> Paul-
>
> Your comments and posts are excellent - well thought out and
> eloquent. Hardly off topic, looking at the human response to music
> and the need to create is what guides the members of this group.
>
> Inevitably, books about music, sound, acoustics, and what-have-you,
> touch upon the subjective experience and physical response to sound.
> There are many works devoted entirely to psychoacoustics, neurological
> and physical response to auditory and vestibular stimulation,
> behaviors in response - we humans are profoundly affected by sound
> whether we can hear those sounds or not.
>
> Your quest for pleasing composition of sound is of interest to many
> here. Please do not hesitate to post your discoveries, suggestions
> and thoughts. Nor should anyone else.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Chub
Well put Chub. I forgot to mention in my last response that I think
your comment about being kind is right on the money - kindness goes a
long way - as they say in my field, "love covers a multitude of sins",
meaning you can screw up a lot of things but if you are loving/kind,
you'll be aight.
I studied some psychoacoustics in school and am interested in the link
between auditory perception and the emotional response to music. Synth
music is perfectly suited to explore this, imo, since we have such
powerful control over all the parameters of sound, especially
timbre/spectral content - the one parameter in which most traditional
instruments are limited. I suspect that there is a link between say,
certain timbres and certain emotional responses (whether it is learned
or "hardwired"), just as there appears to be between certain harmonic
structures and certain emotions. Synth composers seem uniquely
situated to explore this (computer musicians too, but I include them in
"synth composers"). It seems that electronic music is dominated by
academic noise, that may be very interesting but not very aesthetically
pleasing to listen to on one hand; and techno-pop on the other, that
can be fun to listen to, but is not very moving in any way. Since
electronic music is actually still a young field, I look forward to
hearing the music that will fill in the gaps between those extremes.
Interesting and cute story: my 2 year old son, who talks in short
phrases, came into my studio one day and said "scary music" - I didn't
even know he knew the word "music". I forget what record I had on,
but it was some kind of electronic stuff - and it wasn't a high pitched
dissonant chord played by strings or some other cliched "scary" sound -
it had rhythmic and timbral variation- not much harmonic stuff going
on. Anyway I was busy and didn't think much of it at the time, but
that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Haha, maybe I'll have to
line my kids up in the studio for some listening experiments...
Larry D.