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  • a Van Halen/Merzbow mash-up

    9 Eki 2008, 08:45

    Some time ago I found an mp3 of the vocal track from Van Halen's ÇalRunnin' With the Devil. So, I listened to it again and decided that it would be accompanied well by a Merzbow track. Also, I haven't even heard the Van Halen original, so all I'm familiar with is this track on which Eddie Van Halen sounds like a crazy homeless person on the street, like Wild Man Fischer or something. I mixed it with the Merzbow track Black Flesh PT.1, a short track that has chicken sounds in it.

    Last.fm says the link is "spam", so, copy and remove the spaces:
    www . mediafire . com/file/neewmdrzdzk/Black%20Flesh%20Pt.%201_Runnin'%20with%20the%20Devil.mp3
    it's 3:49 and 7.2MB
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  • musical emotions profile

    31 May 2008, 16:54

    An advertisement for this site has been showing up here. It's www.musicalemotions.org. It promises a kind of test of your music-evoked emotions. The test asked me to listen to a piece of music that I like, or "that seems of particular emotional interest to [me]." Then I rate how much I felt various emotions from a long list.

    I decided to listen to Mono's "Lost Snow". I listened two-thirds of the way through before starting to fill in my reactions. There was a space at the bottom to fill in any emotions that I felt but were not on the list, possibly for them to refine the test later. I put in "passion" and "compassion".

    Following is my results page. It describes the groups of emotions that I identified most strongly.

    "Your musical emotions profile

    (there was a bar graph here that listed the following emotions)

    General description of the various musical dimensions

    Wonder: Feelings of wonder are related to experiences of admiration, enchantment, astonishment, marvel in front of anything very impressive such as the beauties of nature, of art or of more specific phenomena such as a child prodigy or a pathbreaking scientific discovery. Why music evokes this emotional response quite frequently is at present not fully understood.

    Transcendence: Experiences of transcendence contain feelings of deep inspiration often combined with feelings of awe, of humility and reverence in front of something perceived as big. These experiences can, but do not have to imply spiritual feelings. As noted by the famous psychologist Abraham Maslow, music is one of the most effective means of inducing feelings of transcendence.

    Longing: Is a feeling experienced in relation to something or someone that is strongly valued or desired but absent. Nostalgia tends to occur in relation past valued experiences, while longing is more typically directed towards a desired but not (yet) existing future. Longing is often experienced in relation to a loved one, but can also be “free-floating” in which case it may be best described as “the desire for desire”.

    Tenderness: This is a state in which one feels soft, gentle, in “caressing mode” as it were. Feelings of tenderness are intimately related to feelings of love, affection and warmth.

    Peacefulness: Reflects the experience of tranquility and serenity and the total absence of emotional turmoil. This experience relates to the well-known calming, sedative effects of music. Despite their apparent dullness, these feelings can be quite intense when experienced as a positive dreamlike state of contentment – a much sought after experience in human life.

    Power: Refers to feelings of triumph, heroism, and “grandeur”. Music does have a mysterious transformative power to make us feel strong, great, and self-confident even when our day-to-day feelings tend to be fragile, dull and not empowering at all.

    Joyful Activation: Feelings of joy, enthusiasm and happiness are self-explanatory and anyone who listens regularly to music knows these feelings. Sometimes these feelings mobilize our motor system and we feel like bouncing, tapping or dancing to the music. Therefore we refer to this state as joyful activation.

    Inquietude: Even though most music-related feelings tend to be positive, some kinds or twists of music can trigger feelings of nervousness, agitation, irritation and even aggression. When in a rebellious state of mind, these feelings can be sought after or even enjoyed as tends to happen particularly during adolescence.

    Sadness: The sadness evoked by music tends to differ from the sadness of our day-to day experiences. The latter tend to be aversive – something we wish we could avoid. In contrast, the sadness evoked by music is one that, on balance, we are able to enjoy. It is as if the music allowed us to experience the pure feeling of sadness, stripped from the aversive experiences of defeat or loss that accompany its appearance in everyday-life."

    I found interesting the descriptions of how we experience these emotions during music. There's not much more to the results than that, however. What would also be interesting would be a look into the differences among people in how they react to music and describe their emotions. To what extent to we differ in what emotions we prefer to feel during music? How much do people vary in the emotions they experience from the same piece of music? How much of that variation would be attributable to different ways of putting words to the emotions? Etc.

    I recommend the test even though the results may be lacking in insight. I'm especially interested in other people's results.

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  • Reward is related to Effort.

    26 May 2008, 14:51

    You listen to music. You love music. You're open-minded. You don't like something just because it's popular. You put some effort into finding music that you like. You "listen" to music. You're lazy.

    How do you listen to music? Do you remove distractions, start an album, and listen to it? Or do you put something on while you're on the internet or writing your philosophy midterm? A little of both? From now on, you're not going to do the second one, you're only going to listen to music without trying to do multiple things at the same time. Because I said so. . .but here are my reasons:

    You can't focus on more than one thing at a time. If we try to multi-task, we are only shifting our attention back-and-forth between the tasks. That means something for how you perceive music. If this is how you listen, it's good that you're favorite songs repeat the chorus three times, isn't it? It's okay if you miss it the second time, because you already know the melody anyway.

    If you are distracted, you miss something. Music organizes time, and it does it constantly. If you listen to a CD (that's right, an actual plastic CD you paid money for), there is something new 44,100 times a second. That's a lot more than your brain has the ability to consciously recognize, but they all contribute to a dense sound with some duration, that, if you have some decent speakers (or headphones, for those of you who like to imagine that Thom Yorke is singing from inside of your skull), will correspond with what the artist intended you to hear. To get to the point, the artist (although not every "artist") did not record their music with the intention that you would listen to about half of it, your attention snapping in and out.

    If an artist respects himself, and his (her/their/whatever) fans, to such an extreme that he assumes that most of them will listen, at least once, maybe twice, with their undivided attention, then he has the opportunity to not have to make his music more "accessible". Compare to the shit on the radio. Radio is usually heard (not listened to) while the audience is doing some other activity. So, if you are an artist who wants to get his music on the radio, you're going to have to take it easy on your listeners. They're not really listening.

    Now you know that you're supposed to listen to music to enjoy it. Okay, big deal. Here's the hard part: Listening takes effort. "No, it doesn't, you said all I have to do is not be distracted, then how am I not going to listen?", you say (that's what you just thought, right?)? Well, it takes effort to focus your attention on the sound (music is just sound, in case you didn't know) to the exclusion of distractions, such as, possibly most significantly, your thoughts. "Well, if I don't have to think, then listening shouldn't take much effort." Try not to think. Now start thinking again. That didn't work, did it? "No, and if I stop thinking, how will I ever start again?" That's a good point, but you'll get bored when the music is over, trust me. There were Zen monks who supposedly meditated for days at a time, but even they had to quit at some point so that they wouldn't starve to death.

    Because it takes some effort to quiet your thoughts and focus on one experience, here's how you are rewarded for that effort: you will appreciate (not necessarily enjoy, i know) new music. I don't just mean that other band you heard of that's similar to the one you already know, but anything that you have the opportunity to hear. Appreciation makes you learn new things and have broader experiences, which can lead to deeper experiences than you have had before.

    Daha fazla bilgi 24 yorum Yorum yaz

  • Ultimate Sound Pressure Level Decibel Table

    20 Mar 2008, 20:12

    I found this interesting table on the physical effects of sound waves, from -80 dB to 320 dB (the estimated sound pressure from a large, explosive volcanic eruption). It describes various effects for different levels of sound pressure.

    http://makeitlouder.com/Decibel%20Level%20Chart.txt

    Some interesting examples of human effects (there are many other kinds of effects as well):

    135 HUMAN, A SLIGHT COOLING EFFECT BEGINS TO BE NOTICED, FROM AIR EXPANSION

    140 HUMAN THROAT AND VOCAL CORD VIBRATION BEGINS

    142 HUMAN BODY CHESTPOUNDING IS INTENCE

    148 HUMAN VIBRATION VERY UNCOMFORTABLE AND SLIGHTLY PAINFUL

    150 HUMAN SENSATION OF BEING COMPRESSED AS IF UNDERWATER IS OVERWHELMING

    155 HUMAN BODY COMPRESSION AND EXPANSION TO VIBRATION IS TO THE “CORE”

    158 HUMAN BODY VIBRATION IS VIOLENT, NAUSEA BECOMES MORE INTENCE

    195-190 (P) HUMAN EARDRUMS RUPTURE 50 % OF TIME

    202-198 (P) HUMAN DEATH FROM SOUND (SHOCK) WAVE ALONE.

    The (P) means that that is a measured peak reading, while the others are calculated from energy levels.
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  • My Top 10 Favorite Rock Albums

    18 Şub 2008, 10:12

    Rock is the genre of music that I have listened to the most. My music collection is probably more than 50% rock, and the number of rock records that I have listened to outnumbers any other style or genre by a good order of magnitude. I predict that that number will alter dramatically once I get a real job and I start buying as much music as I want, which will mean lots more jazz, classical, and avant-garde stuff. Anyway, this list only contains rock music, and, for the sake of definition, I’ll mention a couple of records that are favorites of mine that fall just outside the border with rock music:

    The eternally awesome Tago Mago by Can is rock a lot of the time, but tracks like the droning “Aumgn” and the bizarre “Peking O” are definitely not rock. And the use of overdubbing creates something more Karlheinz Stockhausen Remixing Pink Floyd than actual rock music. And the deliciously eccentric Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band exists somewhere between and outside of blues, rock, and free jazz. It also uses some great atonality, which is extremely rare in rock music, The Velvet Underground being the notable exception to use it at times.

    And here's my list:

    1. Mono – You Are There
    The kids these days keep going on about “Post-Rock”, as if this is the music of the future and it’s not rock. Well, I’d call this rock as it features loud (ridiculously loud) electric guitars and a drum kit. And it’s obviously not after rock, as rock is still around, and it’s not the music of the future if it’s the music of now. Either way, Mono makes the best rock music on the planet. As I read once in an interview with their guitarist Goto Takaakira, they try to express the human condition, all the emotions and energy in it. Note also that their most prominent thematic inspiration has been the atomic bomb disaster catastrophe mass murder destruction on Japan and they’re working from a pretty deep emotional reserve. The passion all comes (in both senses) pouring out in the form of beautiful and sometimes horrifying red hot guitar noise from that place inside people that people don’t talk about and that made Ludwig van Beethoven write music and that made Mono make their music (which is also composed very well).

    2. Dinosaur Jr. – You’re Living All Over Me
    This album just destroys from start to finish. It sounds truly inspired, and it had to be, because J, Lou, and Murph don’t sound like they were even trying. This album to me seems to address the concerns and feelings of all slackers everywhere, including the importance of marijuana in their lives. Some of the songs are actually about girl problems, and luckily they seem genuine and not blown out of proportion like in the blight that is “emo”. Also, the lo-fi “Poledo” (luckily, it’s lo-fi in the absolute best way possible) is a unique song on the album and it is very good. It’s a piece put together by Lou that’s a combination of him singing and playing ukulele, and a beautiful floaty tape sound collage. Listen closely and you can see him singing and playing in his bedroom.

    3. Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation
    I’m only including one album by each artist. Otherwise Sonic Youth would have taken more than one place, including either EVOL or Sister. It’s hard to pick Daydream Nation over those two, because it doesn’t include the ecstatic noisy climaxes of songs like “Expressway to Yr Skull” or “Schizophrenia”. But the band still had as much passion, they just used it differently. The Branca Hardcore finale of Eliminator Jr adequately makes up for what seemed to be missing.

    4. Mogwai – Young Team
    The production on this recording is perfect. It seems Mogwai were oblivious to the terrible trend of compressing dynamics and mastering recordings for maximum loudness all the time. The awesome dynamic range goes from small voices and electrical hums to fierce pedaled-up guitar. This album also has a lot of subtlety. It’s mostly instrumental (no words telling the emotions), it has a lot of quiet bits and voices that are nearly indiscernible, and the production isn’t crystal clear (but it’s good, what you hear is what you’re supposed to hear).

    5. The Rolling Stones – Exile on Main St.
    This is obviously the best Stones record and it’s the first album on my list from before 1987 (which happens to be the year I was born in, but I don’t think that means anything). The band distilled the best rock-n-roll and traditional American music (pretty good for a British band) into one album. All of the songs are great, and there are a lot of them.

    6. Radiohead – OK Computer
    Everyone loves this album and I love it. But I’ll use this space to tell you why it doesn’t make the top five. Radiohead has always had a strong pop consciousness. You can sense it in this album, and it detracts from what they could have done without worrying about it. For example, (it’s nitpicking real hardcore because this is my favorite song on the album anyway!) “Climbing up the Walls” features some awesome and unconventional synthesizer and string parts, but the drums and guitar are obviously louder. A better mix would have brought out more interesting tones and timbres.

    7. The Velvet Underground – White Light/White Heat
    I want to put this higher on the list. I guess it’s the track “The Gift” that holds it back. I only skip it about half the time; the story is good. The rest of the album is excellent. The last two tracks, “I Heard Her Call My Name” and the great “Sister Ray” ensure immortality for this record. I could listen to “I Heard Her Call My Name” everyday for breakfast. It’s full of energy, and the guitar solos are the best.

    8. The Beatles – Revolver
    This is my favorite Beatles album. All of the songs (even “Yellow Submarine”) are really good.

    9. Glenn Branca – The Ascension
    This is sort of not rock music, but I think it counts. The only instruments were electric guitars and drums, but an important feature is the echoes and overtones created by the room that they played in. Unfortunately, it wasn’t recorded in the best way, so the only way to enjoy to its fullest is when I play it very loud in my bedroom or car to let the raw metallic guitars scrape against each other and sound their sparks of varied thrumming overtones.

    10. The Stooges – Raw Power
    This is loud and disgusting and it’s rock. The Stooges weren’t intellectual, they made some of the most energetic and raw rock music there is. “I’m a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm.”
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