a good idea.
Days of the Virus: Information
I've run across a range of information resources that have impressed me as useful and thought a simple way of sharing them is just to post them here, as a list. In no particular order:
- CDC, coronavirus.gov
- Washington Post's free updates on SARS-CoV-2
- The COVID Tracking Project
- The Economist, Anatomy of a Killer
- Washington Post, Why Outbreaks Like Coronavirus Spread Exponentially...
- Washington Post, Social Distancing Could Buy US Valuable Time...
- The Conversation, Why Are Older People More at Risk...
- The Conversation, Get Dressed and Set Goals... (on working from home)
- The Atlantic, How the Coronavirus Became an American Catastrophe
- The Lily, How to Host a Virtual Hangout
- The FiveThirtyEight: How Coronavirus Tests Actually Work
- CNN: The Night Sky as a Shared Experience
- Washington Post: Simple DIY masks could help flatten the curve
- xkcd: Pathogen Resistance
- Longrich Paleo Lab: Public Use of Masks to Control the Coronavirus Pandemic
- The FiveThirtyEight: Coronavirus Case Counts Are Meaningless*
- Washington Post: Four Reasons the Coronavirus Is Hitting Black Communities So Hard
- Washington Post: Coronavirus Doesn't Discriminate, but America Does
- Vi Hart's summary of a Pandemic Resilience proposal she helped build
I'll update this list as I have opportunity to do so.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Days of the Virus: Drawing In
In the last week or so, developments around the coronavirus have gone from "a nasty thing that's happening to those poor folks over there" to "holy shit, people I know could die." It occurred to me last night that it would be appropriate and possibly a meaningful personal exercise to log some of the experiences my family, friends, and I are having in this time, unique in my lifetime. So, it is my intent that this be the first in a series of posts related to SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 disease it causes, and, especially, what's happening in my small part of the world pandemic.
This time last week, I was on day five of a particularly nasty flu. It was the first day that I could detect symptoms attenuating, although that was only the subtlest change and I was far from recovered; since the previous Tuesday, my lungs had felt like I was breathing ammonia fumes, I was coughing frequently and often painfully, and was generally achey as hell. News of SARS-CoV-2's expansion from epidemic to pandemic filtered into my bedroom only in small, disjointed pieces, peppered in between episodes of The Twilight Zone, Marvel movies, and long naps. Once I was recovered enough to be cognizant of what was happening, I discussed with my wife and business partner taking the precaution of preparing to transition my private psychology practice to telepsych -- psychotherapy conducted by video chat. It seemed a prudent thing to have as a backup.
Over the course of the week, my RSS news feeds transitioned to nearly exclusively coronavirus coverage; even some of my favorite comics had begun featuring public health awareness topics. By midweek, both my daughters' and my wife's schools had closed or announced plans to close by the weekend and local government announcements became increasingly dire. As Italy, and now Spain and France, have gone into lockdown, the theme seems to be get ahead of the train. By the end of my workday today, it became clear that my family's best course of action is to self-quarantine.
Writing that feels a bit over the top. I'm not impulsive, at least not when it comes to big life decisions. It has taken quite a bit of steady, strong evidence to convince me that we -- my family, my community, my country -- are at significant risk, but I am convinced. The resources I respect, the science community, public health institutions, level headed friends, are fairly consistent in their assessment that we need to pay attention. So, while at this moment I can hear kids playing outside my window and the birds raucously feeding in my backyard, it feels incongruous that in a week or two my city's hospitals could be overwhelmed with people with collapsing pulmonary systems and my community could be in a police-enforced lockdown. Yet, it appears that those scenarios are not beyond reasonable expectations; thus, I act, even as it feels over the top.
I remember a similar feeling at least once before: August 23rd, 1992. Meteorologists were predicting that Hurricane Andrew would come ashore some dozen or so miles north of my ground-level South Beach apartment and the city was evacuating. Under an eerie foreboding, my brother and I picked up everything off of the floor, packed up the cats and some overnight bags, and headed to a friend's fortified apartment in South Miami, well inland and, so we thought, further from the storm. A long, frightening, largely sleepless night later, we emerged from our impromptu revetment to a changed world: the familiar neighborhood was unrecognizable, a tangled jetsam of power lines, roofing, and tree detritus.
Today feels similar, although the timeline is multiplied a few dozen times. From my experience with Hurricane Andrew, and other events, I know the world can change, sometimes in an instant. It is rare that we get warning; it is good to heed it when we do.
This time last week, I was on day five of a particularly nasty flu. It was the first day that I could detect symptoms attenuating, although that was only the subtlest change and I was far from recovered; since the previous Tuesday, my lungs had felt like I was breathing ammonia fumes, I was coughing frequently and often painfully, and was generally achey as hell. News of SARS-CoV-2's expansion from epidemic to pandemic filtered into my bedroom only in small, disjointed pieces, peppered in between episodes of The Twilight Zone, Marvel movies, and long naps. Once I was recovered enough to be cognizant of what was happening, I discussed with my wife and business partner taking the precaution of preparing to transition my private psychology practice to telepsych -- psychotherapy conducted by video chat. It seemed a prudent thing to have as a backup.
Over the course of the week, my RSS news feeds transitioned to nearly exclusively coronavirus coverage; even some of my favorite comics had begun featuring public health awareness topics. By midweek, both my daughters' and my wife's schools had closed or announced plans to close by the weekend and local government announcements became increasingly dire. As Italy, and now Spain and France, have gone into lockdown, the theme seems to be get ahead of the train. By the end of my workday today, it became clear that my family's best course of action is to self-quarantine.
Writing that feels a bit over the top. I'm not impulsive, at least not when it comes to big life decisions. It has taken quite a bit of steady, strong evidence to convince me that we -- my family, my community, my country -- are at significant risk, but I am convinced. The resources I respect, the science community, public health institutions, level headed friends, are fairly consistent in their assessment that we need to pay attention. So, while at this moment I can hear kids playing outside my window and the birds raucously feeding in my backyard, it feels incongruous that in a week or two my city's hospitals could be overwhelmed with people with collapsing pulmonary systems and my community could be in a police-enforced lockdown. Yet, it appears that those scenarios are not beyond reasonable expectations; thus, I act, even as it feels over the top.
I remember a similar feeling at least once before: August 23rd, 1992. Meteorologists were predicting that Hurricane Andrew would come ashore some dozen or so miles north of my ground-level South Beach apartment and the city was evacuating. Under an eerie foreboding, my brother and I picked up everything off of the floor, packed up the cats and some overnight bags, and headed to a friend's fortified apartment in South Miami, well inland and, so we thought, further from the storm. A long, frightening, largely sleepless night later, we emerged from our impromptu revetment to a changed world: the familiar neighborhood was unrecognizable, a tangled jetsam of power lines, roofing, and tree detritus.
Today feels similar, although the timeline is multiplied a few dozen times. From my experience with Hurricane Andrew, and other events, I know the world can change, sometimes in an instant. It is rare that we get warning; it is good to heed it when we do.
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Dream of Fields
Not long after completing A Welcome Suburbia, I had the thought to go into my gigabytes of field recordings, pull out files that I particularly liked, and put together a compilation of them. Since getting my H4N Pro in '17, I have spent a fair amount of time with it (in fact, I keep it in my bag/purse), recording a wide range of aural phenomena from creaking floors to bird calls, A/C units to wind in fences, nighttime choruses to midday cityscapes, hits to pads to soundscapes. Nearly all of it, especially in my first year or so, was learning/experimenting. Three years into it, I'm certainly no master, but I'm beginning to have some sense of what I can and can't do, as well as what I want out of the medium artistically. Revisiting my collection has reified my values as regards how environmental sounds should be used and the result are these two "sister" albums:
I call them sister albums because they came out of the same project, but they developed into different things. The first, Ambiences, is a collection of my longest, largely natural-world soundscape recordings, collected while traveling in environments I don't normally get to hear. These are intended to be listened to in a leisurely way, entering into and fading from conscious awareness in the true sense of ambient music and sound. The second, Brief Fields, is comprised of relatively short soundscapes that are local and infused with fore- or backgrounded human activity. I selected them because, for various reasons, I liked their content or atmosphere, but they were either too short or too intense to be what I think of as ambient.
Putting them together was, as I said above, validating. As I was editing, deciding what sounds should be kept and which should be cut, I felt increasingly that I should leave in as much of what the microphones captured as esthetics could allow. Retaining the odd car driving past or the jet in the distance that pulls the ear away from whatever foreground there was grew to be more and more important -- more honest, more real. In the end, the only exceptions to this approach were one or two instances where a sudden change in the soundscape was jarring or overpowering (and were thus edited out and crossfaded) and wind.
Wind noise is the bane of many a field recordist's dreams; it is not merely an unpleasant sound but an unnatural one, arising from artifacts in the structure of the microphone being used and thus not something one would experience without the act of recording. The first approach to minimizing this is through mic placement and use of windscreens, but these solutions are spotty at best in their effectiveness and often limit what you can actually capture. Nearly all mic/wind interaction noise occurs below about 85Hz or 90Hz, so it is easy enough to filter out in post-production, but some soundscapes have enough going on in the two-plus octave range from there to the low end of human hearing that doing so often feels -- and sounds -- like an amputation.
My solution in these albums was a combination of the above. As best I could, I made my recordings in wind-sheltered locations and always used a deadcat. Almost inevitably, however, wind noise leaks through at least a bit in recordings of all but the most becalmed places. In these cases my first step is to select stretches of audio in which no wind occurred, thus sometimes wind noise -- or its lack -- effectively determined recording length. If a particular recording had esthetic interest in the same frequency range as some low-level and infrequent wind noise -- say, trucks going by or surf -- I attempted to filter the noise out using a shelving filter, which could cut enough of the artifactual sound to be tolerable but still leave the otherwise interesting low frequencies perceptible. In other samples, where the wind noise was more prevalent and the bulk of the soundscape's interest was above 80Hz or so, I used a more sharply inclined high-pass filter, excising entirely all sound below the threshold of wind. I don't typically like this solution, as the missing bottom end can be noticeable, but in some tracks, it was workable.
Another insight that came out of compiling this was that I like long environmental recordings. I'm especially proud of the two longest tracks on Ambiences, "New England Suburban Midnight" and "New England Rural Sunrise." (At 1:53:53/600Mb, the former is at the limit of what Bandcamp allows artists to upload.) These are ambiences that you can put on your stereo and they hold a space and they are long enough that the captured soundscape changes from beginning to end; the day is never static. I've learned that my H4N Pro is limited to files of 2:14:45 in length at 44100 sample rates and 24-bit resolution; this is a bit above CD quality (which is 16-bit), so I might be able to get a bit more length, but I'm finding myself coveting longer file sizes. Yes, of course, you can crossfade files together imperceptibly to make effectively limitless lengths, but somehow the esthetic of knowing the sound is uninterrupted carries weight for me.
Barring unexpected developments, this will be my last field recording project for a while: I intend next to focus my efforts on an album of viola music, some covers, some original, mostly solo/unaccompanied, a few with computer or other instruments. These two sister albums have been in keeping with my commitment to a Depth Year, taking what I already have and building on and/or completing it, and the viola project is also very much in the same vein: I've had several works for viola percolating for months or years and it feels like it's time to put bow to string and get it done.
I call them sister albums because they came out of the same project, but they developed into different things. The first, Ambiences, is a collection of my longest, largely natural-world soundscape recordings, collected while traveling in environments I don't normally get to hear. These are intended to be listened to in a leisurely way, entering into and fading from conscious awareness in the true sense of ambient music and sound. The second, Brief Fields, is comprised of relatively short soundscapes that are local and infused with fore- or backgrounded human activity. I selected them because, for various reasons, I liked their content or atmosphere, but they were either too short or too intense to be what I think of as ambient.
Putting them together was, as I said above, validating. As I was editing, deciding what sounds should be kept and which should be cut, I felt increasingly that I should leave in as much of what the microphones captured as esthetics could allow. Retaining the odd car driving past or the jet in the distance that pulls the ear away from whatever foreground there was grew to be more and more important -- more honest, more real. In the end, the only exceptions to this approach were one or two instances where a sudden change in the soundscape was jarring or overpowering (and were thus edited out and crossfaded) and wind.
Wind noise is the bane of many a field recordist's dreams; it is not merely an unpleasant sound but an unnatural one, arising from artifacts in the structure of the microphone being used and thus not something one would experience without the act of recording. The first approach to minimizing this is through mic placement and use of windscreens, but these solutions are spotty at best in their effectiveness and often limit what you can actually capture. Nearly all mic/wind interaction noise occurs below about 85Hz or 90Hz, so it is easy enough to filter out in post-production, but some soundscapes have enough going on in the two-plus octave range from there to the low end of human hearing that doing so often feels -- and sounds -- like an amputation.
My solution in these albums was a combination of the above. As best I could, I made my recordings in wind-sheltered locations and always used a deadcat. Almost inevitably, however, wind noise leaks through at least a bit in recordings of all but the most becalmed places. In these cases my first step is to select stretches of audio in which no wind occurred, thus sometimes wind noise -- or its lack -- effectively determined recording length. If a particular recording had esthetic interest in the same frequency range as some low-level and infrequent wind noise -- say, trucks going by or surf -- I attempted to filter the noise out using a shelving filter, which could cut enough of the artifactual sound to be tolerable but still leave the otherwise interesting low frequencies perceptible. In other samples, where the wind noise was more prevalent and the bulk of the soundscape's interest was above 80Hz or so, I used a more sharply inclined high-pass filter, excising entirely all sound below the threshold of wind. I don't typically like this solution, as the missing bottom end can be noticeable, but in some tracks, it was workable.
Another insight that came out of compiling this was that I like long environmental recordings. I'm especially proud of the two longest tracks on Ambiences, "New England Suburban Midnight" and "New England Rural Sunrise." (At 1:53:53/600Mb, the former is at the limit of what Bandcamp allows artists to upload.) These are ambiences that you can put on your stereo and they hold a space and they are long enough that the captured soundscape changes from beginning to end; the day is never static. I've learned that my H4N Pro is limited to files of 2:14:45 in length at 44100 sample rates and 24-bit resolution; this is a bit above CD quality (which is 16-bit), so I might be able to get a bit more length, but I'm finding myself coveting longer file sizes. Yes, of course, you can crossfade files together imperceptibly to make effectively limitless lengths, but somehow the esthetic of knowing the sound is uninterrupted carries weight for me.
Barring unexpected developments, this will be my last field recording project for a while: I intend next to focus my efforts on an album of viola music, some covers, some original, mostly solo/unaccompanied, a few with computer or other instruments. These two sister albums have been in keeping with my commitment to a Depth Year, taking what I already have and building on and/or completing it, and the viola project is also very much in the same vein: I've had several works for viola percolating for months or years and it feels like it's time to put bow to string and get it done.
Going Down
Around the European winter holidays, a forum I participate in, lines.co, typically has threads about goals -- what you accomplished this year, what your plans are for next year, usually focused on music, but also incorporating life in general. This year, one member posted about his plan for a Depth Year and his post resonated with a lot of folks, including me. The idea is to "go deep rather than wide" or, stated more practically, focus on engaging with what you already have, rather than adding new stuff. This is based in part on the principle that you don't need new stuff to be happy -- or that relying on new stuff to make you happy can make you unhappy -- which, like many of us in this consumer culture, I get and endorse, but maybe sometimes occasionally have a hard time following.
This year, though, a Depth Year seems not only a fit, but a natural outgrowth of last year. In 2019, in the wake of my father's death, my mom, my wife, and I decided that we should all live together and buy a house. This entailed helping my octogenarian mother sell and move out of her house, transport her and her stuff 1800 miles over to our neck of the woods, find and purchase a house all three of us like and which has room for one of our adult children, too, pack up our household, move, and unpack a total of three households into that one house. This while my wife started grad school full time and I maintained a full-time private practice in psychology. The previous several years were not dramatically different in terms of novel experiences: major career changes, family deaths and tragedies, kids in college, etc. So, yeah, we've had our share of new stuff.
Music-wise, too, a Depth Year feels right. Since re-acquainting with my musical self back in late '10, I've done a lot of experimenting and exploring which, naturally, means trying new stuff. I'm pleased with and proud of most of that work, even as I've chosen not to follow many paths I was introduced to. On the contrary: that exploration has wrapped me back around to where I am now, focusing on my viola, ambient music, and field recording. Those areas feel the richest to me, with the greatest potential for satisfaction, and those are domains I intend to go deeper into.
Thus, my Depth Year will be focused, musically, on testing out how far I might be able to go technically and compositionally with my viola, exploring harmony and timbre in ambient music, and expanding field recording into longer forms (more on that in the next post). I might also spend some time rebuilding my (piano) keyboard skills, which were never particularly great, but would be good to have, and to expand my use of and facility with my Push2, which I've had for more than three years now. Max/MSP and Ableton Live remain my go-to software; I intend to spend more time exploring the plug-ins that are bundled with Live, especially those built with M4L, and using the knowledge I have from building my own stuff to understand them better rather than reinventing the wheel.
Personally, my mom, my wife, and I have things we want to do with our new home. We also want to care for and support our kids as they transition to adulthood and to enjoy our time together. I plan to spend (and have been spending) time with cherished friends, building on established relationships. I'm also expanding my self-care, going to the gym, working with my medical providers and my psychotherapist, and using my mentor more.
Already, I see how rich my life is and how much there is to dig into; new stuff is not really necessary.
This year, though, a Depth Year seems not only a fit, but a natural outgrowth of last year. In 2019, in the wake of my father's death, my mom, my wife, and I decided that we should all live together and buy a house. This entailed helping my octogenarian mother sell and move out of her house, transport her and her stuff 1800 miles over to our neck of the woods, find and purchase a house all three of us like and which has room for one of our adult children, too, pack up our household, move, and unpack a total of three households into that one house. This while my wife started grad school full time and I maintained a full-time private practice in psychology. The previous several years were not dramatically different in terms of novel experiences: major career changes, family deaths and tragedies, kids in college, etc. So, yeah, we've had our share of new stuff.
Music-wise, too, a Depth Year feels right. Since re-acquainting with my musical self back in late '10, I've done a lot of experimenting and exploring which, naturally, means trying new stuff. I'm pleased with and proud of most of that work, even as I've chosen not to follow many paths I was introduced to. On the contrary: that exploration has wrapped me back around to where I am now, focusing on my viola, ambient music, and field recording. Those areas feel the richest to me, with the greatest potential for satisfaction, and those are domains I intend to go deeper into.
Thus, my Depth Year will be focused, musically, on testing out how far I might be able to go technically and compositionally with my viola, exploring harmony and timbre in ambient music, and expanding field recording into longer forms (more on that in the next post). I might also spend some time rebuilding my (piano) keyboard skills, which were never particularly great, but would be good to have, and to expand my use of and facility with my Push2, which I've had for more than three years now. Max/MSP and Ableton Live remain my go-to software; I intend to spend more time exploring the plug-ins that are bundled with Live, especially those built with M4L, and using the knowledge I have from building my own stuff to understand them better rather than reinventing the wheel.
Personally, my mom, my wife, and I have things we want to do with our new home. We also want to care for and support our kids as they transition to adulthood and to enjoy our time together. I plan to spend (and have been spending) time with cherished friends, building on established relationships. I'm also expanding my self-care, going to the gym, working with my medical providers and my psychotherapist, and using my mentor more.
Already, I see how rich my life is and how much there is to dig into; new stuff is not really necessary.
Friday, January 31, 2020
Making Noise
I'm not really into noise music. I get it and I've heard some work that I was fairly impressed by, but it's not my cup of tea, if only because it really exacerbates my tinnitus and messes with my otherwise impaired hearing. So, I was surprised when I found myself really digging the noise that came out of an experiment I did with Audacity's image-to-audio conversion function.
It started with following a link an online friend pointed me to called pixelsynth, in which one can create or import an image and the browser-based synth will convert the brightness values per-pixel into pitches. Although I thought the app was cool and potentially useful, the synth output clipped badly and I couldn't find how to adjust it and so ended up abandoning it. But I really liked the concept of image-to-audio, which I had been aware of for some time, and my search for help with pixelsynth led me to an Audacity-based solution. In the end, I found myself with 16 hours of audio created from one of my favorite images of the Pleiades. As I said, it felt unexpectedly musical and, after much finagling and negotiations with the sound and with myself, I produced the following piece:
The first few minutes of the piece are unaltered from the original sound file. Although the sound is never the same -- it maintains this wonderful balance between pattern and variation -- it didn't really have a perceivable sense of direction, an aspect I consider critical to what makes something musical. To remedy that, I slowly added some basic effects: panning, delay with feedback, LPF sweeps, and some reverb. Notably, the reverb-like sound you hear at the beginning is not an added effect, but native to the converted image audio. There was some light equalizing to balance out the spectrum, but that's it. I'm pleased with the results -- although not enough to pursue the genre per se!
It started with following a link an online friend pointed me to called pixelsynth, in which one can create or import an image and the browser-based synth will convert the brightness values per-pixel into pitches. Although I thought the app was cool and potentially useful, the synth output clipped badly and I couldn't find how to adjust it and so ended up abandoning it. But I really liked the concept of image-to-audio, which I had been aware of for some time, and my search for help with pixelsynth led me to an Audacity-based solution. In the end, I found myself with 16 hours of audio created from one of my favorite images of the Pleiades. As I said, it felt unexpectedly musical and, after much finagling and negotiations with the sound and with myself, I produced the following piece:
The first few minutes of the piece are unaltered from the original sound file. Although the sound is never the same -- it maintains this wonderful balance between pattern and variation -- it didn't really have a perceivable sense of direction, an aspect I consider critical to what makes something musical. To remedy that, I slowly added some basic effects: panning, delay with feedback, LPF sweeps, and some reverb. Notably, the reverb-like sound you hear at the beginning is not an added effect, but native to the converted image audio. There was some light equalizing to balance out the spectrum, but that's it. I'm pleased with the results -- although not enough to pursue the genre per se!
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