Freed Hartmann
- Aug 1, 2022
- 7 min read

Free Sound Territories – powered by "hypersound touchpoints"

Updated: Aug 2, 2022

What is a sound territory? When is it occupied, when is it free?

Analog comparisons are always risky, especially since they can quickly degenerate into romantically embellished ideologies. However, for the sake of clarity and in view of the very limited time we usually have at our disposal, I have decided to take the risk and look at sounds as individuals that "live" in certain territories.

These territories are characterized by a certain coherence of the properties of the sounds. So e.g. a huge sound territory is that of the piano sound, and within this there is again one where only black keys occur: the music-savvy among you know that this is a pentatonic territory, where only five different tone classes exist, well like in China. Another territory may enclose the sounds of a rock band, and yet another a collection of sine tones that have been assembled into a purely electronic piece and, with skillful synthesis, are even able to evoke the sounds of glass and bells in our imagination.

But if we then ask how the sounds actually exist in such different territories, we may find very different forms of how they live together. Take for example the

Sound anarchy

Here the sounds hardly hear each other. They are closest to themselves – actually total selfish – because they claim sole attention and every moment only for themselves. Stockhausen very aptly spoke here of the “moment form” where only the moment counts. (For real?)

Then we have the sound territory of the

Sound dictatorship

That sounds cruel. But it doesn't have to be: if we want to get on the dance floor, the tyrannical pressure of the constant sequence of sounds actually works quite well. But it's true: As a pure music experience, it can get a bit boring when all the sound inhabitants keep ducking away and dutifully dancing to the same tune. Nevertheless, there are also very interesting listening experiences where rigid patterns change very slowly over time.

Coming to the third category of sonic territory – you certainly guessed it already – that of

Sound democracy

This is characterized by the fact that, based on guaranteed freedom of speech and a cultivated form of listening, sound dialogues emerge that can take on quite interesting courses, depending on what each sound has to say and which of the other sounds are capable of to respond to its original statement and to react to it in a preferably constructive and value-added manner. But

What are free sound territories?

Aren't the anarchists among the sounds the freest? I say no. Isolation doesn't really free you, but dialogue could offer very special opportunities for development. It could allow the sounds to evolve, grow or even transform into new beings by getting to know each other.

If dialogue is that important, then freedom must mean, in no small measure, freedom of speech, and sound territories that are less helpful for cultivating sound dialogue and tend to curtail it might then be considered less free.

But what kind of

Sound speech restrictions

might there be, for example?

A sound is trapped in a sound generating system. He's only entitled to frequency modulation, and after his nineteenth take, instead of the twentieth, which suddenly produces a bass note, he'd rather say something completely different that's much closer to him. But the physics of his speech apparatus doesn't allow that and as a result the next step appears with a rather strange-sounding variation (technical limitation).
Another sound is trapped in a twelve-tone row. He would have liked to have answered his colleague with a different tone, but that different tone isn't up yet. Of course, he is not prevented from answering himself (conceptual limitation).
A third sound follows the social pressure of his fellow citizens. If everyone expresses themselves like that, then I react like that too. And before you know it, we end up in “occupied” territory, the paths of which have often been followed and marked by others, be it in a certain stylistic manner or as a specific, authorized musical process that may even still be under copyright (limitation through well-known sound relationships occupied by different authors).
A fourth sound lives in Hungary and doesn’t hear its relatives who are in London at the moment or who have just faded away in Germany (limitation due to temporal and local differences). Today it would be so easy to visit each other.

And what could be done about these kinds of speech restrictions?

This is where the idea of

Hypersound

comes into play.

Everyone knows hypertext. We are reading an article on the Internet and come across a word with an underscore, which, when clicked, leads to another article.

Source: Wikipedia.org

We're then left with the choice of following that link, or ignoring it and reading on for now, or following that link and not reading the original article at all, and so on. And after the triggering of a large number of connections, we then covered a very individual journey through a certain content territory or even crossed some territories on the way.

What does hypertext have to do with hypersound?

Very easily. Instead of an article, we simply hear a musical text written by certain sound designers or composers. At a certain point in this sound text there is a sound that has associations with a sound with similar properties in another musical text that may have come from other sound creators.

Three sound tracks with various interconnections (symbolic)

At exactly this point, a branching of the content occurs, as in a hypertext. Either we ignore that branching and continue listening to the original talk, or we move onto the new sound stream and listen there first until a new hypersound link comes up, where a new decision is due, and so on. In this way a very individual journey of sound stream emerges, in which the listener sets the tone, depending on the existing sound territory.

However, since this is music to be communicated, there are some key differences when jumping between the various musical "articles":

When the new sound stream arises, the old one will often fade away only gradually and not suddenly shut off. In some cases, the old track can even still be heard as a background, just as what you have read before may sometimes "resonate" in your memory while reading already a new article.
Two sound streams may contain many common associated sounds, so that at different points one can continuously jump back and forth between them. This can result in surprisingly new sound dialogues. We would rather not read different texts crosswise.
Since the "reading speed" in contrast to written texts when listening is the same as the "listening speed" for all listeners, we can not only listen together on such a hypersound trip, but also decide together which of the hypersound links should be used for the journey to continue. And this can even distributed over the Internet, where the end result can be shaped by multiple remote contributors on all ends and be heard in the same way by all.

What does all this actually have to do with the freedom of sounds?

The free exchange of sounds originating from different territories leads to new virtual sound territories in which the sounds interact more freely than they can in their ancestral territory.
The hypersound touchpoints are based on sound associations, i.e. the directly audible properties of the sounds, regardless of their history of origin. What belongs together, or even better, what can be heard together in a value-generating musical way, comes together. Example: If something like an animal voice is produced when you wipe the window, then the animal voice is important as a sound and not the window pane!
The authorship of professional sound streams and the quasi-curatorially implemented hypersound connections allow greater accessibility, simpler, freer access to the sounds, especially for non-professional music enthusiasts.
With the support of remote control software, people in different places can go on a hypersound sound journey together, even if I very much hope that the next Covid-19 wave will not be necessary to initiate this.

Sample configuration (symbolic)

The current hypersound implementation

shown in this article as an example, is meant to convey the idea and serve as inspiration, both conceptually and technically.

Click to open the project

Nevertheless, with the means shown here, anyone who is interested can already build their own hypersound world, or participate in or continue building an existing one.

There is a link freely accessible inviting you to explore the given sound territory:

cm-gallery.com/splash

On the website you can then also find a technical description (see Help) of how others can be invited to play along or how you can even set up your own hypersound territories. Heinz-Josef Florian and I are happy to offer our direct support, just voice your response as a comment to this article or in our facebook music group in order to engage.

The rules of the game

that apply to the sound agents can be different in each Hypersound project. The suggestion of the above showcase works as follows:

Each player is assigned a color. There are 4 colors available, blue, green, yellow and red.
Only highlighted (enlarged) touchpoints are used. Usually they appear just in one color. So you always see who is taking the next step. Since there are often several touchpoints of one color, the participants, who already know the track somewhat, can consciously choose between the alternatives. They also determine the exact time of the change, which can also have a strong impact on the sound result - after all, each sound text continues to flow incessantly in the meantime.
In this model there are some clever touchpoints that contribute to changing the sound streams and thus realize a prepared overall musical course. So we have something like a pre-composed form, which, however, is run through differently every time thanks to the freedom of sound described above. If you like, we are dealing with a "noisy" form here, somewhere between live composition, interpretation and improvisation.

Multiple pathways in a typical hypersound environment (symbolic)

Enjoy the trip with the "hypersound touchpoints"!

#musiceducation #freesoundspirations