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CHAOTIC_SOUND

    
                                                             Jan  1, 1996  
                                                        Rev: Jan 31, 2004   


                      John Cage did a lot of work
                      with chance.  I gather for 
                      two reasons:               
                                                                  
                                            
            To break habits, to      Random events taken as                
            reach something not      some sort of cosmic                   
            determined by your       message, which can be                 
            usual prejudices.        interpreted ala the E-Ching.        
                                                                     
      A method of overcoming            "There are no coincidences,        
      your ego.                          only sometimes the pattern
                                         is more obvious."         
      A method of reaching                                             
      something really new.                     -- Bonzo Dog Band  
                                          

                    I've got some sympathy for the
                    first, and no interest at all           
                    in the second.                       Unless you take
							 the cosmic     
						         message to be     
						         the absence of       
						         any cosmic     
							 message.       
                                                                 

There's another angle on all this
though, that's come out in these
post-chaos theory times: a lot of
natural beauty is bound up in the
chaotic.  Tightly ordered, tightly
structured things tend to be less
interesting to us.
                                
    This can be a problem with 
    music based on artificial                     
    loops: there's a difference                     
    between a muscian trying to
    carefully reproduce the                              LOOPY
    same notes over and over   
    again, and a machine              Why *do* we sometimes have   
    precisely playing the same        humans try to imitate       
    notes over and over again.        mechanical precision?  
                                      What's the point?         
  Instead of using                                              
  a tape loop of a                    Advances in technology       
  sound, you can do                   frequently undercut             
  pieces based on                     fetishes for human           
  the sound of a                      skill...                     PUNK  
  typical piece of 
  rotating                            Or at least force them       
  machinery                           to take a different   
  (washing machine,                   form.                 
  dryer... ?).         Welcome to                               
                       "Industrial"      COMPOSITION_UNITY_AND_CLUELESSNESS 
This is likely to      music.                                      
have a little more                                                 
variation in it            INDUSTRIAL 
than a tape loop,                    
but it can still                      
sound kind of               
dull, because a                
typical machine is              
designed to be    
deterministic, and              
hence produces                   
fairly precisely  
the same sound                         
over and over                          
again.              

   But there's no reason that                                    
   machinery *has* to be designed                                
   this way, in fact a piece of                                   
   machinery that's slightly out         The ancient ventilator  
   of whack often puts out some          raps out a funky tattoo.
   more interesting sounds, as                                   
   the bearings bounce around in                                 
   complicated ways the designer                                 
   originally tried to minimize. 
   
                                                                              
     It is possible to design                                                 
     things with this in mind,                                                
     to produce mechanical                                                    
     sounds with the same level         NECESSITY
     of detail as natural                                                     
     sounds.                   


One of the early on-the-air
noise performances I engaged
in was the Natural Chaos
special, put together (under
great stress) one holiday season...

This included:

Sweep fans blowing against
wind chimes.

The chaotic xylophone: marbles
rattling around in a sieve,
randomly striking a toy
xylophone.

Popcorn popping.

Alka-seltzer fizzing.

Water sloshing.




((A Random thought:      And all too  
fractal shapes are	 obvious, really. 
easy to find... what                 
would a fractal                "Fractally inspired 
sound be like?  Self           composition" makes 
similar at different           people break out in 
scales, i.e. at                groans in new music   
different speeds?))            circles.   
                                          
                                    Adam and Eve in 
                                    the radioactive 
                                    gardens of cleveland.


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