Your opinion on "noise" music

[bassbully]

For more listenable "noise" I'd recommend girl band

Still music but also noise

Really cool video and music. Learning about new bands and groups all the time here.Thanks for sharing.

 

[Ajapses]

I must be un-sophisticated. My uncle has a barn full of rusted-out crap that will make any noise you want...if you're creative enough.

 

[Why Nautilus‽]

You think you have seen GAS with bass gear. Wait until you see the sound libraries you can tap into, if you buy them. I laughed at $1,000 for Komplete, then after a week, I was like "well, maybe..."

I have an akai mpd 32, and I use ableton. Just last night I made a song that had some noisy elements. Just to dip my toes for a bit.

 

[Spectrum]

Frankly when I started this thread I was bracing for more hating. Instead I have a lot of videos and bandcamp pages to check out. Will do...

I also think that for every artist making a legitimate anarchic statement or expressing disillusionment with convention, there are about 10 people who are lazily trying to be called "artists" without having to develop any discernable skills or make any real effort.

Anyway, that's my opinion.

I keep an open mind, but from what I've seen I actually agree with you to a point. When somebody is good at playing guitar or piano, you can tell they have skill even if you think their songwriting or music sucks. But when it comes to knob-twisting, the actual "playing of the instrument" requires far less skill, so all you have to go by is whether or not you get the story the artist is trying to tell with the sound.

As a result, I think a few people get into it because they like the subculture lifestyle of it. But you get that in any "punk" genre where emphasis on musical skill is not considered important. And Noise is a very "punk" kind of thing in my opinion.

Most of the artists I've seen actually do take it seriously, though, even the ones I couldn't stand. They may not have been good at communicating their ideas to me, but I didn't get a poseur vibe from them. One guy I saw looked like he was in his 60s and walked with a cane, he was a really nice guy and his lifestyle was that of a 60-year-old with a cane, nothing more fancy than that. He's been doing this stuff for a long time.

 

[Optofonik]

Like many people performing electronic music, I have to wonder if those performing "noise" have studied the history of their chosen genre. It's easy to forget that "electronic music" predates rock-n-roll by decades and has a rich history and the Futurists were performing with aircraft engines well before Stockhausen's, "The Helikopter-Streichquartett", over 70 years before.

 

[bassbully]

Part of the thrill I get about noise or noise rock music is the mechanical side. I love pedals ,synths really anything that you can manipulate sound with. I have another pedal coming for my new band and it's sick. Just listening to how sound can changed and altered thru electroincs or hands is just a really cool thing to me.

 

[alaskaleftybass]

I must be un-sophisticated. My uncle has a barn full of rusted-out crap that will make any noise you want...if you're creative enough.

Absolutely! Then it would be "natural organic" music!

 

[bassbully]

Absolutely! Then it would be "natural organic" music!

Yea name your album Night in the Rust.

 

[anavar]

OP, opinions?

it starts off very musical, but then....things happen.

 

[Rudreax]

I love it if the intent is there. Meaning that someone is creating a sound or an experiment on purpose, and believes in the music they're making.

 

[bassbully]

I think one of the coolest things are the different sounds that come can from sound. What I mean is when you play different sounds at high volume thru say amplifiers ,pedals, how different sounds come out underneath and thru. You have no idea how and where they came from.

When my band plays some of our songs there are undertones and all kinds of sounds and tones nobody is playing or making. It just comes from all us of alomst organically. Its very cool.

 

[Spectrum]

This just popped up on my youtube reccos...kind of interesting and funny.

 

[Nephilymbass]

Besides playing bass I am also into electronic music, analog synths, and so forth. My dad got me into Tangerine Dream when I was growing up and of course the spacier Pink Floyd stuff. Electronic music is great fun for a gadget freak like me (as if bass GAS isn't bad enough...)

When I look into my local electronic music scene, though, I notice that the old Berlin School / Krautrock stuff isn't so big these days. What is big is electronic dance music (EDM) and "noise".

EDM is fairly straightforward: 4/4 dance beat and all that, the modern descendant of techno and disco and such.

"Noise" on the other hand is, well, noise. People spend money on cool instruments or make their own electronic gizmos, get in front of people, and make random improvised sounds through a PA system, often at high volumes. The idea of it, as far as I can gather, is to embrace the anarchy of it. It's kind of a nihilistic thing, I guess. Some e-music is more like 60s avant garde stuff, atonal and random, similar to some of the more experimental jazz of guys like Wadada Leo Smith or the compositions of Gyorgy Ligeti.

One show I went to in DC had a couple of big CRT TV screens tuned to static as part of the stage show, along with heavy fog and lasers. The sound was so loud that even with earplugs in it was almost too much for me to take. It was kind of awesome for a few minutes, but it didn't go anywhere. No melodic content emerged whatsoever, and the noise just got denser and louder for the next half hour. No resolution, and I got pretty bored.

Now I try to keep an open mind about stuff. I use noise in my electronic music, mainly as an effect or to transition between parts of a piece of music, but there is always music there. Sequenced notes, manually played notes, notes played on my bass or guitar. To me noise is tension, and a melody is a way to break that tension. I always think of music in terms of tension and release.

As a bassist I also believe that music is something you have some measure of control over. My bass plays notes or rests because I make it do so. I trained a long time to get good at that. Random noises to me isn't really music.

Anyway, I wanted to hear what some other people have to say. I'm not ranting or complaining about it, just discussing it from where I stand. I get a kick out of exploring the extreme edges of music to see what clicks with me and what doesn't.

There's a local guy here who does "noise" live using some samplers and drum machines and microphone. He doesn't play very long, only 15-20 minutes but he's got great personality and always gets the crowd loosened up nice. It really helps with when people come to a gig and they are all up tight acting Stuck up and stuff. His on stage antics take the piss out of their attitude and it makes the rest of the evening more fun for everyone. Love having that dude open our shows. His name is Mike but he performs as beardeatsface.

I have some gear for electronic stuff, mainly some virtual instruments I control with an M-audio 49 key controller and a korg tr rack which I control with a Roland midi controller also some apps that have some Cool sound effects. They never leave the house though. What I've done live to incorporate that kind of stuff into our shows is sample stuff using the digitech jamman so instead of bringing out a laptop, multiple controllers and trying to play bass with my toes at the same time. I just sample stuff to the jamman and trigger it by stepping on the pedal. I keep the jamman as its own signal so it's not in my bass signal chain, just have a cheap di I hook it to then DI to the PA.

 

[Spectrum]

I just sample stuff to the jamman and trigger it by stepping on the pedal. I keep the jamman as its own signal so it's not in my bass signal chain, just have a cheap di I hook it to then DI to the PA.

That's a good idea. Way to keep the gear schlepping and stage footprint to a minimum.

 

[10cc]

I like noise music. Harvey Milk has some albums that get into this area. Also former Harvey Milk/ Melvins member Joe Preston has his Thrones thing.

Others that come to mind are Olivia Tremor Control and Kraftwerk

 

[bassbully]

Thanks for turning me onto Thrones. Here is a band I'm just getting into.

 

[Spectrum]

So I went to another noise show tonight, this one at Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring outside of DC. They were billing it as the last concert before the place closes.

I got there late and left early, as it's a long trip from my side of the DC metro area, but I sat through three acts. Only one connected with me; a set by a woman called Bérangère Maximin whose website is in French. She wasn't making random noise. Rather, it was a controlled set of noises that reminded me a trip through a factory or something. Somewhere along the way it turned into a trip through a tunnel to hell with demons screaming and thrashing around. The volume crept up and you could feel the vibrations in your body, something you wouldn't get from a youtube video. Unfortunately, it also meant time to put the earplugs in.

One of you posters called this "sound art", and I get that now. This girl is good at it. The other knob-twisters I saw didn't do it for me. It's not going to me "my thing", but it is interesting.

 

[reddesert]

The great Lester Bangs said, "The point of all this, of course, is that hideous racket is liberating," in his essay A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Noise. You can find it in his collection Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, for a quick read the text is on the web at http://z1.invisionfree.com/thefall/index.php?showtopic=15410. Including a list of 10 of his recommended "Gehennas of wretched squawl," although they are probably less noisy than some of the farthest-out things in this thread. I only have a couple of the 10 records. I fortunately stumbled on a copy of Folkways Records' Sounds of the Junkyard during my first year in grad school (it's field recordings of, you guessed it), and by the end of the year, I found it kind of soothing.

 

[NoiseNinja]

It's like any other form of music, some is great, some is not so great....

Usually you can hear if there is any heart in the music or it's just a mindless stream of poo.

This is a good example of some quality noise, really love what this guy(s) do:



HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS, by Blood Music


Also love this piece:



And here is my own best attempt on making some good old ultra noise, or well let's face it, more like sort of pseudo narrative very noisy ambient piece (It's sort of meant to be a requiem).
Personally I think I did quite well, and although some parts sounds orchestraed (thanks to my old broken accordion), I play everything myself.

 

[mellowinman]

When I was a teenager, I would crank up 70s rock on my stereo, and my Scottish father would come in and say, "turn that junk down! It's all a bunch of bloody noise!"

So, in my efforts not to become him, (most of which have already failed,) I never comment about modern music.