En la Noche, todos los Ruidos son más fuertes

“During the night all the sounds are louder…” great video from diluvio.
(via the music of sound)

Soundwalkers

Half hour documentary from Raquel Castro about sound and listening featuring interviews with Christoh Cox, Janek Schaefer, Peter Cusack, Rafael Toral, Sabine Breitsameter and many others. I liked the story about a young mother who used sound to communicate with her downstair neighbour, an old lady she didn’t liked because the lady controlled her comings and goings. When she made love to her husband, she had a bed with a broken mattress and she wouldn’t fix it because, whenever she makes love to her husband the neighbour downstairs will listen. Also two nice quotes from Allen S. Weiss in the documentary: “Sound: everything we hear and many things we don’t” and “Sound Art: what we do with what we hear.”
(via SAM)

TED Talk: How Sound affects us

TED talks are mostly super slick presentations that sometimes appear to me as if someone is trying to sell me a new idea instead of making me think about it or raise deeper questions. The show part of a TED talk often leaves a stronger impact than the actual content. Maybe I only feel more in favor of insecure but somehow emotionally convincing speakers compared to marketing experts for ideas. Anyhow: recently they had Julian Treasure at TED to talk about how sound affects us and how businesses can facilitate sound to increase productivity and sales. This 5 min. presentation could be the most compressed demonstration of the effects of sounds to my thinking. If he wins over the rest of the business world, one day our shopping experiences might be accompanied by perfectly designed soundscapes and our working space is filled with bird song. Here is the first company that provides you with a nature live stream at home or at work – for free, if you manage to deal with an advertising break every 10 or 20 minutes… Brave new world…

David Lang composes Soundtrack for (UNTITLED)

New Music (with the capital letter “N” indicating contemporary classical music…) grapples with broad public ignorance and clichés of solitary self-indulgent composers writing scores that sound like noise to the rest of the world. The film (UNTITLED) plays with these clichés and centers its story around young composer Adrian who falls in love with a  super attractive gallerist  and changes his musical style through his engagement with the ‘real world’. Bang On a Can member David Lang wrote the score for this movie after he convinced the director to not only use his piano piece “WED” when the main character falls in love but to let Lang compose music for several other scenes. In an interesting interview on Sequenza21 Lang speaks about how he supported the change in the character of the contemporary music composer during the film:

“The progression of the character musically is that he begins by making music only for himself, because that is how large his world view is; when he meets the girl his senses and optimism and maybe even his idea of audience expand, and his music changes accordingly.”

Sometimes I feel that certain New Music composers still linger in their own world and the one of the surrounding art scene. If we see music composition from the perspective of a means of communication as Lang does in the interview, the question is how much do certain composer really want to communicate. David Lang is certainly a composer who does have a sense for communicative music. You can comfirm this impression by listening to his Pulitzer Prize winning piece “The Little Match Girl Passion” on the website of Carnegie Hall Commissions.

German TV doesn’t break bad

Why is German TV so bad, most of the time, even though we have public broadcasting services that should be able to develop at least some formats of high social relevance and artistic value? Maybe because we lack the political and social issues that the U.S. has to struggle with. Take “The Wire“: I can not think of one TV-producer in Germany who would articulate social criticism in such an elaborate manner as the The Wire’s head-author and inventor David Simon does in this deep-digging interview with Bill Moyers. Then take a look at “Breaking Bad“, a TV series produced by AMC who already won a lot of respect for “Mad Men”. In “Breaking Bad” one can learn how a corrupted health care system can lead a middle class chemistry teacher into a situation were drug trade is the last exit to secure his family’s financial security. The story appears to be a little bit stretched on first sight, but the accurate account of his psychological situtation faced with a fatal cancer diagnosis and the complex characters of his close relatives make the series a striking example of how entertainment can be married with existential questions and a closer look at the dark sides of todays society. “The Wire” had no composed film music which contributed to the authenticity of the whole project. “Breaking Bad” however comes with a cautious and subtle score by Dave Porter (apart from some hilarious songs programmed especially in the three early episodes of the first season), that at some parts incorporates iconic sound elements of the story. For instance, in episode 2 of season 2 Walt, the chemistry teacher, and his former student Jesse are held captured by the crazy drug dealer Tuco in a desert shack, where his sick uncle lives in a wheelchair and is only able to express his whishes to the outside world through a bell fixed on his seat. This bell then plays a crucial role in the dramatic climax of the episode and Dave Porter manages to compose a surreal transition from the on-screen bell sound to his musical composition:

 So again: why is it that German television doesn’t offer entertaining, but nonetheless socially critical and relevant TV productions? Is it that we do not have the harsh consequences of a political system, where health care is sometimes a luxury and drug trafficking part of the economic circle? Or are we too acquainted with the tender embrace of a social-democratic wellfare system that takes care of everything and makes our daily concerns so lukewarm and our society a boring biedermeier community compared to the U.S.? I think both is not true. We have a lot of vital and challenging problems to cope with and historical events that carved our society in ways that provides substance for tons of good scripts. Above all there is the phenomenon that in Germany TV-series are not regarded as a cultural achievement, they are mostly associated with cheap underclass entertainment, especially in the more educated establishment. Therefore there is not much fertile ground for creative invention and at the same time not a big audience willing to spend time with their own German heroes to break bad.

Steven Mithen – The Singing Neanderthals

„The basic problem of studying the origins of language is, to understate matters, language leaves few fossils.“ – Edmund Blair Bolles.

In „The Singing Neanderthals“ Steven Mithen, professor of Archaeology at the University in Reading, summarizes his views of the co-evolution of music and language in the history of our species. Drawing evidence from many areas such as anthropology, psychology, neuroscience and musicology, he asserts that music is not only a byproduct of language with no evolutionary value in itself as stated by Steven Pinker for instance. More than that Mithen introduces a hypothetical proto-music/language that was holistic (not composed of segmented elements), manipulative (influencing emotional states and hence behavior of oneself and others), multimodal (using both sound and movement), musical (temporally controlled, rhythmic, and melodic), and mimetic (utilizing sound symbolism and gesture) – a musicking that he calls ‚Hmmmm’ as an abbreviation of the before-mentioned communication modes. These holistic utterances, each with its own meaning but lacking any meaningful sub-units (that is to say, words) were used to manipulate other individuals, as commands, threats, greetings and requests. They would have been as much music-like as language-like. According to this theory „modern language only evolved when holistic utterances were ‚segmented’ to produce words, which could then be composed together to create statements with novel meanings.“

Here is a brief summary of Mithen’s hypothesis in form of a collage of key citations taken from his book:

„Music and language are universal features of human society. They are hierachical, combinatorial systems which involve expressive phrasing and are reliant on rules that provide recursion and generate an infinite number of expressions from a finite set of elements. Both communication systems involve gesture and body movement. They provided the human mind to switch from a ‚domain-specific’ to a ‚cognitively fluid’ mentality that was only attributed to Homo sapiens alone. Cognitive fluidity refers to the combination of knowledge and ways of thinking from different mental modules, which enables the use of metaphor and producing creative imagination.“

Mithen stresses the role bipedalism has played in the evolutionary development of the homo family:

„Both the multi-modal and the musical aspects of such utterances would have been greatly enhanced by the evolution of bipedalism. Bipedalism required the evolution of mental mechanisms to maintain the rhythmic coordination of muscle groups. As our ancestors evolved into bipedal humans so, too, would their inherent musical abilities evolve – they got rhythm. The new degrees of motor control, independence of torso and arms from legs, and internal and uncouscious time-keeping abilities, would all have dramatically enhanced the potential for gesture and body language in Homo ergaster, hugely expanding the existing potential for holistic communication. This would have added to vocalization an invaluable means of expressing and inducing emotions, and manipulate behaviour.“

„Bipedalism requires a relatively narrow pelvis and hence puts a severe constraint on the width of the birth canal. To be born at all through the narrow bipedal pelvis, infants effectively had to be born premature, leaving them almost entirely helpless for their first eighteen month of life. Thus creating selective pressures for the development of vocal and gestural mother-infant interactions, which would have been of a music-like nature.“

„Music-making had considerable survival value as a means of communicating emotions, intentions and information and therefore facilitated cooperation, that is: the sharing of information and resources, working as a team during a hunt, caring for each other’s well-being, advertising and consolidating pair-bonding. In all known societies music-making is frequently, if not always, a group activity.“

Then, Mithen speculates on the transition from a holistic communication system to a referential language:

„Alison Wray uses the term ‚segmentation’ to describe the process whereby humans began to break up holistic phrases into separate units, each of which had its own referential meaning and could then be recombined with units from other utterances to create an infinite array of new utterances. This is the emergence of compositionality, the feature that makes language so much more powerful than any other communication system.“

„Simon Kirby of Edinburgh University is one of several linguists who have begun to explore the evolution of language using computer simulation models. He was able to simulate how children acquire language simply by listening to their parents, siblings and other language-users. In his simulations he gave each speaking-agent a ‚random language’, which is in fact a holistic language, and as the simulation runs, learning-agents are exposed to a sample of speaking-agents and by this means acquire a language by their own. Because they will only ever have heard a sample of the utterances of any single speaking-agent, their language will be unlike that of any other individual. As the simulation proceeds, Kirby finds that some parts of the language systems become stabilized and are passed on faithfully from one generation to the next. A learning-agent mistakenly infers some form of non-random behaviour in a speaking-agent indicating a recurrent association between a symbol string and a meaning, and then uses this association to produce its own utterances, which are now genuinely non-random. Kirby refers to this process as ‚generalization’. Other learning-agents will acquire the same association between the symbol string and its meaning, so that it spreads throughout the population and, eventually, the whole language system will have been stabilized and will constitute a single, compositional language. With his work, Kirby challenges Noam Chomsky’s argument that children are born with an innate language abilities, something he called ‚universal grammar’. Instead Kirby’s simulations show that the process of learning itself can lead to the emmergence of grammatical structures.“

„The transition from a predominantly ‚Hmmmmm’ communication system to a compositional language most likely took tens of thousands of years. Some communities may have continued primarily with ‚Hmmmmm’ for much longer than others; some individuals who had become proficient language-users may have died before their knowledge was passed on, but finally compositional language emerged from ‚Hmmmmm’ and changed the nature of human thought and set our species on a path that led to global colonization and, ultimately, the end of the hunting and gathering way of life that had endured ever since the first species of Homo appeared more than 2 million years ago.“

 Well, from the latest spectacular fossil findings, Ardipithecus ramidus or short „Ardi“ being about 4.4 million years old, it is estimated that the homo lineage is much older than it was recently assumend. But Mithen admits that Archaeology is always coming up with new pieces of a broader puzzle and that human history has to be rewritten over and over again. But since fossils don’t say much about the language and music of our ancestors, much of the theorizing about the origin of language must remain highly speculative and that one of the few weak spots of Mithen’s endeavour: there is too much could-be and might-be in the text and some conclusions appear highly speculative. I also think there is a lack of ethnomusicological background that would have provided a broader, non-western perspective, but doubtlessly this book is a great starting point to dive into the different academic controversies about the evolution and origin of language and music.

The Eigenharp – the World’s most expressive Electronic Musical Instrument?

British innovation company “Eigenlab” introduces the world’s most expressive electronic musical instrument in their view, the “Eigenharp Alpha“. In fact, on first sight it looks like a realy versatile and complex Midi-Controller which can produce its own sounds and also can play the whole palette of digital sounds via Apples Audio Units plugIn format. But after watching this presentation in Air Studios London, I wonder who would be interested in spending £3,950 on an instrument that basically looks like a cross between a bassoon (I assume probably one of the most uncool instruments of orchestral gadgets…) and a chapman stick with flickering lights. If Eigenlab intends to address a younger crowd of technic-savvy electronic musicians (as the beat programming feature suggests), does it look sexy to perform live with that instrument hanging around your shoulders? And does it make sense to play e-guitar sounds with that instrument, or a clarinet sound with finger vibrato? And would a classically trained musician be interested to play electronic sounds that mimic a grand piano or a classical instrument? No doubt, there is a great deal of expressive potential in this new instrument, but I think music history has shown that instruments with some technical limitations were often more successful in the long run because they offered the possibility for a unique and personal sound. The same is true for the electronic instruments that defined genres and certain periods of electronic music’s history: the limitations made their special character. The limitless expressive possibilties of this instrument then appear to be a lack of character.

Björk interviews Arvo Pärt

Already from 1997, this interview features the odd encounter of pop fairy Björk and Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Not much of Pärt’s spirituality and unique compositional style is revealed in this little talk. More insight provides this exerpt from the documentary “24 Preludes for a Fugue”, Arvo Pärt talks about his composition “Für Alina” and demonstrates its structure on a keyboard. In his words: “Such signals sometimes sound as if they lasted an entire life. Or future, or past, outside time. A blade of grass has the status of a flower. To see in this tiny phrase, something more than just the black and white key.”

His vulnerable appearance reminds me of the character of the Stalker in Tarkovsky’s film by the same name, played by Alexander Kajdanowski. Talking of Tarkovsky: here is a last example of Pärt’s music cut against an edit of the film “Mirror”, the compositions name is, “Mirror in the Mirror”.

Classic goes Clubbing

Just returned from a lovely evening of comtemporary music played by a string quartet and a percussionist on various acoustic and electronic gadgets at C3-Festival at Berlins notorious club Berghain. There seems to be a “trend”, by some called “neo-classic” or “modern classical/electronic music”, that follows the intercourse of classically trained musicians and composers with club culture and electronically produced music. My friend Me Raabenstein recently released a compilation of such endeavours under the name “XVI Reflections on Classical Music” together with Universal Classics, who established the “Yellow Lounge” already in 2001 and brought together stars of the classical music scene and well-known DJs. I remember one concert in the panoramic “Weekend” club based in the 12th floor of a skyscraper at Alexanderplatz with Daniel Hope on violin accompanied by Sebastian Knauer on piano: people were just sitting on the stage and under the piano, there was literally no distance between the audience and the artists, when one person in the back of the club screamed “louder” during the quiet intro of a classical composition. Both musicians stopped their performance and returned the offence in a very polite way with the comment that the score asked to play this passage pianissimo, but they would play it a bit louder the next time to please the audience in the back. I was at the same time baffled by the ignorance of some of the young listeners and the forbearance and greatness on the side of the artists. It seemed as if the performance of both musicians was hanging on a thin thread and that made an even deeper emotional experience compared to the well-secured classical concert hall ritual.

I have to think of an article written by Alex Ross in the New Yorker called “Why so serious?” about the “sacralization” of classical music that took place during the 19th century when the bourgeoisie took over control of musical life from the declining aristocracy that was known for its disrespect towards serious artists. This way the bourgeois were able to signal their membership in a social and cultural élite because in contrast to the aristocrats, they lived in fear of going back down the social ladder. The once usual habit of applauding and talking during music was banished and replaced by respectful silent listening. By the middle of the last century, the concert routine worshipped dead composers and the audience was stifled by the genius of the great masters while some wild avantgarde composers searched for new ways of musical expressions without questioning the rite of the classical concert. It was to a great extend the merit of minimalism that “serious” music achieved a more accessible character. In the beginning concerts took place in alternative spaces like galeries and lofts and from there, minimal music entered the bourgeois concert halls and changed the way people perceived experimental or pre-conceived “complicated” musical structures. It’s no surprise that almost all artists of the so called neo-classical field refer in some or the other way to the one dominating person of minimal music, which is, of course, Steve Reich. (I skip a discussion of the term “minimal music”, that is, musicologically speaking, incorrect and should be replaced by something like repetitive or gradual music, but the term is widely used and established and therefore I’ll stick with it…)

Today, the bourgeois culture itself is aching under the pressure of popular culture and mass consumption leading to a situation with diclining and overaged audiences that is often described as a crisis of classical music. An answer to this situation is to open up the classical concert to a younger and hipper audience and bring the music to the places where they usually celebrate their musical rituals, the trendy in-clubs of metropolitan life like the Weekend or Berghain in the case of Berlin. One might feel tempted to denounce this strategy as another marketing trick for classical music sales, but be it so, if the result is that musicians find fresh ways to play canonical scores and present themselves in unusual places to a curious but uninitiated audience, all endeavours are welcome. The Yellow Lounge project is such a thing as is the Wordless Music Series in New York or the, to a certain extent, Carnegie Hall Commissions that promote young striving composers. The C3-Festival is another attempt to crossover contemporary and club-based music with a, at least for this night, beautiful outcome. The Elysian Quartet is a string quartet based in Great Britain and exclusively dedicated to modern compositions, some of them were presented tonight in striking performances with humorous undertones embracing lyrical romanticism and noisy sound structures at the same time. After that, Percussionist Joby Burgess took the stage under his monniker “Powerplant” and gave his interpretation of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint on the Xylosynth. Later he teamed up with the Elysians to perform poetic and likewise danceable versions of Kraftwerk classics like Radioactivity and Model. One could feel that great musicians with open minds and the willingness to experiment were at work (check this remix made by two of the Elysian musicians of Hot Chip’s “One Pure Thought”).

But is it all so new? Bang On A Can was founded 1987 by American composers Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon and David Lang and has since then organized numerous concerts worldwide with a similar mindset. More recently I have to think of So Percussion, a brilliant performance group of 4 percussionists playing complex and challenging, but nonetheless very modern sounding rhythmic compositions from Steve Reich to Matmos (read more here and listen to them here). Or think of Alarm Will Sound, a 20-member chamber orchestra that attracted attention with excellent acoustic arrangements of Aphex Twin tracks, collected on their album Acoustica. Or Sylvain Chauveaux, who composed acoustic versions of Depeche Mode hits. Can we still think of them as composers and musicians being part of a genre that was once called postminimalism or totalism? Or is it just an expression of a new freedom, a postmodern attitude? In many ways this last notion might be the most applicable, considering the key attributes of musical postmodernism: There is a sense of irony, the idea of ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural values is challenged, also elitist and populist attitudes, musical postmodernism takes social and political contexts into account, encompasses eclecticism and contradictions, distrusts totalizing forms, considers technology as part of the musical process and above all: attributes more meaning to the side of the listener than to scores and composers (all these ideas follow Jonathan Kramers “16 characteristics of postmodern music”, expressed in the book “Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought“, 2002). This way of thinking is one possible answer to a world that gets increasingly complex and diverse. And it is interesting to notice that many of the proponents of the above mentioned attitudes stem from the angloamerican hemisphere, since the new music avantgarde in Germany with a highly subsidized cultural machinery has established its own institutionalism that has often hindered fresh unconventional thinking and musical practice.

Phonographic Pottery

The first podcast I heard from radiolab, a programme at New York based public radio station WNYC, was called staying alive. When it comes to the point where a scientist claims that he can play back voices from thousand years ago captured in the grooves of ancient pottery with a stylus like an old grammophone-type recording, I had to burst out laughing. This story about “paleoacoustics” is of course a hoax that looks back on a decade-long history of appearances in different pseudo-scientific papers and science-fiction novels (more about this “urban myth” on this webpage). The podcast closes with a visit at a CPR class where they deal with the problem to hit the right lifesaving rhythm. I keep the ending for myself to not spoil the episode.

The thing with all the radiolab podcasts is that they find an inspiring tone of curiousity and humour to deal with the big questions of life, death, the human experience and everything that blurs the boudaries between science and philosophy. This can turn out extremely funny like this podcast about sperm (why so many sperm?) or can get serious and reflective like in these 11 meditations on how, when and even if we die (after life). All is congenially accompanied by a superb sound design that illuminates the ideas and thoughts followed. The after life episode even inspired filmmaker Will Hoffman to produce this beautiful and uplifting video: