Acousmatics is the study of sounds that do not have a recognisable source, and are listened too as purely sounds. These can be natural or man made, composed or manipulated in any number of different ways but the purpose and essence remains the same, that it is only sound existing only by itself. This is the collection of detailed descriptions of some of the location sound recordings I have made as a part of an Acousmatics unit for my Bachelor Study
Field Recording Eleven 20/05/13
This sound starts with a light crackling that begins almost out of complete silence except from and whirring whin motoring texture that subtly cuts up the silence. The crackling becomes louder and gradually less broken up until it is a uniform and constant sound. This constant sound becomes airier sounding and noisier by the second and slowly a lot of lower and low mid frequencies are introduced first in bubbly intervals and then as a complete undertone of low noise rumble. The higher wash of noise then starts to become weaker and thinner eroding into an airy wisp until it has disappeared completely leaving only the lower rumble. The lower rumble then gets more aggressive and arches up and down between low and low mid frequencies. It gets a lot louder and more broken up until it too fades into a lower airiness and then stops altogether. Subtly under all of this there is an interchange between hollow resonant gurgling and a the initial mechanistic whining that was at the start but is almost swallowed by the noisy washout and rumble until that disappears and it can be heard again.
Field Recording Ten 09/05/13
This sound is very percussive and punchy coming with a lot of force. It is complimented by higher percussive sounds that have a very complex uneven texture. They sound like a mixture of metal plastic, and wood materials scraped on one another together with a metallic and glasslike rustling. some of these sounds ring out incredibly but then abruptly stop and then get replaced with a splashy wet sound that spits and gurgles at the listener with both force and with a calming element. There are firing or shooting sounds that appear offensive or like they are attacking the listener’s ears. The sound is like compressed air with metal particles being shot out of a thick plastic or dense muted substance. There are also a lot of breaks where sounds of warped percussive woody nature ring out in a cavernous space. There is also a splashing sound that fades into being mechanical and broken up, bouncing around in a very tight chamber of icy metal, but its then re-wettened from the outside of this chamber and put in a larger cavernous space. It’s a very unfamiliar and sonically interesting sound. The percussive sound although not in a distinguishable rhythm seam to evoke a tribal and very
primal feeling despite their unfamiliarity, and this is because of how organic
they sound, as well as being other worldly.
Field Recording Nine 03/05/13
This sound starts with a very high pitched tone that is very pure and resonant, with metallic harmonics. The tone is then harmonised by other similar tones that are higher in frequency. These tones are complimented by what would seem like a much lower noisier version of the sample tones that quickly come in fading intensely to a peak and then disappearing. These sounds keep coming in until the sound field is saturated with chaotic mess of intense tones and noisy muted sounds. After this dissipates a few of the tones get more wet and distant sounding. Another sound comes in that appears to be a more tonal instrument with a very resonant woody hollow quality. There is then a very sparkly twinkly sound that fills the space and surrounds the listener. The sound would be nice or peaceful if not for the awkward frequency shifting and micro cuts in the sound that sound very digitized.
Field Recording Eight 24/04/13
The initial sound is very wet like a creature of no recognisable description, except perhaps biomechanical coughing or barking and gurgling. Then enters a sound which is very digital and bit crushed which starts very present and then drifts backward becoming and almost unnoticeable ambience that leaves you a little on edge. Then more sounds come in and out, like alien typewriters, with a mechanical constant uniformity but with a dissonant non harmonic quality that pushes it into the realms of fear and unfamiliarity in the mind of the listener. After many of these noises the coughing barking gurgling sounds come back but this time even more wet sounding and with an eerie background of sweeping but muted noise in a large area creating an airy whistle. This whistle is then complimented with a more present high whistle which comes in under more attacking sounds from the gurgling mechanical life-form.
Fiel Recording Seven 19/04/13
There are elements that are almost tuned repeating. It’s like cycling between note that are in between a major 3rd and a perfect 4th so it sounds quite haunting with unresolved. The sound is noisy and every now and again cries out like a mechanical being that is in fear or terror. There are lots of other mechanical elements to the sound that buzz in and out and evolve quickly in texture from a plastic timbre to a much more high pitched harmonically distorted sound. There was also a constant shuffling of imaginary trinkets of different shapes sizes and textures but most seemingly made of metal. At one point the sound drops out and then returns highlighting its chaotic and intense and alive feeling.
Field Recording Six 13/04/13
This sound is very constant, but every now again it fluctuates in pitch either very very slightly, or drastically. The sound has a characteristic whining tone to it; it is made up of a main tone and some harmonics that seem like they contribute to a very weak sounding major chord. The tone seems like it is very smoothly distorted because of a high smooth noise element under the tone that is very breathy and constant like a wave suspended at the loudest most energetic moment of its crash. There is also a lower smooth noise sound around the low-mid frequency range that is a very wide spacious sound and contributes to the tones above it by giving them a wide platform to start from making them sound like a small but dominating part of a more subtle but larger whole. Every now and then when the pitch of the high main tone suddenly goes up drastically, it increases in amplitude, but not as much as the lower noisier frequencies do in comparison to how quiet they are during the normal constant pitch. Even though the high tone is dominant as a definable note, it is hard to hear the exact timbre of that note as it is almost completely masked by the noisier elements of the sound which acts on it to turn it from what might be a pure sine tone with higher partial harmonics into a more whiney sound with low and sub harmonics dominating the higher more subtle harmonics. There is also a very subtle fluttering in the smooth low noise aspect, which makes it somewhat less smooth than it could be but sort of blurs it too making less constant and so more natural and easy to listen to than a pure noise sound.
Field Recording Five 03/04/13
This sound is rather complex, despite its uniformity most of the time. There is another sound that is extremely loud that creates an intense swell in the sound, but then it goes away again and makes the original cycle texture sound like silence for a few seconds until you realise again how it is subtle yet quite complex. The immediately obvious part of the texture is a constant swelling and then stopping grating sound. The sound starts as a hum at a definable pitch and it slowly opens up like a crispy scratching emerging from a dull in closed chamber that brings itself above the original hum. As this sounds scrapes along it seems to break of or shatter part of the sound and send it off into empty space to disperse and then it returns to the beginning of the cycle. This cycle creates a rhythmic element that is very hypnotic. There is a very subtle crunch in the buzz at the start like a slight change in pitch and temporary boost of the mid and high frequencies. Underneath this main sound is a very soothing and ambient airy calling sort of sound. It is very ghostly but has a very subtle almost unnoticeable mechanical or metallic hum tone to it as well. It is a constant flowing sound with both a moderate volume of airy and liquid characters to it. It also seams to evolve very subtly, the sound itself is noisy in character but also very smooth as if its dampened and only a few mid frequencies of this smooth noise make up the main tone, and the change of these certain bands of frequencies glide up and down gently to evolve the texture and make is less uniform. The sound that interrupts these two textures comes in as a fast swelling of what seams immediately to be just noise but listening closely there a wiring tones at different pitches and sweeping and swishing across the high frequency spectrum like a filter or some sort. There is a washing sound that is like a time suspended crashing that lingers and keeps crashing very lightly smoothly and slowly over and over. It has a slight roar to it also adding to the intensity. There is a very high frequency whistling tone that only really becomes apparent when the sound starts to fade and almost sweep down through the frequency spectrum, this whistle also sweeps down in pitch and looses volume until its too low to be called a whistle and too quiet to hear. It is then, after this sound has fully faded away into perceived silence that the original two textures come back in around the silence, even though they never actually stopped.
Field Recording Four 29/03/13
This is a very high pitched sound that moves about randomly in a pitched way like it has intelligence or intension. The sound is high yet it still seems to be broken up creating a very rapid percussive revving that produces a lower sub harmonic fluctuating buzz. There is a feeling of heat or danger that I associate with this sound like you can almost hear the atoms bouncing around from vibrating really fast and hitting things creating this harsh but very fast high pitched noise. There is a crackling mixed with a squelching to this tone as well which is made up of tiny microtones that are very high pitched suddenly going even further up onto the top fringe of audible sounds like a very tiny woodwind instrument overblowing or doing squeaky harmonics. This layered a lot produces something like a cellophaney simultaneous crackling and squelching. The sound is also reminiscent of a combination of a spraying or squirting sound that is around the surface of a liquid with something electrical or digital interfering. This is what gives the sound a very tense and dangerous quality despite its tiny timbre.
Field Recording Three 22/03/13
This is a sound that is relatively tonal, but contains very strange artefacts in the sound that detract attention from the tonal centre and confuse the musical quality it has. It has the effect of confusing because of the uniqueness of the texture, being completely unnatural sounding, even more so than some more musical synthesised sounds. Despite this tho it is still very easy to hear the note or fundamental frequency as a particular note if you consentrate just a little. There is an inherent circularity to it as if it is a tone comprising of many less tonal mechanical vibrations that are circling around each other at speed. There is a sense of air or even a grainy fluid flowing roughly over something in that the sound comprises of many noisy frequencies all at once, which works in the same way how a trickling of a small amount of water couples together with a waterfall of a very large amount of water, but in this instance the sound is pure noise, and it is distorted giving sub harmonics and high harmonics. The sound is of something very large that is going incredibly fast, and you can hear the power that this has in the tone. The sound is very dark and haunting but in a mechanical way, it gives the impression of a futuristic industrial and intensely mechanical landscape. It sounds like the sound has a resonance inside of something or with reflections inside a large cold metallic space, but it seems to swallow these reflections just as you start to notice them and they don’t ring out or echo as such like a reverb, but stay contained or circulate back to the beginning layered on top of one another. There is also a scraping element to the sound that is merged with what I perceive as percussive sound but textured out or drawn out into a tone, in other words it has the timbre of something percussive that is being scraped rather than producing a transient or impulse. It’s more of a swelling sound without any instance of a start of finishing point or any change in velocity, as it seems to trick the brain into thinking it is swelling when it actually isn’t per say.
Field Recording Two 17/03/13
This is a description of the second location sound recording that I have made.
The sound is very high frequency heavy, there is a very noisy aspect of it, in the high frequency range but oddly enough not rough or harsh sounding, almost smooth but I imagine lots of tiny smaller sounds that make up a whole sound, similar to if you could hear an ant colony. The individual ants would sound like a feeble scuffling of twig like limbs but a whole colony would sound like this multiplied thousands of time making all the scuffling blend into one. This sound is what the ant colony would sound like if you imagine speeding up the ants hundreds of times to a blur. The other portion of the sound is somewhat tonal, and while sounding completely separate from the other sound, it is still present in the relatively high frequency range. Its much more resonant suggesting a hard ceramic or metallic material, that is very brittle in theory but will never break, and so it’s a tone that could seemingly go on for ever. The over tones and undertones create a sort of blurry mellowness to this otherwise sharp sound, which is enhanced further by the noisy sound that accompanies it. The two parts together sound like an extreme pitter patter of rain on a very resonant roof, only the roof is glass and the rain is super storm fast liquid boiling hot lava, some of it cuts through the glass, but its so hot it has the smooth knife through butter undertone. This sound on the whole represents the grey area somewhere in between an atmospheric somewhat ambient pad, and full on hard sounding power tools, it occupies this space well, almost as if the two had a sonic love child and this was the result.
Field Recording One 07/03/13
This is a description of the first location sound recording that I made. It is described in terms of the sound and not the location, context or object that the sound came from.
The sound is metallic, containing lots of high overtones that are harsh but brittle. There is also a relative sustain on the impulses and moans that occur in this sound, and it is like the echo or reverb of something in a very small but extremely echoey space. Its almost as if it is infinitely small, and so its not very audible, but with infinite sound reflections at the same time, so it is perceived as an echoey sound. The sound evolves in the way that the communicative noises that animals make do, only it is a more metallic man made mechanical material resonance being delivered, perhaps by an animal with a slightly sinister mechanical soul, a soul which sonically is being projected from a contained yet infinitely big universe inside the animal. It has a tonal quality to it that fluctuates in a way which screams that it is trying to communicate to you, either asking for help or trying to get your attention in a very timid yet sinister way.
This sound was very hard to capture and I only had and iPhone to record it with. I was really quiet once i started to record and became less frequent. The reason this sound was happening was because of wind, a natural force that i coudn't predict or control, with it also impeding on the recording.
Now that i have describe the sound as it was, in terms of it being just a sound, I can reveal that the location of the sound was in an industrial area between two large tin warehouses and i'm not certain of the exact source of the sound, which made it more interesting and suitable as an acousmatic sound, but i am pretty sure it was caused by wind on some loose tin or metal that was part of the warehouse structure.
The sound is metallic, containing lots of high overtones that are harsh but brittle. There is also a relative sustain on the impulses and moans that occur in this sound, and it is like the echo or reverb of something in a very small but extremely echoey space. Its almost as if it is infinitely small, and so its not very audible, but with infinite sound reflections at the same time, so it is perceived as an echoey sound. The sound evolves in the way that the communicative noises that animals make do, only it is a more metallic man made mechanical material resonance being delivered, perhaps by an animal with a slightly sinister mechanical soul, a soul which sonically is being projected from a contained yet infinitely big universe inside the animal. It has a tonal quality to it that fluctuates in a way which screams that it is trying to communicate to you, either asking for help or trying to get your attention in a very timid yet sinister way.
This sound was very hard to capture and I only had and iPhone to record it with. I was really quiet once i started to record and became less frequent. The reason this sound was happening was because of wind, a natural force that i coudn't predict or control, with it also impeding on the recording.
Now that i have describe the sound as it was, in terms of it being just a sound, I can reveal that the location of the sound was in an industrial area between two large tin warehouses and i'm not certain of the exact source of the sound, which made it more interesting and suitable as an acousmatic sound, but i am pretty sure it was caused by wind on some loose tin or metal that was part of the warehouse structure.