Re: [microsound] levels of abstraction

[Glenn Bach <gbach@xxxxxxxxx>]

> i'm curious about the levels or forms of abstraction that people in this
> list use when working with sound.

I take sound to increasingly deeper levels of abstraction by focusing on
digital noise or cut-and-paste detritus, highlighting regions of apparent
silence, enhancing and effecting those quiet areas in order to expose latent
sounds, searching for new areas of silence in those new sounds, and continuing
indefinitely.  The waveforms are often twisted and distorted into wildly
meandering shapes.  The final sounds are far removed from their original
sources, which were highly abstracted to begin with (i.e. not
"representational" or referring directly to the object that generated the
sound in the first place).

Then I will reverse direction and begin building these raw sounds into
multi-layered drones of different "pitches," or isolating distinct sonic
events against fields of quiet, a clear figure/ground relationship.  Moving
back towards some semblance of figuration, recognizable music structures.

I'm also working with observational data I'm collecting on my soundwalks, i.e.
the number of cars heard, birds chirping, lawn sprinklers, helicopters, dogs
barking etc.  Logging these sounds over a month long period, averaging them
out, then building some kind of numeric-sound relationship.  So that the
music/sound events are several steps removed from the real events that
inspired them.  This project might end up being scored for traditional
acoustic instruments, however, as I'm collaborating on part of this project
with a composer friend in upstate New York.  But there still may be some
microsonic/lowercase elements.

G.

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