BeingVibration,BecomingSound
I observe the graphical representation of a waveform on a sequencer It’s stopped. It reminds me of the sign stop◼ When you turn that square into the triangle of the sign play► a sound event will occur.
How can one turn it into two lines that look at themselves?
How can one make this instant into something unlimited?
At a party in downtown Monterrey the loudspeakers sang in the voice of Selena, “It was your lips that kissed her, you scoundrel.” (“Eran tus labios losque labesaban, canalla.”)In the recording of the 1993 album SelenaLive!,at just the moment when she pronounces the first a of the word besaban (“kissed”), the singer makes a kind of falsetto that sounds like a complaint. A vocal arrangement that reaffirms the feeling of betrayal in the lyrics, as if it contained all the reproaches that Selena had in store for her alleged ex-boyfriend. The fragment made a strong impact on me; for me, it had reached the pinnacle of feeling, and I wanted to be part of that fraction of a second for longer than it really lasted.
When I got home I downloaded the song and put it on my DAW (digital audio workstation) to cut just the fragment I was interested in and replay it many times. Nevertheless, lacking the context (some seconds before and some seconds after) the feeling was lost in a sea of homogeneous sound, a repetitive sound, a straight line that in no way reminded me of Selena or the sensation caused in me by the first aof the word besaban.Not only did it not have the same impact, but it became another thing. I realize that stretching a sound beyond its temporality deforms it, turns it into another and, therefore, does not stop it (see, for example, 9 Beet Stretch: Beethoven’s Chorale [or NinthSymphony]stretched to a 24-hour duration).
This first failure was the driving force behind a question: In what way can one stop a sound event in order to contemplate it on pause, to analyze all its angles, to be in it? To contemplate a fraction of time immobilized like a building standing erect before our eyes, imposing, solidified.
A problem that arises when talking about sound is that the perceptual phenomenon and its physical cause are designated by the same name: source.This brings us clear complications when we ask ourselves what we hear, what we perceive. This text does not aim to solve this problem, and for practical purposes it will be argued that the sound eventis the physical effect and the soundobjectits perceptual phenomenon.1 So, will it be necessary to stop time to contemplate the sound event on pause?
The sound event dwells in the limits of its temporality. The speed of sound is measured in meters over seconds (m/s),which indicates that sound is simultaneously spatial and temporal. The spatial aspect is in the air particles contained in the place where the sound event takes place, and the temporal aspect is in its duration. Nevertheless, this description does not fit sound objects in the same way. In Treatiseon Musical Objects, Pierre Schaeffer does not define exactly what sound objects are; however, in my opinion, he comes close when he states that the sound object is a perception—it is not the magnetic tape, and neither is it the instrument.2 I understand it as that which conveys each sound—if we consider very broadly what the unit sound means: that object of perception contained in the potential of any recording. The sound object is that thing we hear when we press play ► The sound object is what we perceive, and what we provide, or do not provide, with meaning. Schaeffer adds that the object is relative to our listening.
1 For further discussion of these concepts, see: Leonardo Secco, “La musicalidad del paisaje sonoro urbano: el pregón del heladero,” in Dixit,no 27, December 2017, available online; and Francisco Rivas “¿Qué es el objeto sonoro? La fenomenología del sonido en Pierre Schaeffer,” presented at the celebration of the centenary of Pierre Schaeffer, Museum of Modern Art, Rijeka, Croatia, October 2010, available online
2 Pierre Schaeffer, TreatiseonMusicalObjects,trans Christine North and John Dack (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017)
It is for this ungraspable and meaningful nature that sound is sometimes imbued with a spiritual character
For a sound event to be called a sound event, the sound chain must be fulfilled: a sound is emitted by a source; then, it travels through the air and reaches the ears of a receiver. To expand on that concept there is a very popular kōan that asks, “If a tree falls in the middle of the forest and there is no one who can hear it, does that tree make a sound?” As we have said, sound is two things at once. In his book SoundMichel Chion describes these as both an objective phenomenon and the sensation it causes.3 If we analyze the tree question from this perspective, the sound, as an objective phenomenon, does indeed exist when the tree falls, since it is known that when a tree falls it makes noise. Nevertheless, since there would be no one around to hear it, the event would have no effect and therefore the sound chain would not be fulfilled. In short, we could say that there is an object but not an event.
As long as it does not happen, the sound event remains in limbo, like something we think we remember. A vestige that is recreated in the mind while observing its graphic representation on pause, like a shadow that precedes the event, that anticipates it, allowing it to be alive for a few moments in an immaterial way Perhaps it is there, in that memory, in that immateriality, where the sound object manages to extend beyond its limits.
In its absence, the sound event stops, lingers.
Sound, in its state of propagation, is something architectural; owing to its characteristics, it is an ephemeral phenomenon, an event, an architecture that time does not preserve as a ruin, but as an absence. It is this emptiness that we seek to occupy in order to contemplate the sound event on pause, like the building that will rise
3 Michel Chion, Sound:AnAcoulogicalTreatise,trans James A Steintrager (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999)
in front of us, tangible, and—if not eternal—at least of an amplified temporality. For the building to last, it will be necessary to filter its physical part and add temporality when talking about it, because the sound event is not ephemeral owing to its temporality. It is so because it aims to enter the physical world and manifest itself through energy propagated by molecules. It is necessary to overthrow its physical part, forget about its propagation and concentrate on its immaterial aspect: itsspirit.
The sound event is ephemeral because of its eagerness to be a space.
If the sound event manifests itself as the memory of something that happened a few milliseconds ago, I wonder if when we play an instrument we become, at least for those instants, sound. Would we thus cancel out the 344 m/sthat the vibrating string needs to reach the ear?
Rimbaud said, “It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought. -Pardon the pun- I is someone else.” I would ask Rimbaud: Are you someone else at all times or are you only other when your temporality is dislocated?
The ethnomusicologist John Blacking, in his book HowMusicalIsMan?,affirms that
The Balinese speak of “the other mind” as a state of being that can be reached through dancing and music. They refer to states in which people become keenly aware of the true nature of their being, of the “other self” within themselves and other human beings, and of their relationship with the world around them. […] We often experience greater intensity of living when our normal time values are upset, and appreciate the quality rather than the length of time spent doing something.4
Thekairos,I would add.
When talking about sound, the sound event stops and that is why we are able to contemplate it, as in the frame of a paused movie. Perhaps it is within the kairos(“the
4 John Blacking, HowMusicalIsMan?(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973), 52
right moment”) where that a in the Selena song pauses, and perhaps it is within that qualitative time that we can be part of a sound for longer than its temporality allows.
Being vibration, becoming sound.