If you dream of a dog and he bites you

Pythagorean theories on the harmony of the celestial spheres postulate correspondences stretching through the abstraction of number, sound and into light.

The difficulty for many has been crafting representations through art that encompass this process and remain comprehensible and communicative.

An Unfinished Substance: Cut-up#5 - Life Science Library ‘Matter’ 1963 - Zac Odin

Harry Everett Smith created hand painted films that were accompanied initially by jazz music. In subsequent screenings the music changed to fit the time period, Smith wanted contemporary music played with his films based on when they were screened, not when they were made. His visual explorations were meant to encompass universal themes that would remain current with each new iteration of music.

[open myth source] – “where the recombining of elements and the interactive process is more important than the product.”

A Bright Matter: Cut-ups - Life Science Library ‘Matter’ 1963 (Final Result) - Zac Odin

“Differing from other music, here soundscape is no longer the background but the foreground as the sound collage drives the experience; sound is now the story that we process and interpret individually and collectively.

A series of segways or glimpses into in the Sonic – Human Interface.” – Willi Paul : [open myth source] myth as soundscape

Pythagoras and his followers saw these correspondences through imaginal means. Mathematical relationships were concrete realities.  Philosophical epiphanies were arrived at through intense meditation, cementing the relationships in their minds.

The sounds and their direct relationship to mathematics were tied through ritual to corresponding emotional states. This, tied with image, creates a mnemonic device for encompassing a wider set of information. Allegorical stories along with music create a dynamic vehicle.

“I think that with music you can really accelerate dramatic moments because of the kind of ineffable shorthand of certain musical conventions, or musical innovations that just make sense, and bypass rational judgment in a way that writing can’t always do, or takes longer to do.” – Eric Lindley, Careful –Oh Light – A Conversation

“Over coffee and liqueurs we would sometimes listen to John Jacob Niles’ recordings. Our favorite was ‘I Wonder As I Wander,’ sung in a clear, high-pitched voice with a quaver and a modality all his own. The metallic clang of his dulcimer never failed to produce ecstasy. He had a voice which summoned memories of Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere. There was something of the Druid in him. Like a psalmist, he intoned his verses in an ethereal chant which the angels carried aloft to the Glory seat. When he sang of Jesus, Mary and Joseph they became living presences. A sweep of the hand and the dulcimer gave forth magical sounds which caused the stars to gleam more brightly, which peopled the hills and meadows with silvery figures and made the brooks to babble like infants. We would sit there long after his voice had faded out, talking of Kentucky where he was born, talking of the Blue Ridge mountains and the folk from Arkansas…” —Henry Miller, Plexus pp. 366-367.

The Royal Portion - Paracharattein to Nomisma

7687. If you dream of a dog and he bites you, you will have good luck – Harry Middleton Hyatt,  Folklore from Adams County Illinois

I decided to test the [open myth souce] idea and used two Willi Paul’s [open myth source] tracks and then layered guitar over them. I slowed down one of the WP tracks & messed with the stereo, Lft/Rt channels to build out the sound a bit.  Fiddle with it in Win Movie Maker and it’s a picture with sound that can be used to accompany the pictures and text in this post created from the elements at hand.

*this post is a collage of quotes from other sources, images from Zac Odin and  Paracharattein to Nomisma, along with text taken from discarded portions of an upcoming Alarm Magazine article on ‘audible color’. Another experiment with the open myth source concept.

Broke Incantation

this ghost descends

Zac Odinn

From the last days of summer…

Zac Óðinn (Words Spoken)

David Metcalfe (Guitars Strummed)

Subtle Sounds

There’s a subtle power to sound, it goes straight to the brain and a skilled musician can motivate visions, emotions and even physical responses in their listeners. Alan Lomax’s book, The Land Where the Blues Began, has a great description of how the old blues players would work the crowd with their songs. By choosing music that fit what they needed, they’d get the audience into a rhythm and watch how they reacted to the music, when the time was right they’d sing lyrics that expressed what they wanted from the crowd, if it was money they’d sing about getting money, if it was food or drink they’d do the same, if they wanted someone to take home after the show, well it was just a matter of choosing the right song.

Speculative Exomusicology

While doing research for an Alarm Magazine article on “Audible Color” I had the opportunity to speak with Professor William Sethares of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Sethares studies acoustical engineering and has spent a number of years looking at how sound is interpreted by the listener.

One of the interesting things to come out of this study is his idea of speculative exomusicology, a thought experiment that looks to recreate music from outside the Earth. This concept helps Sethares  move past traditional boundaries of musical structure and allows him free reign to play with the mathematical underpinnings of tone, harmony and timbre themselves.

Immediately I think of Sun Ra and his Afro-Futurist explorations of Egyptian magic, idealized Africa and the Celestial Spaces. Talking to Sethares was an opportunity to better understand  the ability to build structures and landscapes with sound and to open up new spaces through music.

Landscapes of Sound

Looking at the Swans upcoming album the same can be applied to what Michael Gira has been doing. The vocals seem to drift in this landscape of sound. He looks at sound in a very physical way, and builds up layers of aural expression as one might layer stone on stone to build a wall. If you go back through the Swans catalog you can hear this interesting development of visceral sound experimentation. In his solo work, and his work with The Angels of Light, he was able to really explore the art of song-craft. On My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to Heaven he brings it all together with powerful results.

Jhonn Balance and Peter Christopherson of Coil used their idea of sidereal sounds to build transcelestial landscapes with their music, Medieval polyphony excites  images of harmony and utopian ideals, and singers like Rene Zosso bring alive the Troubadours’ highly visual music. The more I think about it, the more I start seeing the same in most artists who have truly mastered their medium. This is especially true when you look at traditional music from around the world.

Knowledge of sound’s ability to build images in the mind, and create landscapes that one can travel through, seems to only be missing in the lowest forms of pop music. Most serious musicians are adept at utilizing this, spiritual movements have taken advantage of this power to bring glimpses of  theophanic visions to the believer, and national movements have built idealized dreams of their nation-states on songs.

Possibilities

An hour or so on the phone with Professor Sethares and my mind was racing with the possibilities. Even in the visual arts the same mastery of the medium is possible. Austin Osman Spare was able to achieve this effect with his subtle use of color and ephemeral line work.  Talented writers and poets do it with words. Ezra Pound’s poem Sestina Altaforte has a good example of the recognition of this process, with Pound declaring at the beginnig:

En Bertans de Born. Dante Alighieri put this man in hell for that he was a stirrer up of strife. Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug him up again?

Here we have Pound pointing to the power of words to resurrect the dead. The duration of the reanimation would seem dependent on the artists ability to create a lasting work to carry the intention.

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Integrating Sound and Image

Another enlightening exchange that came from the research was an email interview with Bryan Michael of Alka. He discussed the interplay between sound and image, and the process of integrating the two during a performance.

According to Bryan “the idea of both the visual and musical elements being conceived at the same time seems important. The trick is finding someone that can interpret and translate the tones into viewable elements without them being typical screenplay-style interpretations of the emotions evoked.” Having experienced this myself  during the production process and  live exhibits of A Serious Inquiry into the Vulgar Notion of Nature it was very helpful to hear how he tackled the ups and downs of the process.

alka :: i am a wreck live @ GATE in Philadelphia

This combination provides an interesting area of investigation. Sound itself is capable of so much, combined with visual elements of the same caliber and you get something like Stravinsky and Roerich’s presentation of the Rite of Spring. How can we translate this in contemporary terms?

Learning more about Brian’s interest in Gematria and Pythagorean musical ideas also opened up areas that I wasn’t very familiar with. “The idea of reducing words and incantations to their numerical equivalency and plugging the data into sequencers for audible results” is something that he is working with more. It seems like an idea that has a number of applications across the artistic spectrum, and closely tied to the same techniques that allowed the old blues players to be so effective.

Planetshifter Magazine was kind enough to host the full interview with Bryan, so check it out and learn more about Sound and Incantation – Digital Art as Alchemy.

Broke Incantation

And on an end note – here’s my own Broke Incantation, the latest bit of dabbling I’ve done while experimenting with awkward home recordings:

Any word?

It’s very humbling to see  the amount of creativity that exists, flowing through a world that so often seems cold as a coin. I was fortunate enough to speak with Michael Gira  recently for an article I’m writing for Alarm Magazine about the Swans’ new album, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, and in the course of an hour experienced a better understanding of the creative process than I could have previously conceived.

A week or two was spent in preparation for the conversation; I delved deeply into Michael’s previous recordings, tried to gain a sense for where he was coming from with his music and where he was going with his recent efforts. In the process I became overwhelmed by a sense of possibilities and a realization of the potential power behind something as simple as a sustained chord.

Beyond artistry, I saw a man who has mastered the freedom of our hyper-connected age. Running his own label has given him the chance to raise the act of simple home recording into an art form. In order to fund this new Swans album he created a limited edition album, I Am Not Insane,  in hand printed packaging. Here is a veteran of the music industry getting his hands dirty and showing the rest of us how it’s done.

I Am Not Insane was recorded in his office! Imagine if every business owner had the passion to pick up an instrument on their lunch break, or even rip out an acapella tune, and start pressing their own CDs. The drawing at the top of this entry was made with soy sauce and india ink, so even if lunch time didn’t bring out a song there’s still no excuse for not getting busy with some creative endeavors. No need for expensive tools, they give you enough with your take out order to get started.

Zac Odinn’s recent spoken word experiments and his collaboration with Jeremy (mthing), along with my brief conversation with Michael Gira, got me excited enough to start fiddling around with sound myself. While at the grocery store last night I picked up an $8 computer mic, and when I got home threw together a quick little 2 track instrumental improv I’ve titled ‘Any Word?’ in honor of my long time friend, and creative partner, Terry Hahin‘s recent move to the Phillipines.

Hope you enjoy it, and more I hope you go out and grab the opportunities that are all around us to create and bring some light to our confused world…