Sonoetics | Everything is Completely Sound

everything is
completely sound

There is a mystery at the intersection of mind and matter, at the confluence where the world is both a wave and a particle. A place where reality depends on how we observe it — where the structure of the world “out there” may be only an allegory of the strange loops, recursions and self-mirroring that underlies it all.

This project aims to explore that delicate, dynamic realm found at the margins of order and chaos, sign and symbol, the material and the imaginal.

Poised in that narrow space between the repetitive and the unpredictable is music — a peculiar ordering of sound in time — something we experience as different from random noise.

Down there, at the level of quantum strings, it can be said everything is completely sound. Perhaps then music is an analogue, a portal into that liminal space between the duality of waves and particles.

From strings above, to strings below.

about the compositions

Each music experiment in the playlist is titled according to a particular compositional structure. I totally made up the names of these structures, because I don’t want to impose any established presuppositions on the listener, but at the same time I do want to provide a helpful heuristic, to place the piece within its expected tempo, tone and style.

Tranceform
Minimal beat or tempo-free atmospheres that lose track of space and time. Musical contemplations.

Psinewave
These are minimal-beats synthesizer waveforms spiced with analog instruments or their physical model equivalents.

Imaginal
Developed themes that repeat in a passacaglia style, designed for passive listening during a meditative practice like active imagination.

Cinematic
More attention-focused than the passive Imaginal journey, the listener of a Cinematic work is carried along as an active participant in an unfolding story.

Dialectic
Minimal to light beats, dominated by two or three instruments in conversation with each other, searching for a resolution, often operating within the jazz mode.

Spacecraft
Moderate to allegro beats and intricate looping recursions that emerge from the psybient genre, sometimes (but not always) overlain with a defined melodic line.

Mechanism
Complex rhythmic and harmonic patterns woven into a loosely fugue-like sound mandala.

about the sounds

Physical Modeling Synthesis.
Most of the sounds created in these works are original waveforms constructed on my computer with mathematical models.^[1]

With physical modeling I can explore the parameters of timbre, texture and microtonality beyond the limits of both sampling and analog instrumentation, working to invent new color tones and sonic pigments while maintaining references to early and imaginal modalities.

Because building complex waveforms can be an art in its own right, I would like to thank the following artists and sound designers who have created some foundational constructions from which I was inspired to fork my own versions.

Richard Devine
Daniel Stawczyk
Christian Laffitte
Laurence Rapaccioli (Arksun)
Alessandro Cardinale
Christian Halten
Dave Linnenbank
Joerg Huettner
Taiho Yamada
Adam Pietruszko
Thiago Pinheiro
Klaus Baetz
Vincent Gagnon
Gautam

Analog Antecedents.
Some of the physical models I’ve built are based on some real-world analog instruments I’ve owned, including: Currier piano (1959).
Seasoned to a mellow resonance after years in an open-air living room — the bay breeze coming through the Florida jalousie windows — a touch of sea salt in its hammer felt.
Woods guitar (2009) .
I bought it in Montana and hand-tuned it to the sounds of the Lochsa River in the Clearwater National Forest, then allowed it to detune gracefully where I recorded it in the Puget Sound.

Forked Samples.
In the parlance of computer programming, a fork is a derivation of source code, often taking the original in new directions, altering the source in unrecognizable ways. To add some analog color to my palette, I’ve engineered a few real-world instrument samples and crushed the waveforms to produce unconventional texturing. Bass clarinet (2021).
Softly played in a single sustained note, recorded through a close microphone set-up and downtuned to an intimate whisper.
Violin, viola and cello (2021) .
Recorded as single-note legato bowing, I’ve altered samples of Farida Rustamova on violin, Alejandro Regueira on viola, and Vasily Bystoff on cello.^[2] I hope I’ve retained the spirit of their artistry.

the color of Sound

The Color of Sound ^[3]
The exterior circuit of the infinity loop follows the notes of the octave as it ascends in perfect fifths. The bottom cycle flows through the whole tones, and the top through the half tones. The interior circuit (that makes the star shape) follows the notes of the octave as they appear in ascending order through an equal temperament scale. Each note on the 12-tone octave then corresponds to a hue on the 12-color CMY/RGB color wheel, the half tones represented by the 5 primary colors of the subtractive scale, and the natural notes by the 7 remaining secondary colors mixed by the primaries.

notes

^[1] The sounds created by fractals and math are like elements pre-existing, a priori, in the universe, waiting to be discovered. This should not be confused with AI, which is a predictive algorithm based on stored data. If you’re wondering, I don’t use AI for the creation of music, imagery, writing or code. I believe art is a practice, not a product. The inspirare is in the imagination, not in the imitation.

^[2] Licensed samples. The artists have generously offered their time and talent.

^[3] The Color of Sound was inspired by and developed from the “Circle of Seven whole tones, Circle of Five half tones” by Hans Erhard Lauer in Die Entwicklung der Musik im Wandel der Tonsysteme (The Evolution of Music Through Changes in Tone-Systems), 1935, revised ed. 1960, reissued Basel, Verlag die Pforte, 1976.