disquiet0030-nonsilent, disquiet Kaboodle Sound
Waves of Silence [disquiet0030-nonsilent]

Created for the Disquiet Junto.

Assignment:

"Step 1: Select a segment of recorded sound that would generally be perceived as silent. Examples include: the gap between tracks on a tape cassette or vinyl record, the noise your laptop’s headphone jack emits when nothing is playing, the quietest moment in an MP3, a radio signal when nothing is supposed to be heard.

"Step 2: Amplify or otherwise magnify that supposed absence of sound until it makes a perceivable noise.

"Step 3: Compose, perform, and record a new original piece of music that takes this sound as its sole source material. You can manipulate the original audio as you see fit, but you can’t add other pre-existing audio elements to it."

Method:

I had originally envisaged a good rhythmic beat-fest with this week's project, but everything seems to be an uphill struggle at the moment, and I ran out of time again.

I had an old recording knocking about that had some silence recorded on it, when I didn't realise I'd hit the wrong button and left the thing running. The recording was on a Zoom h4N, and so the silence is the internal digital (?) hiss of that machine.

Using Audacity, I amplified a 4 minute segment of the silence so that it was as loud as it could go without distortion.

I played the track through 2 Korg Mini KP Kaoss pads, a Korg KP3 Kaoss pad, and the effects part of a Roland SP555. I manipulated all the effects live, and recorded the performance back onto the Zoom h4N. The only effects I used were 4 varieties of slicer, so that different parts of the sound were removed at different times as I moved my fingers around the Kaoss pads and the knobs on the SP555. In effect, I was adding silence to the recording of silence (or removing sound from the silence).

I fed the recorded track back into Audacity, and applied a comb filter, a comb slicer, and a sliding pitch shift, both up and down. These 3 tracks I then mixed with the main recorded track to create the resulting track.

I don't really like the track very much, but it's interesting as a way of playing with silence and the concept of silence.

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Track image adapted from this image:

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...nce_mg_6668.jpg

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More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
Disquiet Junto