It’s All about Change – ‚Varifications‘ 2.0

How can we enjoy music and sounds beyond tones and harmonies?

Could a sound territory of pure noises be able to give us warm feelings as well?

Well, we could sit in front of a fireplace where it crackles, snaps and pops:

This creates a cozy feeling, doesn’t it? But why should this be called music, or why should we search there for music in the first place?

If we want to find new territories beyond tones and harmonies to

Expand our reach of musical joy

then such sounds can not only be a solution by themselves, but serve as an example and offer us to learn from it in order to apply it to a vast range of applications.

If we listen very carefully to them, we might be even able to retranslate and rediscover them back in the territories of tones without falling into the areas where our standard musical operating system rules.

Sounds complicated? Maybe not so much:

1. First we understand the basic principle of the sound conversation.

2. Then we apply variations, or “varifications” as demonstrated by our greatest ancestors of musical design – see the latest blog entry on this topic.

This way, our fire sound can serve as a true 'freesoundspiration' (see all #freesoundspirations) for our new discoveries.

What would be the basic principle of the sound conversation?

Listen again to the fire: There are a few very loud pops and snaps, and many smaller crackling sounds, in an decreasing order: the more, the smaller and faster the sounds following each other, or in the opposite way – the less, the louder the sounds will appear, like you can see in this sound graphic with a similar sound:

The following examples are taken from the author’s kitchen to inspire various ways of listening and recreation. Many other examples can be found. If you have, let us know! Hope you will enjoy this trip through the world of sounds that learned how to “crackle”:

Doesn’t this sound like fire, even played on string instruments?

1. Extended strings sounds from String Quartet – “The Emperor’s Wardrobe”, 3rd Movement

Now let’s translate the crackling into various tones – Black Sonata, Spotlight 3

1. Flat chord repetition

2. Swapping chord between two positions

3. Falling chord while swapping with a base chord

4. Playing between different positions (like a melody)

5. Raising and falling chords within the shape of a large triangle

What about “crackling” a whole symphony orchestra? – Oireca Symphony, 1st Movement

1. Entry motto of the symphonic movement with distributed chords

2. Antiphonic structures of distributed pizzicato chords with raising tone figures, shortly afterwards growing into larger instrumentation

3. Segments of structure in various loops with brass and wind instruments

4. Progressive windows of structure snippets with strings, arranged into phrases by little breaks

5. Dual occurrence of structure with high and low register, disintegrating shortly afterwards

6. Complete split into multitimbral groups with many breaks

7. As an accompaniment to a high register string melody

8. Concluding tutti structure with many tight loops

9. Starting with a single tone and unfolding to a wider range

10. Accompaniment to tutti structure with moving loops

11. Harmonic chord in different configurations

12. Step-by-step falling chord

13. Step-by-step falling chord accompanying a floating repetition structure

14. Progressive ordered elements in curves, “jogglifying” them on the way and ordering them again to join massive chord attacks

15. Accompaniment of melodic structure remains twice isolated to switch to full attention

16. Antiphonic dialogue with various other structures in a stressed coda progress

17. Raising chord structure concluding the piece

Crackles can work in very different sound territories

1. Pure noise sounds from Noise Symphony, 1st movement

2. Harmonic sound structure in 3 layers from Portraits of a Woman, “Variations”

3. Pure noise sounds in various occurrences from Black Bird’s Garden, “Black Bird’s Foundation”

4. Heavy processed natural sounds from Letters, “Mys(t)icA”

5. Interwoven noise structure from Letters, “Echo of Man”

6. Dialogue structure based on storks bill rattle from Passage

Back to the piano: Last example uses exclusively crackle structures in Piano Games, “Crackle”

1. Basic “crackle” structure with transposed elements

2. Looped snapshots of the previous structure

3. Narrow transposition window while raising volume in deep register

4. Ordered elements and playing with the resulting curves

Thinking of the last sound example, here is a question for the curious:

What has a falling table tennis ball to do with our sound crackle model?

#musiceducation #freesoundspirations

More on this Topic:

• More examples for multiple variations of a single structure based on Beethoven’s 7th symphony in 33 Ways of Dancing with a Motif

• There is a mathematical link of the described structure to Brownian noise and Pink noise

• Other sound examples for crackling noise can be found with old vinyl records, see https://youtu.be/LQKylPGnjeY?t=11, Sample 3

• More information about Freesound.org sound examples (see introduction) can be found in The Magic E@r, chapter 4.2, "The Facebook of Sounds"

• If you liked the orchestral examples above, more symphonic crackling structures can be found in Piano Concerto "Coronation of Morpheus", Movement 1