What to listen for in noise?

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But this could be an interesting question to answer seriously.

(Look who's roffling.)

― Rockist Scientist (RSLaRue), Saturday, 2 September 2006 00:03 (eighteen years ago) link

three months pass...

Silence?

― Mark (Mark R), Thursday, 14 December 2006 23:55 (seventeen years ago) link

Best part about noise music is that the obvious answer is: "Whatever you want, really."

― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Friday, 15 December 2006 00:00 (seventeen years ago) link

voices telling you to kill

― friday on the porch (lfam), Friday, 15 December 2006 00:02 (seventeen years ago) link

Metallic rattling. Could be the radiator.

― Fat Lady Wrestler (Modal Fugue), Friday, 15 December 2006 01:55 (seventeen years ago) link

Your destiny is located somewhere within the Merzbox.

― clotpoll (clotpoll), Friday, 15 December 2006 03:17 (seventeen years ago) link

Atlantis, The end of the rainbow, Joanna Newsom going for a high e above middle c...

― Tape Store (Tape Store), Friday, 15 December 2006 03:41 (seventeen years ago) link

Repetition and slowly changing, irregular rhythms.
Density.
The degree to which it engages the listener's attention.

― ian (orion), Friday, 15 December 2006 05:14 (seventeen years ago) link

(the first two are just are my preferences; i think sometimes you can even listen for melody in noise music, because it's not like it doesn't show up here and there.)

― ian (orion), Friday, 15 December 2006 05:15 (seventeen years ago) link

what

― amon (amon), Friday, 15 December 2006 05:19 (seventeen years ago) link

sorry i'm stoned.
what's going on here?

― ian (orion), Friday, 15 December 2006 05:30 (seventeen years ago) link

loud white noise with low end repetition.
is my thing, sometimes
but not all the time.

― ian (orion), Friday, 15 December 2006 05:31 (seventeen years ago) link

sorry i'm stoned.
what's going on here?

oh hi!

― grbchv! (gbx), Friday, 15 December 2006 05:35 (seventeen years ago) link

it's like when you listen to the noise until you imagine it speaking to you. it's like a magic eye for yer ears.

― ian (orion), Friday, 15 December 2006 05:58 (seventeen years ago) link

magic eye (puzzle)

― ian (orion), Friday, 15 December 2006 05:58 (seventeen years ago) link

noise as body music is awesome - where it goes too far from that, im like ehhh

― 69 (pete), Friday, 15 December 2006 06:03 (seventeen years ago) link

i like noise that changes shape when i move around the house. stuff that sounds completely different depending on what room you are in. art as sound waves. it follows you and changes your brain patterns.

― scott seward (121212), Friday, 15 December 2006 06:26 (seventeen years ago) link

ts: high concept "noise" vs. punk rock/DIY noise.

― ian (orion), Friday, 15 December 2006 06:36 (seventeen years ago) link

listen for intuitive choices (but non-rational) choices being made about the articulate (but non-propositional) circulation of amplitude/energy/tone/color, mannnnnnn

― Dr. Drew Daniel, PhD (Drew Daniel), Friday, 15 December 2006 06:42 (seventeen years ago) link

choice choices

― Dr. Drew Daniel, PhD (Drew Daniel), Friday, 15 December 2006 06:43 (seventeen years ago) link

that's why he's the Dr, people

― grbchv! (gbx), Friday, 15 December 2006 06:53 (seventeen years ago) link

The dude who looks like Will Ferrell getting his sax out.

― jim (jim), Friday, 15 December 2006 10:31 (seventeen years ago) link

Its easy, this:

Just buy a bunch of 'em. Look at the covers and the sleeves (depends, you might not want to get it out of the wrapper when its time to flog it on ebay) and stack it up on yr shelves.

Don't play the CD/LP (or CDR), then make it up as you go along.

― xyzzzz__ (xyzzzz__), Friday, 15 December 2006 12:26 (seventeen years ago) link

I think the biggest attraction for me is the fact there's (seemingly) no structure so I have nothing to cling onto. This frees me up more and pushes me into this sea of sounds. I like the randomness of noise and even changed the way I listened to music.

― nathalie (stevienixed), Friday, 15 December 2006 12:29 (seventeen years ago) link

The only "noise" group I listen to anymore is Borbetomagus, so I just try and pick out what each member is contributing to the whole. Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich have very different saxophone styles, but sometimes it can be hard to tell them apart. Jim's told me more than once that when he plays back tapes of their gigs, sometimes he can't tell who's doing what. So that's where the fun comes in for me, at least when listening at home. Live, it's just about hanging onto something sturdy and riding it out.

― Phil Freeman (unperson), Friday, 15 December 2006 12:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Harmonics, shifting textures, and surprises. Also rhythms - even if they're only implied, or superimposed upon the sounds themselves artificially, like a layer of reverb or tremelo added during mixing (or whenever that sort of thing is done).

Also, is it too much to ask that the stuff be recorded reasonably cleanly and professionally? (Unless a crap recording job is kinda the "point", of course.)

― Myonga Von Bombast (Monty Von Bygone), Friday, 15 December 2006 15:35 (seventeen years ago) link

the sublime / humor / conceptual derring-do

― sexyDancer (sexyDancer), Friday, 15 December 2006 15:53 (seventeen years ago) link

I think I listen to noise the same way I listen to outside sounds. Most of the time, it feels like a matter of being given pieces of a puzzle that only fit together in retrospect, but usually I don't look back on what happened, so I'm always listening to what's happening right now (and maybe sometimes wonder what will happen). When something hits me, when I have a reaction that for whatever reason I feel the need to reflect on, perhaps it seems like a pattern is emerging, or suggested, but even then it's always fleeting. It's like hearing a story that will almost certainly not go where you expect it to, and for large stretches might seem totally incomprehensible -- so, if I want to "comprehend" it, I just have to listen, and let meaning happen intuitively (?). I think it helps if you go into noise knowing that nothing may resolve, no clues may be given -- and then over time, somehow it still seems okay, evocative, intuitive, musical.

― Dominique (dleone), Friday, 15 December 2006 16:06 (seventeen years ago) link

For many musicians and listenters, music is a discrete abstraction that exists within larger meaning-making environments - such as human consciousness, or a built space. Some music, however (and especially at very high volume), seems to break those boundaries, becoming an inhabitable physical environment in itself - something that contains and transforms both the perceiving consciousness and the built space that supposedly contains it.

Sometimes I prefer music as an explorable, seemingly infinite sound-space to music as a decorative or intellectual artifact within some other containing space. And when approached this way, the quality and/or ostensible meaning of the music's component sounds doesn't matter as much the overall experience of inhabiting the sound-structure.

I like structures that are surprising, graceful, intuitively accurate, challenging, and dreamlike. I like structures that pay more attention to the tactile/sensual qualities of the whole than to the composition of any given part. And in pursuit of that, I listen to a lot of straight-up noise.

― adam beales (pye poudre), Friday, 15 December 2006 16:36 (seventeen years ago) link

i like when it makes me feel like what i'm doing - shopping, carefully walking across an ice patch, administrative work - feel far more important than it actually is.

― deej (deej), Friday, 15 December 2006 16:40 (seventeen years ago) link

what to listen to with ears?

― Tyrone Slothrop (Tyrone Slothrop), Friday, 15 December 2006 16:47 (seventeen years ago) link

I listen for disorientation. I *only* listen to noise when I'm absolutely fucking full of stress and I need something to cut up my brain into little pieces to be recombined whenever. I don't listen to noise often but when I need it, I NEED it. The vast majority of noise I'm scouring my hard drive and the internet for right this moment is falling well fucking short of my needs so I'm having to play 4 songs simultaneously. Really 3 was doing it, but 4 is really chasing the demons. It's been that kind of day, comes maybe twice a year.

musicmatch: merzbow - 1930
foobar: merzbow - intro to 1930
pandora - clip - 1r1
winamp - merzbow - degradation of tapes

I downloaded 1930 cuz I can't find my cdr of it and Pandora is pussying out on me and I don't know of anything as harsh or harsher than 1930. I could use some other suggestions, nothing soft or rhythmic or meditative or any of that tho jsut jackhammer shit. I need it within the next 30 minutes or so so if you see this later don't bother. thanks.

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Saturday, 16 December 2006 03:37 (seventeen years ago) link

Merzbow/Pan Sonic - "V"
IT IS THE CHEESE GRATER YOUR BRAIN NEVER KNEW IT NEEDED.

― I Am Curious (George) (Slight Return) (Rock Hardy), Saturday, 16 December 2006 03:40 (seventeen years ago) link

i'm on it. thanks

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Saturday, 16 December 2006 03:48 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm listening to it again, trying to hear through new ears, and it might not be what you're after. It's more like the laser crawling up toward James Bond's crotch than jackhammer shit.

― I Am Curious (George) (Slight Return) (Rock Hardy), Saturday, 16 December 2006 04:11 (seventeen years ago) link

sounds great!

― friday on the porch (lfam), Saturday, 16 December 2006 05:15 (seventeen years ago) link

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