Re: [rumori] curve of sound innovation


From: matt davignon (mattdavignonAThotmail.com)
Date: Sat Mar 17 2001 - 01:21:48 PST


>From: Don Joyce <djATwebbnet.com>
>
>Matt,
>I would have to hear the Daxophone (and would like to!) to tell you if it's
>any kind of new sound, but I would bet it's one of the oldest sounds in
>music's world being vibrating string on wood(?) And how old is the
>Daxophone? Are you calling it a NEW instrument?

It's on the first track of "Gravikords Whirlies & Pyrophones", a cd set of
experimental music instruments. (You've probably seen the CD around with the
big yellow booklet.) I don't know much about the instrument, other than that
the inventor is still alive, and it was probably invented within the past 15
years.

>The elephants are playing traditional instruments and can make no "new"
>elephant sounds with them. I am also willing to confine my argument to
>human music...

I wasn't sure if your argument was originally referring to sound production
or musical composition. Steev's rebuttal to my arguments cited my examples
of both being "different colors of the same guitar", suggesting that we were
talking about something inherent in music other than those 2 things. (And
really, the only characteristics of music other than the nature of the
instruments/sounds and how they're arranged is semiological context - but
semiotics seem very far from the point of this discussion.)

Okay, so now I know we're on the subject of the mechanical generation of
sound. Are you saying that humankind has already exploited every possible
vibration of any vibratable object? That we've heard air pass through any
chamber that might generate sound?

>After 40 years of digitized sound manipulation, I believe we've pretty much
>made computers make every variety of sound which digitization will ever
>provide in any elemental way. (Again, we are dealing only with the sound
>qualities of elements, not all the infinite varieties of untried music that
>might be made with them.)

Well, I'd have to say, any possible sound in existence that can be heard by
the human ear CAN be generated on a computer. Several editing programs
feature a "drawing tool" intended to help patch up errors. This tool can
also be used to draw a completely new waveform from scratch. A friend of
mine did a track entirely out of "drawn" souds. It takes an awful lot of
intense work just to get a fraction of a second of sound though, so it's
pretty safe to say that not all of the sounds that can be obtained in this
manner have been obtained.

Matt
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