Why is it that the traditional method of studio recording often incorporates the use of artificial echo devices and reverberation, while attempting to cut out the natural acoustics of the space? Most musicians and recording engineers want complete control of the sound for recording and so they attempt to make the sound of a room void. However, musicians like experimental artist Ryan Gregory Tallman acknowledge that the architecture of a room: the materials, shape, and distances in a space have inherent sound qualities that add character and depth, and can actually help create the music.
“Noise” music is a tricky subject—a slippery slope, as it were. Ever since Luigi Russolo published his manifesto, The Art of Noises*, in 1913, “noise” has been a bit of a moving target. The primary reason for the existence, and subsequent perpetuation, of “noise” music is subversion; a subversive reaction to “tonal” music that noise artists, in any context, are resisting. However, this is when the problem of “noise” music rears its ugly head. Once something is widely accepted as “noise,” (especially within the academy) there will, inevitably, be artists who will create “noise” against what was previously considered subversive “noise” music; thus, the “moving target” syndrome.” Defining “noise” is antithetical to the actual philosophy of it. In a nutshell, “noise” must defy definitions and classifications in order to be true “noise.” Or something like that . . .
The traditional method of studio recording often incorporates the use of artificial electronic echo devices and reverberation. When did you decide you wanted to start emphasizing the sound of the actual rooms and spaces in which you were performing?
This is a pretty BIG question; one that I wrote my Master’s thesis attempting to answer. So, this will be a relatively short response. Ever since I started playing music (age 6, violin), I have been absolutely fascinated with the way sound is colored by the different spaces in which these sounds are realized. I began to notice this phenomenon when the music I was playing in primary school ensembles sounded drastically different in the “dry,” cramped practice rooms than it did in the big, open sound of the theatre for performances. Sound just seemed much more alive and 3-dimentional in acoustically resonant places. Compositionally, I started using resonant spaces as instruments themselves when I was offered to write a piece for a 16,000 gallon wine fermentation tank in 2005. I’ve rarely looked back since.
Do you consider yourself a noise musician?
No, I don’t.
In layman’s terms would you say you’re a noise musician?
No, because even on this last tour everything I was doing was pretty tonal. Not necessarily tonally-centered but if you go by the dictionary’s definition of noise, where it’s an unpitched sound, that’s basically what noise is: an un-pitched sound. So I guess I employ frequencies as much as I do noise. I was actually talking to John Krausbauer (a fellow musician Tallman recently toured with), on the car ride, about this. We were talking about noise musicians and how most of it is just a lot of distortion and if you peel away the distortion it is really harmonic, and I like harmonics. Harmonics are good. I’m not trying to be subversive.
On this last tour I was using sine waves, frequencies that would resonate the particular rooms that I was in. And I also did stuff with a singing bowl as well. If I had more time in each space, there’s an actual equation where you can find the room’s resonance, you measure the length and width by height, and in there you have all the possible frequencies. So for this thing I had to do it by ear, so my soundcheck was basically me tuning the room. I have 32 frequencies that I’m working with…
They are all sine waves?
Yeah. And from there I could see which ones were the closest and then I would tune the SuperCollider patch (a software sound generator) to that. And then the ones that I got close to I would have another sine wave as a beating oscillator. So it would interfere with that and create binaurals and they would cancel each other out and create psycho-acoustic effects.
Have you pretty much continued that since you were at Mills College?
I’ve definitely been aware of it since I did my thesis. That was pretty much the basis of my thesis—my written thesis and my performance thesis. It has made me so much more aware of the spaces. Many people go into a space and just turn on their amplifier or play their trombone or play their drum kit as if they were practicing in a practice room. And for me, I can’t forget what I taught myself, or what I’ve learned.
Most musicians have a sound engineer and they know very little about that end of it but you seem to have one foot in each position, you are doing both things. Your performance is half sound engineering.
Kind of, yeah. I think the thing I really like is playing the room. The room becomes part of the signal chain. And if you have that option why not utilize it, exploit it.
Do you have to adjust the sound when it is full of people?
Yeah and that’s the thing about Supercollider, you can adjust things on the fly. I would say it’s almost straddling the line between sound art and performance art. Not performance art like Laurie Anderson performance art but…
Pushing the boundaries of what people expect from a performance?
Right. I always have this idea in my head that the sounds that I create are aural sculptures and then to move those frequencies around makes it almost 3D. So if you use the analogy of the sculpture it’s almost like the sculpture is moving according to the changing light in a museum or something like that.
It’s very much based in experience and being present at the performance.
Do you attempt to capture that when you record at home?
That’s the thing, they are two completely different worlds and the way that I perform and record as of late has pushed those worlds even further apart. Bands will go into the studio and record and then go out and play and it’s the same motions, using the same muscle memories or close to those things. It’s not really a conscious thing that I did (but) you can’t really present someone the experience of these huge monolithic pulsing sine waves with the room exponentially reinforcing them. That’s so hard to capture on a recording that I wouldn’t even attempt to do something like that.
So when you are recording at home do you use microphones or do you record directly from the machines?
It just depends on what I’m trying to capture, I guess.
When you were touring was it all Supercollider putting out sine waves?
It was SuperCollider. I actually used Berna on a few shows. The middle shows I used Berna but my computer is getting so old that it started doing some digital clicks, so I had to… it’s those stupid graphic interfaces. That’s what I like about SuperCollider, you don’t have to have a GUI if you don’t want that sucks up all your RAM. You don’t really need a realistic looking knob with a shadow and something that looks like brushed steel – that just takes up so much processing power.
That’s why you like SuperCollider?
Yeah, it’s just the most efficient program. It’s just numbers.
Was it pretty much clean sine waves you were playing? No distortion or clipping?
No. If any distortion happened it happened very quickly and then I would turn the gain down, because then you’re adding extra harmonics that weren’t intended in the first place.
What type of venues were you playing?
They were mostly art gallery-type venues. They were pretty much gallery spaces. The neatest one was called Disjecta in Portland. It was an old bowling alley that they have converted into a community art gallery. That was really neat.
What was the sound like?
It was intense.
It’s very wide and spread out but the ceilings are low, right?
The ceilings are high. The building used to be a bowling alley but they’ve done construction on it, it looks like an art gallery now. The main room, where I was playing, was concrete floor, walls on either side and high ceilings. So, that was a really interesting harmonic environment to be in. My close friend Mike Burnett actually came up to me after the show and was talking to me about how he was hearing a third tone in his ear. This is something Maryanne Amacher has talked about, she calls it a third ear - it’s when frequencies hit a certain point and they start doing weird phasing things with each other. Especially in stereo in a live setting, you get these binaurals and they create difference tones. So if I’m just putting out two sine waves, one left, one right, let’s say one is 100hz and the second one is 223hz, there is going to be this beating pattern that happens and all of a sudden in the center there is going to be this tone and it’s the difference between those two frequencies. It’s weird and magical and that’s why I don’t get sick of doing it. Even though the performances are these long extended explorations of the space, anytime I’m in a space it’s going to be different. Or let’s say I play Disjecta four times a year, the temperature… everything about the integrity of the building is going to shift a little bit. The speakers are going to be in a different physical state, so I could play the same place and still have an interesting time playing with frequencies and making these magical things happen. (Laughs) That just sounded gross. But it’s explainable, it’s scientific, it’s numbers.
There is an important element in what you do that is responding to chance occurrence.
Since there are a lot of things open to chance, that opens the improvisation door wide open. With that I use my listening skills as much as I use my playing skills. So it’s a lot of listening too. It is a strange thing performing solo and I was using my improv chops to their fullest extent because it’s almost as if I’m performing with a ghost. I’ll hit a frequency and something strange will happen, I’ll have to immediately be on and decide “Is this what I want? Is this tone going to provide the type of experience that I want to articulate?” And it has to be a millisecond type response; and if it’s not, then I can bring in another one to offset or enhance the experience, whatever I’m trying to go for at the time. It’s a really hard thing to articulate because it happens so fast. At this point now it’s just a knee-jerk reaction that I have.
You’re not thinking about it, you’re just doing it.
It just happens. Going through all those improv classes in grad school, it connected the synapses in my brain in a different way to think about sound in a different way. And I say sound, I think, because it’s really hard for me to say “music,” because there’s so much baggage that is in that when you say “I’m a musician.” There are a lot of assumptions and connotations that come along with that. Like, if I said I was a musician and I got up there and I just started banging… making literal noise, people would tell me that’s not music. A lot of people have told me what I do is not music, including my grandfather so that’s why I refer to it as sound. I’m just making sound or organized sound.
Most of your pieces are drone pieces, right?
They’re drone based, yeah.
So why have you left out rhythm?
I don’t think I have left out rhythm if you listen closely enough. There is rhythm that happens within the standing binaural sine waves, the beating tones that happen. I feel that at this point in my life, I’m not talking about the work that I’ve done in the past I’m talking about the work that I’m continuing right now, that anything traditionally rhythmic is far too constraining and doesn’t have anything to do with the effects that I’m trying to achieve. In fact I think it would probably take away from that. Because exploring the space is just one thing, but kind of lifting people off the ground, as it were, is another. And traditional rhythm with percussion instruments, let’s say, grounds the music, really grounds it. And I’m not saying my music is not grounded; it is literally shaking the ground but for me it gives me more space to think. It gives me more space to explore without being confined in any time signature. And more importantly it gives the audience something to explore around in their own head and if there were any kind of rhythmic element it would be a distraction to their imagination. It’s not drone based just for the sake of it, it has to be, I think. And I like taking tiny musical moments and stretching them out as far as they possibly can go. That’s just endlessly fascinating to me. Even when I think about rock-based music, I like the idea of stretching out chords as long as they possibly can go… and feedback.
It seems with rhythm there is an even greater expectation to be tied to tradition, because anytime you step outside a 4/4 time signature it sounds a bit gimmicky.
If you’re talking about rock music, yeah, I think it can lead to gross aspects of prog-rock or something like that.
Or tribalism in European culture, it seems really put-on.
Yeah.
Trying to borrow from African rhythm as an American or European, it seems fake.
I do feel like my music is really primal; the sounds that I create are really primal. It is just sine waves and there’s no harmonics it’s just the fundamental tone. A good performance, for me, and the reason I employ drones is that at high sound pressure levels it starts to become a communal experience. It’s no longer the guy or the band up there and the audience over there. We are all . . . I guess I’m kind of leading a meditation or an imagination exercise. When it goes right I can almost feel a connection to the rest of the people there because they literally become part of my instrument. If they weren’t there I’d make different choices, not just because of them being sentient beings but the fact that they are sound baffles. So it’s like I’m playing the bodies of people as well. It’s neat to me. It’s another side of music that I’ve become really fascinated with. That’s what music should be, right? It should be a communal experience. And for me, that’s the way that I’ve found for it to be a communal experience. Because I’m not writing songs that people are singing along with or something like that. I’m not writing pop songs; that would be another communal experience. But this is a physical communal experience that everyone’s feeling, because the speakers are part of the instrument, the room is part of the . . . everything in the chain is completely essential to the performance.
http://www.ryangregorytallman.com/
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