Making noise music
 

After being enthralled by the SYR stuff and the alternate take of Diamond Sea, I wanted to know just how one goes about making similar noise music. Do you need a thousand different pedals? Is a whammy bar a must? Do you need some kind of percussion behind it all?

Please! Answer my questions if you can.

Scroll down to 'effects': http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/eq/gear.html

Looks like it's a relatively small set-up (by comparison to complete gear monsters like the Edge/ Kevin Shields).

Honestly though, you're better off going down the playing route. A lot of SY's early greatness was due to not having much in the way of effects and using physical mods rather than falling back on pedals. A pedal isn't a shortcut to creativity.

Though I say that, there's good in most techniques - Keith Rowe, Kevin Drumm, My Cat is an Alien - all worth checking out (this is, obviously, a massively incomplete list).

Skinny Puppy tried to make a noise album. they pussy'd out.

it takes testicles the size of grapefruit to attempt the feat. testicles that Skinny Puppy were lacking.

if only they had one of those pc komputer widgets. that would have helped.

Depends on what kind of noise you're supose to do.

Lots of pedals is cool. Noise thru computer is gay but cool sometimes.

woof.

I'd say before you start making noise get a grasp of various techniques in composition. They don't have to be particularly complex ones, but a better undertstanding of making music, rather than making noise, will potentially work to your advantage if you intend to progress. You can make noise in so many ways; it really is that easy. Your best friend is a good recorder, so you can capture the majority of enviromental sounds around you, which you can then manipulate into ''controlled'' freakouts. Using a computer is perfectly fine, but if you want to stand out from the crowd you'll need to start working on your own preferences in how things should sound, rather than just emulate what's been done by others. In other words, do make noise but make it with a musical mind/soul, rather than just channeling some aggression. That will naturally come out if it's meant to be there.

One good method of practice to decide if pedals are fitting into what you do is to familiarise yourself with the different sounds that various objects make when you hit them with your hands or with other objects. That gives you an idea of how much you can get out of them before you resort to the help of alien (figure of speech here, since pedals are often used in banal and unimaginative ways) sounds.

^ The (very) easy route.

there are no fuckign rules and anyone who tells you 'how' to make noise music is clueless. if you want to make noise music 'like' someone that is just stupid. You need carve out a distinct niche otherwise you're no better than Live ripping off Pearl Jam, and probably even less interesting. Or, of course, just do what you like. Noise is not sustainable, from my experience, and usually ends in madness, of which I offer myself as proof. NOISE IS ABOUT FREEDOM NOT LIMITS.
if you like it, do it. if you don't like it but do it anyway, whats the point?

After 25 years I'm finally finding the totalizing bass sound I've always wanted, I plan to get a Boss RC3 soon and then I can play with myself forever, although I would like to work with a heavy free guitarist or two again.

Try explaining this to all the noisemakers who sound the same. And like shit.

W/ noise, it's all about being creative. Trying to come up with new sounds in unconventional ways, or at least attempting (I say "attempting" because in 2011 it can seem impossible sometimes) new approaches to more traditional instruments. Weird oddball tunings/strumming patterns/etc. Pedals are not necessary even though they can make creating noise easier or make one sound more experienced than they actually are (in other words, I enjoy pedals but feel people hide behind them sometimes. It's easy to make something sound interesting with pedals). Whammy bars can be fun and useful but get old fast. Mine has spent most of the four years I've owned my guitar in the guitar case. Come up with an idea, a sound, and figure out how to obtain it. Or just use what ya'v got while saving/investing in new stuff (yes, this can mean pedals) and experiment until ya find something you like. The music of others, in my opinion, should be used more so as a guide to ideas than a "how to", at least when it comes to noise. noise is based on improvisation. And despite what some will say, learning to play an instrument in traditional ways/tunings can pave way for new exciting ideas even when it comes to noise. First Sonic EP had some hella noisy moments, and from what I understand they used standard tuning on that one.

Listen to music you normally wouldn't have much interest in.
Read books above yr ability level.
Get sad/get angry/get happy...
And just explain it via yr guitar however you know how.

There are no rules to noise, as someone else has said. If there must be rules, make yr own.

Good point. If you think that to make weird sounds you necessarily have to use unorthodox tunings doesn't always mean your music will sound weird to certain ears. I often feel that what made SY special isn't so much their tunings, but how they approached their instruments as performers, down to the way they handled them while playing. Besides, I am not a fan of weirdness at all cost because too often I perceive that attitude as trying too hard but not trying hard enough.

don't try and emulate anyone else. if you use a guitar for god sakes use it creatively.

In practise, the above is a tautology. And if I thought you'd read it, I'd explain why.

Agreed. Weird for the sake of weird is often boring.

i'd say just listen to the sounds you're making.. take your cues from the sound...

the ultimate error is stop listening - often happens to some...

best advice i've ever seen during the history of this board.

I understand tautology, no need to be douchey.

Let me say it another way.

If you aren't trying to innovate new sounds, why the fuck are you bothering?

firstly, you have to have noise music in your heart bleeding into your head and daily reality before you can even begin to start to try to capture it with your instruments. Its not a manner of tuning, or tone, or set up, or wiring, or guitar selection, or effects chain, or any such matters. If you have noise music in your head, you can make it with nothing, the way Bach and Beethoven composed symphonies by notation without even having to play the instruments out.

Once you realize you have this in your head, if you have a bit of natural talent, you will find it sublimely coming out of your instrument. when natural harmonics or feedback arises, you will play with it and ride the resonance like a surfer rides a wave. You may discover certain tricks, such as ways to manipulate the wiring to get certain sounds, or to tap the neck to get feedback, or certain knob settings, various effects chains etc etc..

But the truth, is these will only accentuate what is already in your head.

From my perspective, I say start simple. Turn the volume down and the gain up on your amp, plug in a guitar and play around with the introductionary open tuning, (the drop D) and see what comes out. A simple effects chain to play with this is a delay pedal. From there, let the guitar take you on an adventure. The tricks of the trade to get noise, these only come from experience so keep literally playing around with your guitar, and you will stumble into the right things. Also, smoke some weed, it helps.

this thread has inspired my bowels to make noise music.
Let them take me to an adventure.

made this music

http://www.sendspace.com/file/e7pf00


what you think woof woof

im not too crazy about this pressure that if something isnt new than it isnt worth a damn. not everything has to be innovative to be good. sometimes people should focus a lot more of their efforts in doing something thats good rather than just something that is innovative.

i also disagree with you. even if the music you are making is simple, you should still work for it. i dont think that the point of noise is to just make noise, but to rather achieve certain sounds that sound noisy, if that makes any sense.
i would say that getting to know your instrument and its capabilities is a good way to start rather than just bashing it. that is not to say that you should be technically good, but i do think that it is worth it to practice different things, get to know what creates certain sounds. for instance, that playing a minor second (or major seventh) or a tritone will give you the most dissonant sounds on guitar. or finding out where on your guitar the overtones are the most sustained and create feedback the quickest.

dont want to be a douche, but i will be one anyways. that is not true about beethoven, and i dont think about bach either. beethoven would use an entire notebook in order to figure out just one theme. he would constantly change rewrite and edit his themes. mozart, on the other hand, would compose more or less straight from head to paper.

Cool thread, here's a few tracks from a tape I'm self-releasing soon:

http://www.mediafire.com/?eb324gabubihtcc

Tell me what you think

then you're just rehashing someone else's ideas, no? It is my understanding we're talking about experimental music here, not rocknroll or other structured music.

Ultimately, though, one should do what they like and fuck what anyone else thinks. IN 50 years after you're dead someone will recognize it and make a cottage industry out of it, e.g. Angus MacLise.

Everyone rehashes someone else's ideas. Very, very few people innovate. That doesn't make their 'experiments' bad, it just usually means they're not experiments in the broadest sense. The people I know who make the best music are also the people who've given up on making 'crazy new sounds' or 'experimental' things. I picked up Xenakis' Formalized Music again today, and I was struck by how little interest he has in experimentation for the sake of it, and it just interested in reflecting his non-musical interests in his music (though he seems to have a notion of a gestalt art).

Whether Xenakis was or wasn't the most innovative composer of the 20th-century is less important than the success of his work, and the work he put into developing an aesthetic - the real iconoclasts, if there are any, are working on a singular aesthetic rather than trying to break with convention.

Also, Herr fugazifan is cock on about the Beethoven/ Bach thing. Beethoven wasn't 'deaf' until the 9th, and even then there's a big debate over the extent of his deafness.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik used to say the same thing in interviews at the time they put out ''Flaunt It. That's how most people are deluded and that's also how old I am. Cliches Cliches.

Also, how someone did make make a cottage industry out of Angus MacLise?

This thread may as well lead us into wondering why people assume VU thought they were making avantgarde music. Read, pay attention and do listen. They were into mixing different musical backgrounds and spread equality amongst people. Not necessarily in a muscial way either, just relaxing attitudes towards one another. That's what it should be like to be young and enthusiastic. Not overemphasizing this jaded bullshit all the time.

yeah, just make music, less talk more action

good stuff like it

The past few years have seen a bunch of limited releases and publications sold at high prices as well as art shows recently, etc. $30 or $40 for a single record. That's what I mean.

I can't think of anything more useless than being in a noise cover band. Anyway, noise is oldies. in 1975 when I was a kid, they referred to the 50's music as oldies, and since noise has been around since at least the 70's, i would assert the same thing.

Noise is oldies music.

I don't think there can be a new radical form of music until we get new neural interfaces, a la John Shirley's 'bone music'.

My advice is to not make noise.

My advice is to shit in a cup.

Don't get me wong, and you may a well drop the antagonistic music forum attitude for the time being, but you seem to confuse noise with avant-garde. Personally, I don't perceive the two as being the same thing because noise as your sole style of choice gives you way too much of an opportunity to let things happen by chance outside of your own control, without much of a planned strategy or command on making a challenging point you can use over and over to prove how valid it is. Effective avant-garde forms of music are pre-meditated with the precision of a blood-thirsty army, and when noise is used, it's used as a tool, not a genre of music as such. I think Sonic Youth are the perfect example. To me they used the ''uneasy element'' in their music to filter uncommon ideas and ways of making music through fairly straightforward playing. That's quite the achievement, as far as I am concerned. And they aren't an avant-garde band AT ALL.

this.
listen to this.