Thread for noise discussion

Noise. harsh noise. guitar noise. metal noise. maybe you like the idea of different noise textures. Screechy synths and heavily amplified contact mics are also welcome. Generally stuff that makes an overly loud racket.

Maybe post ideas for noise tracks, get feedback, or just talk about it. I just feel the need to elaborate on what this thread is about. Not sure to put this in the studio or music scene chat, i want it to be a bit of both.

Haven’t seen a thread here that’s exclusively for any and all noise talk, not just for mastering. I’ll probably be the only one posting here actively, but at least it keeps me on this forum.

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Hell yeah.

I used to be utterly obsessed with harsh noise, industrial, harsh noise wall, etc. Unfortinately I’ve sort of lost my taste for most of it over the years, but there’s still some great stuff out there ranging from drone to musique concrete and everything in between that I still love.

I’m on mobile so I’ll post some jams later, but awesome thread! I think we had one on the old forum, but honestly I can’t remember shit from my drunk posting days. Maybe someone else can remember for me :wink:

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I might have a thing for noise:

I had an acoustic guitar preamp/piezo laying around to use vs a piezo disc, so it basically came with a 1/4" output ready to go, too. And the EQ is actually useful, too.

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“Every single sound is interesting.” - John Cage

At San Francisco State when I would be rehearsing piano in their tiny little practice studios, the fire alarms would occasionally go off (tests, drills, etc.) And they were loud, obnoxious, NOIIIISY fuckers – this type of alarm was designed to send a shockwave from your ears down to the base of your spine. straight up sonic warfare shit. normal people (aka not me) would be like “get me the fuck away from this shit” upon hearing it. its peak was 3000 hz (with subharmonics), at about the highest legal level (about 110 dBA), at 24V DC which is basically meant for industrial jet hangars not colleges haha. Our piano studios sat in the middle of the building with a big hallway and the actual alarm hung from the ceiling smack-dab in the middle. I always thought it so ironic that they decided to install a system so detrimental to the human ear after long exposure right in the middle of the music department’s practice quarters :laughing:

If we were warned beforehand by school admins that the alarm would be going off that day, the few students that cared about their education (many didn’t — entitled little shits) would hate to vacate a practice space graced with a piano because

    1. the rooms were first come first serve.

    2. if you left your practice room, there’s always a person reading outside in the hall waiting for you to leave

    3. composition majors with a focus on piano (aka me) did not have first dibs to the nice grand pianos in the larger rooms like the piano majors did.

    4. i had way too much music to learn and compose to be giving up my practice room to a singer who wanted to practice their runs or scales…. because of a stupid fuckin alarm?! heck no, techno!

Anyway, as this alarm be blaring, I realized the gradual shift of experience of the sound from causing panic (adrenaline rush) to becoming actual sound material. I’d use its pitch as a fundamental, playing piano and sometimes singing around it, harmonizing different blends of chords, syncing with the temporal structure that revealed itself in the prolonged tremelo-less pitch. What I mean is that after listening to a pitch of grating noise that loud for that long, our brains begin to actually sense a rhythm of crests and troughs of the amplitude in the waveforms which normally is filtered out by our collective linear sense of time. Once the cortisone wears off and the sound is still going, it causes time dilation and everything slows down.

This is a long way to say that shrill noise expressed in “harsh walls of sounds” (standing near a jet plane taking off, being in a room full of crying babies, going to a Seattle Seahawks game etc.) actually have an incredible effect once we allow the “annoyingness” of it to wear off and let it become a part of our existence – it becomes musical in a way that harmonic or beat-driven music can never really do.

(of course, for your ear’s health, you can’t do that shit for too long or you’ll go deaf eventually).

this sort of “melding into the noise” is something I’ve done naturally my whole life. loud noise rarely gets to me, and eventually it shifts into sound material in my brain. it even will make start tripping or hallucinating sometimes like i’m on mushrooms. of course, i can occasionally be startled, or jumpy when a noise surprises me, but to me, anything can be musical if you allow yourself to overcome your biological response and acquiesce in it.

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interesting story, and mine is not as long but still weird. over a year ago a guy broke my foot over a basketball game (basically, it was a trash can alternative in gym). so eventually I needed an MRI to scan my foot. I dont think I’ll forget it. the machine made all sounds of these strange, loud noises that resonated with me. It would blare from anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes at a time. It was meditative listening to the various drones that it would emit. of course I got to thinking “I would listen to this outside of an MRI scan”, yet since the room is completely sealed for radiation’s sake it was hard to find anything about it afterwards, other than why the machines made noise. its a bit hard to explain since it was probably 8 or 9 months ago.

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my favorite type of harsh noise is when they bitcrush it to hell and maybe add some junk noise (just amped up contact mics attached to junk metal. i love it, of course.). I got a few go-to’s for when i’m in the mood.

Macronympha - Intensive Care

very heavy and crushing harsh noise. one of my favorites.

Bloated Data - The Aesthetic of Death

dissonant and unnerving harsh noise with strange sound collage uses.

Scald Hymn - Pangs of Wet Ash

some solid no nonsense harsh noise with some junk noise sprinkled in. feels very aggressive at it’s peak.

i’ve also been fascinated with gorenoise (big surprise since i made a noise track heavily inspired by it). I find it so strange that music so aggressive and over the top can become a surge of manic and unhinged noise. a lot of these bands are inspired by late Last Days of Humanity, and thats not bad. Anal Birth is a project that gets swept under the rug, even though the dude behind it single handy created gorenoise, even if its a version that few are inspired by.

also, maybe i’ll post my humble noise setup here sometime. if I was able to hook up more pedals it would be a lot more elaborate.

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Unique textures really do seal the deal; when I was a lot younger, I’d listen to the most harsh, punishing shit out there and I’m really glad I didn’t develop some form of tinnitus in the process (aside from that, “eeeeeee” sound I always hear; maybe that’s also tinnitus). Some of it can still be pretty cool, but I find the similarities and non-individuality of HNW to be a little depressing and low-effort, even if I really dig the way it sounds. That’s… errr, just my autism probably.

Nowadays, I really like the delicate balance of dynamics and creeping drone / noise crossovers, or things that just have some kind of alluring novelty that I can’t explain, like these:


(4 views; 1 view - yep, I’m all alone on an island now :slight_smile: )

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That’s me to a tee. The majority of stuff I listen to wouldn’t be considered music by most of the world, but the whole power electronics a-boy-and-his-distortion-pedal blast of continuous high frequency noise doesn’t do much for me and gets boring quick. I need an artist to bring something else to the table alongside the racket (and there are plenty of artists that do so).

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if i cared about if the stuff was high effort or not i would not be listening to noise. i like it if it has cool sound textures, has “interesting moments” (changes in feedback, samples, brutal moments, ect). basically if it’s creative i’ll like it. or if it’s a genre blend, since harsh noise usually never goes outside of it’s target audience.

I at least know that the Kansai noise scene had a very hardcore type of view about noise, that it needs to be pure or it’s not noise or some nonsense. considering the quality that came out of there, I give it a pass. but not for north american releases. they gotta do something more than ape what’s already out there.

one thing that is never said enough when it comes to harsh noise is listen responsibly. low volumes are a lot better than losing your hearing to ear piercing feedback. i’m careful about volume levels but at times venues still have a way of slowly dwindling my hearing (those fucking ear plugs always fall out in the pit). the best harsh noise doesn’t need loud volumes to catch your attention. i’m sure i have a slight form of tinnitus already but its best to at least try. it pops up sometimes.

also here’s my humble noise setup. wish I had more adapters for my 3 other pedals, but this gets the job done.

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Sarah Belle Reid just released

I think i might get the vinyl

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Thanks for the heads up! This album sounds totally nuts, from the sonic content to how she went about it. The QUARK stuff is super interesting and I don’t fully understand it, but looks like a system to play both stereo and quadraphonic depending on the device, maybe?

I don’t think there’s vinyl, it’s how they’re packaging the accompanying zine. From the bandcamp description:

haha whoops. I was looking at it on my phone at the same time as doing other things, and got excited. Didn’t read it properly.

As a trumpet player and electronic producer, myself, Sarah is pretty inspiring!

EDIT: Just listened through the whole album in Dolby Atmos. It is really nuts. It gets exceptionally good around halfway. Worth the 10 bucks