sef 2: straying from the path
sonic edge fog 2
music is a high-dimensional space.
for a listener, there are many possible dimensions of reception. speed and mood are obvious examples. music can be fast or slow, happy or sad — and everything in between. every noise at once, less conventionally, maps thousands of genres according to how ‘organic’ or ‘mechanical’ they sound, and whether they are ’dense and…atmospheric’ or ‘spikier and bouncier’.
for the composer or performer, other dimensions are more prominent. which notes should be played, or sounds made? in what way (how loud or soft, with what expression)? and when (in what rhythm, for how long)?
if you’re mixing a track, you’ll be working to balance quite different dimensions again. the spread of sounds across the frequency spectrum, from high to low. the placement of sounds in the stereo space, from left to right. the depth of the sonic field, the positioning of sounds from front to back. (this mixing masterclass was what got me thinking about dimensions in the first place.)
computers give a music-maker unprecedented control over all these dimensions and more. but that control is wielded to a greater extent, with the possibilities it offers more freely explored, in some dimensions than in others.
the dimensions of reception are well accounted for. computer music runs the gamut of moods and tempos; it absolutely does organic and mechanical, atmospheric and spiky. but as we move away from the experience of the listener, I become more hesitant.
let’s return to the composer or performer. all manner of weird and wonderful sounds are made on computers, expressively and in myriad rhythms. but there are obvious areas of underdevelopment. experimentation with microtonality and more complex polyrhythms, to take a couple of examples, has become more common in recent years — due, presumably, to the increased availability of music tech to parts of the world with traditions that fall outside the western classical or folk canon — but it remains niche.
the spatial dimensions of music are also handled expertly in almost all the music I listen to. some tracks are exquisite, with each element in precisely the ‘right’ place. presumably, the next frontier is extending this to surround sound (the new Danny Daze album features a Dolby Atmos Version for performance in, I kid you not, planetariums). but too much polish and ‘rightness’, whether in stereo or surround, tends towards homogeneity. we still need grit (Ronny J’s overdriven 808s were the closest thing to punk rock I knew of ~5y ago), intentionally skewed mixdowns, and more curveball moments.
there are obvious obstacles to this exploration. one is the technology itself, which nudges you, hard, in certain directions. towards the use of whole tones and 4x4 rhythmic patterns, for instance. the combination of splice.com — the drag-and-drop of ready-made loops all sounding just-so — and youtube tutorials for making identikit beats further smooths the way to making music that sounds like other music. (AI, of course, will first speed this up, then automate it away completely.) the possibility space is expanding around us, but the known paths are also becoming easier to tread, and harder to drag ourselves away from as a result.
underpinning this is commercialisation. music is expected to fit into a slot, a genre, a mood. a spotify playlist or other use-case. without this, how is it to be marketed — or more pointedly recommended, pushed by the algorithm based on other things you have listened to that fall into that same slot? leaving the familiar paths feels like an invisibility-wish: your stuff will not be pushed, will not be placed, will not be played. but staying on the path may prove no easier, given the countless people competing for space there and the imminent automatability of the fruits of said path.
perhaps most lacking in this new landscape is variability. or maybe better, dynamism. artists, albums and DJ sets do sometimes move between genres and styles in a way that likely complicates the marketing and recommending process. but I very rarely encounter tracks that do this, changing tempo, mood, volume (loss of dynamic range has been long-lamented), key, genre, sound palette, vibe…anything really, partway through.
this seems surprising, given shortening attention spans. perhaps the idea is to get people to listen to another track to get that difference, bumping up streaming numbers. but my impression is that most people don't even want the difference. the next track will, ideally, sound like the one before it. too great a change would be jarring. the playlist will deviate to some degree, but it should not stray too far.
at its root, I wonder if this is about control. we have learned, from spotify and the general proliferation of low-cost music of all stripes, to expect music to serve us. we have been sold the idea that it should suit or supplement our mood, help us exercise, help us focus, make us dance or sing. we pick tracks according to what we want to get from them. and if a track starts giving us something different, we don't need to submit — we can just skip to one of the thousands of others that will do the job.
but music is not just a tool. it can be a world, a journey, a story. something that challenges us, that makes us think, that makes us feel in unexpected ways. it might seem empowering to be able to 'use' music, but this is its own form of submission: to the impetus of commercialisation, and to a way of seeing the world that prioritises efficiency, productivity, and the immediate desires of the individual.
I'm not sure yet how to give music some of its power back. but everything I hear that does something unexpected, pushing the boundaries of just one of the dimensions, straying from the well-worn paths even slightly, feels like a step in the right direction.
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this is very much a wip post. what felt like a simple idea became much more unwieldy as I wrote and kept seeing new angles... so this topic is likely one I'll return to. will try and keep things briefer next time!
if any of this has been interesting, try Kai Whiston’s new Prod podcast, which touches on similar themes. c u :)