View Single Post
  #14   Report Post  
Paul Stamler
 
Posts: n/a
Default

I think one of the things you'll find, investigating these real-world
sounds, is that most of them differ drastically from the sound made by most
musical instruments in that they are inharmonic; in other words, musical
instruments produce sound consisting mostly of a fundamental and harmonics,
at integer multiples of the fundamental frequency. Real-world noises, to a
great extent, have mixtures of frequencies that aren't integer multiples of
one another.

The implication of that, of course, is that in trying to score instruments
to sound like real-world noises, you'll have to suppress their natural
tendency to play with integer-multiple harmonic series. In other words,
you'll need to force them to stop behaving like musical instruments. Thus,
for example, the suggestion of the light-pressure bow producing extraneous,
"non-musical" sounds in the Schickele recording. Contemporary composers have
been doing things like this for a while, with varying degrees of success --
I think back to the string snaps in Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion
and Celesta, in effect making the fiddles into percussion instruments.

Interesting project, and quite a challenge.

Peace,
Paul