Noise in music

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an article covering the occurrence of noise in music. For noise as a form of music, see noise music.
Jimi Hendrix revolutionised rock and jazz by incorporating noise through techniques such as feedback, distortion, wah, fuzz, dissonance, and loud volume.
A Dolby 361 A-type noise reduction module.

In music, noise is any departure from intention and pattern. It is an uncontrolled sound. The Oxford Companion to Music describes noise as unmusical sounds.[1] Edgard Varèse challenged traditional conceptions of noise and instead found ways to transform noise into music; Varèse believed that noise was simply "any sound one doesn't like",[2] and he perceived music as a mere organized collection of noises, with composers being responsible for organizing noises in a pleasing way for the listener. Jacques Attali, in turn, defines music itself as "the organization of noise".[3] In more general usage, noise is any unwanted sound or signal. In this sense, even sounds that would be perceived as musically ordinary in another context become noise if they interfere with the reception of a message desired by the receiver.[4] Prevention and reduction of unwanted sound, from tape hiss to squeaking bass drum pedals, is important in many musical pursuits, but noise is also used creatively in many ways, and in some way in nearly all genres.

Noise is an important component of the sound of the human voice and all musical instruments, particularly in unpitched percussion instruments and electric guitars (using distortion). Electronic instruments create various colours of noise. Noise music explores the musical use of all types of noise.

Traditional uses of noise are unrestricted, using all the frequencies associated with pitch and timbre, such as the white noise component of a drum roll on a snare drum, or the transients present in the prefix of the sounds of some organ pipes.


Noise as a feature of music

Musical tones produced by the human voice and all acoustical musical instruments incorporate noises in varying degrees. Most consonants in human speech (e.g., the sounds of f, v, s, z, both voiced and unvoiced th, Scottish and German ch) are characterised by distinctive noises, and even vowels are not entirely noise free. Wind instruments include the whizzing or hissing sounds of air breaking against the edges of the mouthpiece, while bowed instruments produce audible rubbing noises that contribute, when the instrument is poor or the player unskilful, to what is perceived as a poor tone. When they are not excessive, listeners "make themselves deaf" to these noises by ignoring them.[5]

Traditional music

Maracas owe their distinctive tone to the noise in their sound

Noise has subtle and important uses in traditional music, for example:

Unpitched percussion

Many unpitched percussion instruments, such as the snare drum or maracas, make use of the presence of random sounds or noise to produce a sound without any perceived pitch.[6][7] See timbre.

World traditions

Some world traditions include genres that employ unpitched percussion exclusively. For example:

Antiquity

Although percussion instruments were generally rather unimportant in ancient Greek music, two exceptions were in dance music and ritual music of orgiastic cults. The former required instruments providing a sharply defined rhythm, particularly krotala (clappers with a dry, nonresonant sound) and cymbala (similar to finger-cymbals). The cult rituals required more exciting noises, such as those produced by drums, cymbals, jingles, and the rhombos (bull-roarer), which produced a demonic roaring noise particularly important to the ceremonies of the priests of Cybele.[8] Athenaeus (The Deipnosophists xiv.38) quotes a passage from a now-lost play, Semele, by Diogenes the Tragedian, describing an all-percussion accompaniment to some of these rites:

And now I hear the turban-wearing women,
Votaries of th' Asiatic Cybele,
The wealthy Phrygians' daughters, loudly sounding
With drums, and rhombs, and brazen-clashing cymbals,
Their hands in concert striking on each other,
Pour forth a wise and healing hymn to the gods.[9]
An altogether darker picture of the function of this noise music is painted by Livy in Ab urbe condita xxxix.8–10, written in the late first century BC. He describes "a Greek of mean condition ... a low operator in sacrifices, and a soothsayer ... a teacher of secret mysteries" who imported to Etruria and then to Rome a Dionysian cult which attracted a large following. All manner of debaucheries were practised by this cult, including rape and
secret murders ... [where] the bodies could not even be found for burial. Many of their audacious deeds were brought about by treachery, but most of them by force, and this force was concealed by loud shouting, and the noise of drums and cymbals, so that none of the cries uttered by the persons suffering violation or murder could be heard abroad.[10]
Polynesia

A Tahitian traditional dance genre dating back to before the first contact with European explorers is ʻōteʻa, danced by a group of men accompanied solely by a drum ensemble. The drums consist of a slit-log drum called tō‘ere (which provides the main rhythmic pattern), a single-headed upright drum called fa‘atete, a single-headed hand drum called pahu tupa‘i rima, and a double-headed bass drum called tariparau.[11]

Traditional Yangge dance performances are accompanied by unpitched percussion ensembles (Dream Butterfly Dance Group (蝶梦舞团) pictured here).
Asia

In Shaanxi in the north of China, drum ensembles accompany yangge dance, and in the Tianjin area there are ritual percussion ensembles such as the Fagu hui Dharma-drumming associations, often consisting of dozens of musicians.[12] In Korea, a style of folk music called Nongak (farmers' music) or pungmul has been performed for many hundred years, both by local players and by professional touring bands at concerts and festivals. It is loud music meant for outdoor performance, played on percussion instruments such as the drums called janggu and puk, and the gongs ching and kkwaenggwari. It originated in simple work rhythms to assist repetitive tasks carried out by field workers.[13]

Ensemble of chenda and elathalam performers

South Asian music places a special emphasis on drumming, which is freed from the primary time-keeping function of drumming found in other part of the world.[14] In North India, secular processional bands play an important role in civic festival parades and the bārāt processions leading a groom's wedding party to the bride's home or the hall where a wedding is held. These bands vary in makeup, depending on the means of the families employing them and according to changing fashions over time, but the core instrumentation is a small group of percussionists, usually playing a frame drum (ḍaphalā), a gong, and a pair of kettledrums (nagāṛā). Better-off families will add shawms (shehnai) to the percussion, while the most affluent who also prefer a more modern or fashionable image may replace the traditional ensemble with a brass band.[15] The Karnatic music of southern India includes a tradition of instrumental temple music in the state of Kerala, called kṣētram vādyam. It includes three main genres, all focussed on rhythm and featuring unpitched percussion. Thayambaka in particular is a virtuoso genre for unpitched percussion only: a solo double-headed cylindrical drum called chenda, played with a pair of sticks, and accompanied by other chenda and elathalam (pairs of cymbals). The other two genres, panchavadyam and pandi melam add wind instruments to the ensemble, but only as accompaniment to the primary drums and cymbals. A panchavadyam piece typically lasts about an hour, while a pandi melam performance may be as long as four hours.[16]

Turkey
Turkish mehterân, or janissary band

The Turkish janissaries military corps had included since the 14th century bands called mehter or mehterân which, like many other earlier military bands in Asia featured a high proportion of drums, cymbals, and gongs, along with trumpets and shawms. The high level of noise was pertinent to their function of playing on the battlefield to inspire the soldiers.[17] The focus in these bands was on percussion. A full mehterân could include several bass drums, multiple pairs of cymbals, small kettledrums, triangles, tambourines, and one or more Turkish crescents.[18]

Europe

Through Turkish ambassadorial visits and other contacts, Europeans gained a fascination with the "barbarous", noisy sound of these bands, and a number of European courts established "Turkish" military ensembles in the late-17th and early 18th centuries. The music played by these ensembles, however, were not authentically Turkish music, but rather compositions in the prevalent European manner.[19] The general enthusiasm quickly spread to opera and concert orchestras, where the combination of bass drum, cymbals, tambourines, and triangles were collectively referred to as "Turkish music". The best-known examples include Haydn's Symphony No. 100, which acquired its nickname, "The Military", from its use of these instruments, and three of Beethoven's works: the "alla marcia" section from the finale of his Symphony No. 9 (an early sketch reads: "end of the Symphony with Turkish music"), his "Wellington's Victory"—or Battle Symphony—with picturesque sound effects (the bass drums are designated as "cannons", side drums represent opposing troops of soldiers, and ratchets the sound of rifle fire), and the "Turkish March" (with the expected bass drum, cymbals, and triangle) and the "Chorus of Dervishes" from his incidental music to The Ruins of Athens, where he calls for the use of every available noisy instrument: castanets, cymbals, and so forth.[20][21][22] By the end of the 18th century, the batterie turque had become so fashionable that keyboard instruments were fitted with devices to simulate the bass drum (a mallet with a padded head hitting the back of the sounding board), cymbals (strips of brass striking the lower strings), and the triangle and bells (small metal objects struck by rods). Even when percussion instruments were not actually employed, certain alla turca "tricks" were used to imitate these percussive effects. Examples include the "Rondo alla turca" from Mozart's Piano Sonata, K. 331, and part of the finale of his Violin Concerto, K. 219.[23]

Harpsichord, piano, and organ

At about the same time that "Turkish music" was coming into vogue in Europe, a fashion for programmatic keyboard music opened the way for the introduction of another kind of noise in the form of the keyboard cluster, played with the fist, flat of the hand, forearm, or even an auxiliary object placed on the keyboard. On the harpsichord and piano, this device was found mainly in "battle" pieces, where it was used to represent cannon fire. The earliest instance was by Jean-François Dandrieu, in Les Caractères de la guerre (1724), and for the next hundred years it remained predominantly a French feature, with examples by Michel Corrette (La Victoire d'un combat naval, remportée par une frégate contre plusieurs corsaires réunis, 1780), Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (March des Marseillois, 1793), Pierre Antoine César (La Battaille de Gemmap, ou la prise de Mons, ca. 1794), and Jacques-Marie Beauvarlet-Charpentier (Battaille d'Austerlitz, 1805). In 1800, Bernard Viguerie introduced the sound to chamber music, in the keyboard part of a piano trio titled La Bataille de Maringo, pièce militaire et historique.[24] The last time this pianistic "cannon" effect was used before the 20th century was in 1861, in a depiction of the then-recent The Battle of Manassas in a piece by the black American piano virtuoso "Blind Tom" Bethune, a piece that also feature vocalised sound-effect noises.[25]

Clusters were also used on the organ, where they proved more versatile (or their composers more imaginative). Their most frequent use on this instrument was to evoke the sound of thunder, but also to portray sounds of battle, storms at sea, earthquakes, and Biblical scenes such as the fall of the walls of Jericho and visions of the apocalypse. The noisy sound nevertheless remained a special sound effect, and was not integrated into the general texture of the music. The earliest examples of "organ thunder" are from descriptions of improvisations by Abbé Vogler in the last quarter of the 18th century. His example was soon imitated by Justin Heinrich Knecht (Die durch ein Donerwetter [sic] unterbrochne Hirtenwonne, 1794), Michel Corrette (who employed a length of wood on the pedal board and his elbow on the lowest notes of the keyboard during some improvisations), and also in composed works by Guillaume Lasceux (Te Deum: "Judex crederis", 1786), Sigismond Neukomm (A Concert on a Lake, Interrupted by a Thunderstorm), Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély (Scène pastorale, 1867), Jacques Vogt (Fantaisie pastorale et orage dans les Alpes, ca. 1830), and Jules Blanc (La procession, 1859).[26] The most notable 19th-composer to use such organ clusters was Giuseppe Verdi. The storm music which opens his opera Otello (1887) includes an organ cluster (C, C♯, D) that is also the longest notated duration of any scored musical texture.[27]

Bowed strings

Percussive effects in imitation of drumming had been introduced to bowed-string instruments by early in the 17th century. The earliest known use of col legno (tapping on the strings with the back of the bow) is found in Tobias Hume's First Part of Ayres for unaccompanied viola da gamba (1605), in a piece titled Harke, Harke.[28] Carlo Farina, an Italian violinist active in Germany, also used col legno to mimic the sound of a drum in his Capriccio stravagante for four stringed instruments (1627), where he also used devices such as glissando, tremolo, pizzicato, and sul ponticello to imitate the noises of barnyard animals (cat, dog, chicken).[29] Later in the century, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, in certain movements of Battalia (1673), added to these effects the device of placing a sheet of paper under the A string of the double bass, in order to imitate the dry rattle of a snare drum, and in "Die liederliche Gesellschaft von allerley Humor" from the same programmatic battle piece, superimposed eight different melodies in different keys, producing in places dense orchestral clusters. He also uses the percussive snap of fortissimo pizzicato to represent gunshots.[30]

An important aspect of all of these examples of noise in European keyboard and string music before the 19th century is that they are used as sound effects in programme music. Sounds that would likely cause offense in other musical contexts are made acceptable by their illustrative function. Over time, their evocative effect was weakened as at the same time they became incorporated more generally into abstract musical contexts.[31]

Orchestras

Orchestras continued to use noise in the form of a percussion section, which expanded though the 19th century: Berlioz was perhaps the first composer to thoroughly investigate the effects of different mallets on the tone color of timpani.[32] However, before the 20th century, percussion instruments played a very small role in orchestral music and mostly served for punctuation, to highlight passages, or for novelty. But by the 1940s, some composers were influenced by non-Western music as well as jazz and popular music, and began incorporating marimbas, vibraphones, xylophones, bells, gongs, cymbals, and drums.[32]

Vocal music

In vocal music, noisy nonsense syllables were used to imitate battle drums and cannon fire long before Clément Janequin made these devices famous in his programmatic chanson La bataille (The Battle) in 1528.[33] Unpitched or semi-pitched performance was introduced to formal composition in 1897 by Engelbert Humperdinck, in the first version of his melodrama, Königskinder. This style of performance is believed to have been used previously by singers of lieder and popular songs. The technique is best known, however, from somewhat later compositions by Arnold Schoenberg, who introduced it for solo voices in his Gurrelieder (1900–11), Pierrot Lunaire (1913), and the opera Moses und Aron (1930–32), and for chorus in Die Glückliche Hand (1910–13). Later composers who have made prominent use of the device include Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Benjamin Britten (in Death in Venice, 1973), Mauricio Kagel, and Wolfgang Rihm (in his opera Jakob Lenz, 1977–78, amongst other works).[34] A well-known example of this style of performance in popular music was Rex Harrison's portrayal of Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.[35] Another form of unpitched vocal music is the speaking chorus, prominently represented by Ernst Toch's 1930 Geographical Fugue, an example of the Gebrauchsmusik fashionable in Germany at that time.[36]

Machine music

In the 1920s a fashion emerged for composing what was called "machine music"—the depiction in music of the sounds of factories, locomotives, steamships, dynamos, and other aspects of recent technology that both reflected modern, urban life and appealed to the then-prevalent spirit of objectivity, detachment, and directness. Representative works in this style, which features motoric and insistent rhythms, a high level of dissonance, and often large percussion batteries, are George Antheil's Ballet mécanique (1923–25), Arthur Honegger's Pacific 231 (1923), Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Le pas d'acier (The Steel Leap, 1925–26), Alexander Mosolov's Iron Foundry (an orchestral episode from his ballet Steel, 1926–27), and Carlos Chávez's ballet Caballos de vapor, also titled HP (Horsepower, 1926–32). This trend reached its apex in the music of Edgard Varèse, who composed Ionisation in 1931, a "study in pure sonority and rhythm" for an ensemble of thirty-five unpitched percussion instruments.[37]

Percussion ensembles

Following Varèse's example, a number of other important works for percussion ensemble were composed in the 1930s and 40s: Henry Cowell's Ostinato Pianissimo (1934) combines Latin American, European, and Asian percussion instruments; John Cage's First Construction (in Metal) (1939) employs differently pitched thunder sheets, brake drums, gongs, and a water gong; Carlos Chávez's Toccata for Percussion (1943) requires six performers to play a large number of European and Latin-American drums and other unpitched percussion together with a few tuned instruments such as xylophone, tubular chimes, and glockenspiel; Lou Harrison, in works such as the Canticles nos. 1 and 3 (1940 and 1942), Song of Queztalcoatl (1941), Suite for Percussion (1942), and—in collaboration with John Cage—Double Music (1941) explored the use of "found" instruments, such as brake drums, flowerpots, and metal pipes. In all of these works, elements such as timbre, texture, and rhythm take precedence over the usual Western concepts of harmony and melody.[38]

Experimental and avant-garde music

Prepared piano

Use of noise was central to the development of experimental music and avant-garde music in the mid 20th century. Noise was used in important, new ways.

In the years immediately following the First World War, Henry Cowell composed a number of piano pieces featuring tone clusters and direct manipulation of the piano's strings. One of these, titled The Banshee (1925), features sliding and shrieking sounds suggesting the terrifying cry of the banshee from Irish folklore.[39]

In 1938 for a dance composition titled Bacchanale, John Cage invented the prepared piano, producing both transformed pitches and colorful unpitched sounds from the piano.[40] Many variations, such as prepared guitar, have followed.[41] In 1952, Cage wrote 4′33″, in which there is no deliberate sound at all, but only whatever background noise occurs during the performance. Cage used the word "chance" to describe the use of random procedures in the act of composition, and the word "indeterminacy" when a piece can be performed in substantially different ways, to be chosen by the performer.[42]

In 1955, Werner Meyer-Eppler introduced the term aleatory to describe music that incorporates elements of chance at the detailed level of a work whose course is determined in general.[43] Such music dates back at least to the 15th century.[44] When applied to the formal design of a piece of music, aleatory is seen as an analogue to the statistical behaviour of the components of a nonperiodic sound (i.e., a noise), in which components can be exchanged or permuted without changing its identity.[45] Between 1952 and 1957 Karlheinz Stockhausen analysed music in terms of frequency spectra, with the lowest frequencies corresponding to form and dynamics, and higher frequencies then representing melody and harmony, rhythm and pulse, with the highest of all representing pitch and timbre.[46] By 1961 he was speaking of "twenty-one octaves of musical time": seven "octaves" (i.e., the proportion of 2:1) in the realm of pitch, seven more below this in the realm of rhythmic durations, and finally about seven for formal proportioning.[47] In terms of this analysis, aleatoric music is simply music which incorporates noise at frequency levels other than pitch and timbre.[48] Stockhausen also employed noise in vocal compositions, such as Momente (1962–64/69), in which the four choirs clap their hands, talk, and shuffle their feet, in order to mediate between instrumental and vocal sounds as well as to incorporate sounds normally made by audiences into those produced by the performers.[49]

Stockhausen, Cage and many other composers either used randomness in the composition process, or specified ways in which it was to be used in the performance, or both. Random choices in performance include the order in which sections are to be played, the assignment of instruments to parts, and the way notation is to be interpreted. Methods of making such choices include random number books, use of the I Ching, audience participation, dice throwing, and random-number generators.[50][51][52]

Robert Ashley used audio feedback in his avant-garde piece The Wolfman (1964) by setting up a howl between the microphone and loudspeaker and then singing into the microphone in way that modulated the feedback with his voice.[53]

Electronic music

Roland System-100M modular synthesizer with ring modulator, noise generator, sample & hold, LFO.
Some of the Minimoog Voyager controls. Note the NOISE/PGM option on the top rotary switches controlling the modulation busses.

Noise is used as basic tonal material in electronic music.

When pure-frequency sine tones were first synthesised into complex timbres, starting in 1953, combinations using inharmonic relationships (noises) were used far more often than harmonic ones (tones).[54] Tones were seen as analogous to vowels, and noises to consonants in human speech, and because traditional music had emphasised tones almost exclusively, composers of electronic music saw scope for exploration along the continuum stretching from single, pure (sine) tones to white noise (the densest superimposition of all audible frequencies)—that is, from entirely periodic to entirely aperiodic sound phenomena. In a process opposite to the building up of sine tones into complexes, white noise could be filtered to produce sounds with different bandwidths, called "coloured noises", such as the speech sounds represented in English by sh, f, s, or ch. An early example of an electronic composition composed entirely by filtering white noise in this way is Henri Pousseur's Scambi (Exchanges), realised at the Studio di Fonologia in Milan in 1957.[55]

In the 1980s, electronic white noise machines became commercially available.[56] These are used alone to provide a pleasant background noise and to mask unpleasant noise, a similar role to conventional background music.[57] This usage can have health applications in the case of individuals struggling with over-stimulation or sensory defensiveness.[57][58] Also, white noise is sometimes used to mask sudden noise in facilities with research animals.[59]

Rock music

Ibanez Tube Screamer TS9, an example of an overdrive pedal

While the electric guitar was originally designed to be simply amplified in order to reproduce its sound at a higher volume,[60] guitarists quickly discovered the creative possibilities of using the amplifier to modify the sound, particularly by extreme settings of tone and volume controls.[61]

Distortion was at first produced by simply overloading the amplifier to induce clipping, resulting in a tone rich in harmonics and also in noise, and also producing dynamic range compression and therefore sustain (and sometimes destroying the amplifier). Dave Davies of The Kinks took this technique to its logical conclusion by feeding the output from a 60 watt guitar amplifier directly into the guitar input of a second amplifier.[62] The popularity of these techniques quickly resulted in the development of electronic devices such as the fuzz box to produce similar but more controlled effects and in greater variety.[61] Distortion devices also developed into vocal enhancers, effects units that electronically enhance a vocal performance, including adding air (noise or distortion, or both).[63] Guitar distortion is often accomplished through use of feedback, overdrive, fuzz, and distortion pedals.[64] Distortion pedals produce a crunchier and grittier tone than an overdrive pedal.[64]

As well as distortion, rock musicians have used audio feedback, which is normally undesirable.[53][65] The use of feedback was pioneered by musicians such as John Lennon of The Beatles,[66][67] Jeff Beck of The Yardbirds, Pete Townshend of The Who, and Jimi Hendrix.[53][68] Hendrix was able to control feedback and turn it into a musical quality,[69] and his use of noise has been described as "sculpted - liquid and fire expertly shaped in mid-air as if by a glass blower."[70] Other techniques used by Hendrix include distortion, wah, fuzz, dissonance, and loud volume.[71]

Jazz

In the mid-1960s, jazz began incorporating elements of rock music,[72] and began using distortion and feedback,[69][73] partially due to the efforts of Jimi Hendrix,[74][75] who had strong links with jazz.[76] The proto-punk band MC5 also used feedback and loudness and was inspired by the avant-garde jazz movement.[72] Jazz musicians who have used feedback and distortion include Gábor Szabó,[77] Pat Metheny,[78] John Abercrombie,[79] and Scott Henderson.[79]

Noise as a type of music

Construction drawing for one of Russolo's intonarumori
Japanoise band The Boredoms
Main article: Noise music

Noise music (also referred to simply as noise) has been represented by many genres during the 20th century and subsequently. Some of its proponents reject the attempt to classify it as a single overall genre,[80] preferring to call noise music a non-genre, an aesthetic, or a collection of genres. Even among those who regard it as a genre, its scope is unclear.[81]

While noise music is often nowadays associated with extreme volume and distortion[82] and produced by electronic amplification, the tradition dates back at least to the Futurist Luigi Russolo,[83] who rejected melody, constructed original instruments known as intonarumori and assembled a "noise orchestra" in 1917. It was not well received.[84] In his 1913 manifesto The Art of Noises he observes:

At first the art of music sought purity, limpidity and sweetness of sound. Then different sounds were amalgamated, care being taken, however, to caress the ear with gentle harmonies. Today music, as it becomes continually more complicated, strives to amalgamate the most dissonant, strange and harsh sounds. In this way we come ever closer to noise-sound.[83]

Some go so far as to use the phrase "noise music" or "noise" as a synonym for Japanese noise genre, often called Japanoise.[85][86]

Some types of noise music

Noise reduction

Main article: Noise reduction
Dolby noise-reduction system hardware

Most often, musicians are concerned not to produce noise, but to minimise it. Noise reduction is of particular concern in sound recording. This is accomplished by many techniques, including use of low noise components and proprietary noise reducing technologies such as Dolby.[87]

In both recording and and in live musical sound reinforcement, the key to noise minimisation is headroom. Headroom can be used either to reduce distortion and audio feedback by keeping signal levels low,[88][89] or to reduceinterference, both from outside sources and from the Johnson-Nyquist noise produced in the equipment, by keeping signal levels high.[90] Most proprietary noise reducing technologies also introduce low levels of distortion. Noise minimisation therefore becomes a compromise between interference and distortion, both in recording and in live music, and between interference and feedback in live amplification.[89]

Noise created by mobile phones has become a particular concern in live performances, particularly those being recorded. In one notable incident, maestro Alan Gilbert halted the New York Philharmonic in a performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9 until an audience member's iPhone was silenced.[91]

Noise as excessive volume

See also: Noise-induced hearing loss#Hearing loss for musicians, noise pollution, and loudest band in the world

Music played at excessive volumes is often considered a form of noise pollution.[92] Governments such as that of the United Kingdom have local procedures for dealing with noise pollution, including loud music.[93]

Noise as high volume is common for musicians from classical orchestras to rock groups as they are exposed to high decibel ranges.[94][95] Although some rock musicians experience noise-induced hearing loss from their music,[96] it is still debated as to whether classical musicians are exposed to enough high-intensity sound to cause hearing impairments.[97] Nevertheless, in 2008 Trygve Nordwall, the manager of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, invoked new EU rules forbidding more than 85 decibels in the workplace, as a reason for dropping the planned world premiere of Dror Feiler's composition Halat Hisar(State of Siege) because it was "adverse to the health" of the musicians. The twenty-minute piece begins with a burst of machine-gun fire, and gets louder. Readings taken during rehearsals measured at least 130 decibels, and some members of the orchestra reported suffering headaches and permanent tinnitis after sustained exposure for three hours during rehearsals. Earplugs for the musicians were suggested, but they objected they could not hear each other and the composer also rejected the idea, adding that his composition was "no louder than anything by Shostakovich or Wagner".[98]

Music-induced hearing loss is still a controversial topic for hearing researchers.[99] While some studies have shown that the risk for hearing loss increases as music exposure increases, other studies found little to no correlation between the two.[99]

Many bands, primarily in the rock genre, use excessive volumes intentionally. Several bands have set records as the loudest band in the world, with Deep Purple, The Who, and Manowar having received entries in the Guinness Book of World Records.[100][101][102] Other claimants to the title include Motörhead,[101] Led Zeppelin,[103] Blue Cheer,[104][105] Gallows,[106] Bob Dylan's 1965 backing electric band,[107] Grand Funk Railroad,[108] Canned Heat,[105] and the largely fictional parody group Spinal Tap.[109] My Bloody Valentine are known for their "legendarily high" volume concerts,[110] and Sunn O))) are described as surpassing them.[111] The sound levels at Sunn O))) concerts are intentionally loud enough that they are noted for having physical effects on their audience.[112][113]

See also

Look up noise in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Look up music in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Noise in general

Relating noise to music

  • Noise#Use in Music for a brief overview of the use of noise in music
  • Definition of music, a detailed discussion
  • Phonaesthetics for the aesthetics of sound, and particularly what is meant by cacophony
  • Aesthetics of music
  • Inharmonicity, one of the factors causing a sound to be perceived as unpitched
  • Consonance and dissonance#Dissonance for discussion of the nature and usage of discords in melody and harmony and similar devices in rhythm and metre
  • Timbral listening

Related types

Related types of music

  • Category:Noise music for an automated list of articles related to noise as a type of music

Notes

  1. ↑ Scholes 1970, 10, 686.
  2. ↑ Cox and Warner 2004,
  3. ↑ Attali 1985, 4.
  4. ↑ Attali 1985, 27.
  5. ↑ Helmholtz 1885, 67–68.
  6. ↑ Maconie 2005, 84.
  7. ↑ Hopkin 1996, 2, 92.
  8. ↑ Mathiesen 2001; West 1992, 122.
  9. ↑ Athenaeus 1854, 3:1015.
  10. ↑ Livy 1823, 5:297–98.
  11. ↑ Stillman 2001.
  12. ↑ Jones 2001.
  13. ↑ Provine 2001.
  14. ↑ Qureshi, et al. 2001, §I, 2 (i)
  15. ↑ Qureshi, et al. 2001, §VII, 1, (d)
  16. ↑ Qureshi, et al. 2001, §VII, 2, (ii), (a).
  17. ↑ Pirker 2001.
  18. ↑ Blades 1996, 265.
  19. ↑ Meyer 1974, 484–85.
  20. ↑ Blades 1996, 266–67.
  21. ↑ Montagu 2002, 108–10.
  22. ↑ Sachs 2010, 65.
  23. ↑ Meyer 1974, 486–87.
  24. ↑ Henck 2004, 32–50.
  25. ↑ Gates and Higginbotham 2004, 85.
  26. ↑ Henck 2004, 41–45.
  27. ↑ Henck 2004, 56; Kimbell 1991, 606.
  28. ↑ Walls 2001, §2 xi.
  29. ↑ Newman 1972, 207; Pyron and Bianco 2001.
  30. ↑ Arnold 1994, 54.
  31. ↑ Arnold 1994, 56–57.
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 Hast, Cowdery, and Scott 1999, 149.
  33. ↑ Arnold 1994, 53.
  34. ↑ Griffiths 2001.
  35. ↑ Kennedy 2006.
  36. ↑ Oechsler 2001.
  37. ↑ Machlis 1979, 154–56, 357.
  38. ↑ Miller and Hanson 2001; Holland and Page 2001.
  39. ↑ Simms 1986, 317.
  40. ↑ Simms 1986, 319–20.
  41. ↑ Rhodes and Westwood 2008, 184.
  42. ↑ Pritchett 1993, 108.
  43. ↑ Meyer-Eppler 1955, 22; Meyer-Eppler 1957, 55.
  44. ↑ Boehmer 1967, 9–47.
  45. ↑ Cott 1973, 70.
  46. ↑ Stockhausen 1963a, 124; Stockhausen 1963c, 216; Stockhausen 1989, 89–93.
  47. ↑ Cott 1973, 189; Stockhausen 1963c, 215–16; Stockhausen 1989, 93–95.
  48. ↑ Cott 1973, 70; Stockhausen 1963a, 124; Stockhausen 1963c, 215.
  49. ↑ Simms 1986, 374.
  50. ↑ Slonimsky, Baker, and Kuhn 2001, 50.
  51. ↑ Mâche 1993, 33.
  52. ↑ Potter 2001, 45.
  53. ↑ 53.0 53.1 53.2 Madden 1999, 92.
  54. ↑ Stockhausen 1963b, 142 and 144.
  55. ↑ Stockhausen 1963b, 144–45.
  56. ↑ Anon. n.d.}
  57. ↑ 57.0 57.1 Heller 2003, 197.
  58. ↑ Fast 2004, 233.
  59. ↑ Hessler and Lehner 2008, 72.
  60. ↑ Bacon 1981, 142.
  61. ↑ 61.0 61.1 Bacon 1981, 119
  62. ↑ Piccola 2009.
  63. ↑ Maserati 2012.
  64. ↑ 64.0 64.1 Bennett 2002, 43.
  65. ↑ Holmes 2008, 186.
  66. ↑ MacDonald 2005, 136–37.
  67. ↑ Shea and Rodriguez 2007, 173.
  68. ↑ Coelho 2003, 116.
  69. ↑ 69.0 69.1 Martin and Waters 2011, 323.
  70. ↑ Stubbs 2003, 6.
  71. ↑ Candelaria and Kingman 2011, 130.
  72. ↑ 72.0 72.1 Kirchner 2005, 505.
  73. ↑ Dunscomb and Hill 2002, 233.
  74. ↑ Alexander 2003, 132–33.
  75. ↑ Bush 2005, 72.
  76. ↑ Sallis 1996, 155.
  77. ↑ Tiegal 1967.
  78. ↑ Alexander 2003, 98.
  79. ↑ 79.0 79.1 Bush 2005, 6, 28, 74.
  80. ↑ "With the vast growth of Japanese noise, finally, noise music becomes a genre—a genre that is not one, to paraphrase Luce Irigaray" (Hegarty 2007, 133).
  81. ↑ Wolf 2009, 67: "The genre noise music does not have a proper definition".
  82. ↑ Piekut 2011, 193.
  83. ↑ 83.0 83.1 Russolo 1913.
  84. ↑ Hegarty 2007, 13–14.
  85. ↑ Minor 2004, 291.
  86. ↑ Gottlieb and McLelland 2003, 60.
  87. ↑ Dolby Laboratories n.d.
  88. ↑ Amyes 1998, 60.
  89. ↑ 89.0 89.1 Self 2011, 417.
  90. ↑ Self 2011, 411–29, 510–11.
  91. ↑ Associated Press 2012.
  92. ↑ Avison 1989, 469.
  93. ↑ Directgov
  94. ↑ Jansson and Karlsson 1983.
  95. ↑ Maia and Russo 2008,.
  96. ↑ Anon. 2006b.
  97. ↑ Ostri, Eller, Dahlin, and Skylv 1989, pp. 243–49
  98. ↑ Anon. 2008; Connolly 2008.
  99. ↑ 99.0 99.1 Morata 2007.
  100. ↑ Ankeny n.d.
  101. ↑ 101.0 101.1 Cohen 1986, 36.
  102. ↑ Anon. 2009.
  103. ↑ Kreps 2009.
  104. ↑ Anon. 2006a, 21.
  105. ↑ 105.0 105.1 De la Parra 2000, .
  106. ↑ Dan 2007.
  107. ↑ Unterberger 2002, xiii.
  108. ↑ James 1999, 30.
  109. ↑ McCreadie 2009, 153.
  110. ↑ Hughey 2009.
  111. ↑ Turner 2009.
  112. ↑ Battaglia 2009.
  113. ↑ Economy 2004.

References

Gallows Become the World's Loudest Band!", Kerrang! (21 June) (Accessed 15 July 2007).

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.