I often wonder why I enjoy free-jazz, something I consider to be the most intense form of music/recorded sound.

I actually have used that one before.

I always admired people who strived to get different sounds and feedback out of thier guitars (before I got into SY it was Tom Morello of RATM and Matt Bellamy of Muse for me). I always tried to find a band that did loads of feedback (like, nearly entire songs of it) but never thought I would ever find one because no one would ever listen to it. But then my Dad played me Sonic Nurse in the car... the rest, as they say, is history.

Because at its best it becomes as cathartic and liberating as the best rock music can be. It's when you get that feeling that a heavy weight has been lifted off your shoulders.* It's also another form of music with its ups and downs.

* It could be said for all good music, really.

Noise and drone really appeal to me a lot I cant place as to why but it sooths somethign within me . I guess its just pwersonal taste and thats difficult to explain.

why do i like noise? why am i so special?

different individuals have differnet tastes.

Noise is often thought of in terms of a release, of letting go. And yet, at its most vital I think it often holds back. Sarramkrop once mentioned something similar to this in another thread and I remember it ringing particularly true. I always think of the first two thirds of Death Valley 69 as providing a perfect example of this idea. It sounds like a sustained build up of pressure and is, if anything, slightly pointless once that pressure is finally released during its climactic final third. Mars are another band that I always think of in this way: holding back, using noise as an (in)expression of containment rather than expulsion.

When people put me into the situation described earlier, it is rather difficult for me as I am aware that there is much more... severe noise (I suppose) out there that I really don't care for. I always attempt to consider music in terms of painting and in this instance I consider dissonance to be merely different shades of color. Perhaps the post-modern "everything is beautiful" rhetoric is to blame but I stand by it. Using noise to accent a melody, to shake the listener in such a way to introduce them to a melody that was there are along is, in my opinion, beautiful. Would looking out onto the day first thing in the morning be as amazing without the first rays paining your eyes?

Now I'm starting to think about Heidegger's attunements but I'll spare whomever is reading and myself. But isn't it strange that the most profound uses of noise reminds us (well, at least myself) of the most profound experiences/emotions?

I suppose another answer to the question is: "Some people dismiss the fire because they were burned. I'm willing to sit back at a warm distance and watch it flicker. It seems as though I'm always edging closer to the flame.

I was talking about Heidegger in the context of art just last night, strangely enough. You must be a prick too!

Personally, my take on it is that 'noise' is always a bit of a mis-nomer. The general linguistic notion is that 'noise' is opposed to 'music', whereas in terms of strict musico-linguistic terms, 'noise' means 'that which falls outside of the notated musical spectrum' (I use very broad terms). Outside of India and bits of Africa, percussion is rarely used for its tonal value, and as such is considered noise; within a very strict (and retarded) Western art-music sense, anything falling outside of notation is noise; this would include Townsend's feedback as much as it would Whitehouse.

I personally hold no stock with the 'liberation' narrative applied to noise; being slightly more liberal in my desire to use adjectives, I think noise is co-extensive with the narrative of musique concréte or, more benignly, post-60s production, both of which seek to impress upon the listener (in the recording-as-artefact era) qualias adjunct to 'tonal' bases for description - viz, that noise, concréte and Pet Sounds/ Sgt Peppers all re-affirm the importance of timbre and volume dynamics to recorded sound.

'Noise-icians' often attempt to claim this is antithetical to tonal music, but for my money there's often a restricted tonal basis, or a (simulucrum-)chaotic tonal sense - the emphasis on certain tone groups, or tone clusters, which are often neglected by conventionally tonal music doesn't mean that the tonal-content is elided entirely - the truth is that it takes a backseat in favour of volume dynamics, timbre and other qualia 'neglected' until John Cage (although we shouldn't ignore Schoenberg, Stockhausen and especially Xenakis [etc] here).

And, for what it's worth, I think Penderecki, Wagner, Xenakis and the litany of musique concréte artists, coming from the academy, are infinitely more capable of fulfilling one of noise's alleged purposes of unsettling the listener.

I could write more, but I'm probably boring the arse off of anyone who's got even this far.

noise helps me stay regular

thats what i ws ging to say, that noise for musical theorists is simply that which cant be notaded. but that was proven wrong when somebody notaded metal machine music:cool:
and btw the end of schizophrenia is in no way noise.

a funky story;

december 2001, chuck schuldiner is dead and i am mourning his passing with my cousin in a far a way town. his idol was kurt cobain so to "cheer me up" he thought to put up KURT & COURTNEY, the documovie, cuz he knew i always fell in love with conspiracy theories and also to show me that also his hero had died.

the version he had was taken from a tv broadcast which had a series of 90ies vids attached to it at the end of K&C.... so we ranged from the mandatory SMELLS LIKE TEEN vid to some SMASHING PUMPKINS tune... the videos didn't have any kind of info on them.

and then a band with a girl on bass popped out of nowhere, these guys playing at a party ...and scenes of a dead guy? in the lawn? what the fuck is that?

we strived to find the band's name to no avail, and the net seemed to point out to the fact that the band was most prolly SONIC YOUTH. which we thought it was impossible - "this vid is from 92, it can't be these guys, they look like fucking 14 years old in there... it would mean they were in their 30ies at the period... impossible".

right on, it was 100% but we couldn't find out.
and i HATED IT with a passion!
i could not believe that my cousin liked it!!!

so he started looping the tape for around 40 times per day. the same song, again and again.
we still weren't sure about who the guys in the vid were. and that song was bugging me big time.

at the end of the week i came back to my town, went shopping and found a DIRTY cd for 7 euros.

bought it, came back home, played it.
100%.

BANG!

since then....

i was hooked.

not to mention that 5 months later SY played in my fucking island, in my fucking town.

B-BANG!
i was hooked forever.



























so i guess it might take some time for each of use to tune into noise and make it sound good for ourselves.

yeah, aural appretiation is about getting used to sounds. if you hrear a band enough you can get used to them even if you dont like them and eventually ut will sound familiar and thus good

I like noise because... wait I hardly listen to noise.

you should create a why do i like pop thread. i like your madonna picture.

No, because I don't like much pop either.

Also, I consider all music pop.

If you are asking what it seems like you are asking, and it seems like you are, then do you mean to say: What makes these songs that people have put a lot of heart and soul into (and let's face it, Chad Kroeger (sp?) probably does work hard on his songs, I doubt he could just pop them out one after another, otherwise he would) sound like crap to a lot of us, when songs that seemingly are just guys or girls having fun with their instruments, touching different wires together to see what noise they make, and being suprised by the end result just as much as we are sound great? Is it just the nature of the genesis of said music? Do we simply prefer knowing that the music was born of experimentation and improvisation, or is there more to it than that?

I get asked this a LOT, and I always say
I see/hear no difference between a clean A note ringing from a piano, or a guitar string and a rough E### modulating to F flat played by feedback or distorted signal of some kind

to me it is all tools for making music.