Portland State University

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University Honors Theses University Honors College

6-16-2021

Noise as Music: Effects of Physical and Digital Noise

in One’s Life
Juliana Bigelow
Portland State University

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Recommended Citation
Bigelow, Juliana, "Noise as Music: Effects of Physical and Digital Noise in One’s Life" (2021). University
Honors Theses. Paper 1069.
https://doi.org/10.15760/honors.1095

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 Noise as Music: Effects of Physical and Digital Noise in One’s Life

by

Juliana Bigelow

An undergraduate honors thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of Science

in

University Honors

and

Sonic Arts and Music Production

Thesis Adviser

Anwyn Willette, M.M.

Portland State University

2021
 2

Introduction

This thesis follows the development of five short sonic compositions created from

field recordings taken of my various environments between June 2020 and March 2021

during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic is not the focus of the project, it had a

significant impact on the result, as when life changes so do the noises and sounds present

within it. This paper will detail the literature which informed its creation, describe the

creative process, and seek to provide an answer to the question: how has the sound in the

spaces surrounding me, both physical and digital, influenced my worldview and

relationships?

Sound is something to be thought about critically. It is not just a part of our world,

but it helps define it. The sounds I hear in my physical settings and my digital world are

instruments. They have been alongside me as I have formed and let go of deep connections,

offering insight into how I interact with my environments. I am not alone in this, as each

person has a unique relationship with sound. These compositions explore how sounds have

impacted my and other people’s lives. They also encourage others to think about the noises

in their own life, and how noise and music are not as unrelated as many people may think.

Sound is expansive and can push people to understand how noises may play a meaningful

role in their environments. Additionally, critical thought about sound can and should push

meaningful experiences with music and sonic environments outside of academic discourse

into the mainstream.

 3

Background

Most people in the western world view music as a delicately crafted collection of

notes, harmony, and rhythm. Noise, on the other hand, like traffic, is often considered as

being a nuisance, industrial, and having no connection to music. The western concept of

using noise in music emerged in the early 1900s under the influence of modernism. In

1913, Luigi Russolo wrote The Art of Noises, a futurist manifesto letter to fellow composer

Francesco Balilla Pratella. At the beginning of the letter, Russolo mentions how even "the

most complicated orchestra can be reduced to four or five categories of instruments with

different sound tones."1 He calls for a change saying, "We must break at all costs from this

restrictive circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds."2 In the

1930s, Edgard Varèse, an American immigrant from France, began writing entries

describing the development of a concept he called "organized-sound." Varèse was

determined to gain the "right to make music with any sound and all sound" and advocated

for the use of technology.3 The idea of including electronics was not popular with

composers at the time. Still, Varèse stated that "electronics is an additive, not a destructive

1. Luigi Russolo, The Art of Noises, trans. Robert Filliou (New York: Something Else
Press, 1967), 6.

2. Russolo, The Art of Noises, 6.

3. Edgard Varèse, and Chou Wen-Chung, “The Liberation of Sound.” Perspectives of

New Music 5, no. 1 (1966): 19, https://doi.org/10.2307/832385.
 4

factor in the art and science of music."4 He brought this into his compositions of organized

sound, such as “Poème électronique,” a piece in which he utilized electronics and tape.5

John Cage is one of the most prominent figures within the western movement to

expand societal ideas of noise and music. In his writing, “The Future of Music: Credo,” he

talks about the future of rhythm in music, stating:

The composer (organizer of sound) will be faced not only with the entire field of
sound but also with the entire field of time. The 'frame' or fraction of a second,
following established film technique, will probably be the basic unit in the
measurement of time. No rhythm will be beyond the composer's reach.6

Beyond just the inclusion of noise, there is a link between music's future and its

relationship to time. Rhythm expands beyond the concept of measures or notes. Noises do

not follow set rhythms and cannot be notated accurately with the symbols western music

currently holds in the highest regard. Exploring with noise in composition inherently

pushes it into a space that expands upon western ideas of rhythm. Going beyond the

traditional bounds of time moves music into a new dimension.

In the 1950s, Cage experimented with noise in a piece called “William's Mix.” The

work was arranged to be played on eight magnetic tapes and was the first noted

demonstration of octophonic music. In the recording, the textures and timings of different

4. Varèse, “The Liberation of Sound,” 19.

5. Edgard Varèse, “Poème électronique,” Track three on Varèse: The Complete Works,
Decca Music Group, 1998.

6. John Cage, “The Future of Music: Credo,” in Sound, ed. Caleb Kelly (Cambridge: The
MIT Press, 2011), 24.
 5

noises come together in unique ways due to the live splicing of tapes. 7 Other minimalist

composers, such as Steve Reich, have also experimented with noise. Notably, in the late

1980s, Reich composed a three-movement piece called Different Trains. In the piece, a

string quartet plays repetitive chords, while the sound of horns, trains running on tracks,

and speech samples fill out the arrangement. The speech samples were taken from

interviews with people in America and Europe before World War II and allowed Reich to

explore the aspects of his environment and life as a Jewish man.8

Just over 100 years since western composers began to expand music to include

noise, modern composers now use noise consistently to explore environments. In 2015

composer Tod Machover debuted Symphony in D, a piece honoring the city of Detroit. The

composition featured both sounds and speakers from the city to explore and paint a picture

of its history and current state.9 Just a few years prior, Gascia Ouzounian published an

article detailing sound art in Belfast, Ireland. Projects such as The Belfast Sound Map, which

collected and displayed field recordings on a digital map, and Resounding Rivers, which

publicly displayed the sounds of rivers that once flowed through the city, have helped

people begin to critically explore their environment through sound.10 Recently, in April of

7. John Cage, “Williams Mix,” Track two on disc three of Cage: The 25-Year
Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage, Wergo, 2012.

8. Steve Reich, Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint, Nonesuch Records, 1990.

9. Tod Machover, Symphony in D, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, 2015,

https://openmusiclibrary.org/videos/5720/.

10. Gascia Ouzounian, “Recomposing the City: A Survey of Recent Sound Art in
Belfast,” Leonardo Music Journal 23 (November 12, 2013): 47–54,
https://doi.org/10.1162/lmj_a_00154.
 6

2020, Fiona Apple released Fetch the Bolt Cutters,11 a vividly percussive album that Apple

crafted using a combination of musical and non-musical objects to explore her home

environment.12

Contemporary music often uses sounds recorded from artists’ environments through a

technique called sampling. Pop music, or modern-day contemporary music, is a genre of

music that eats itself through its use of sampling.13 Andrew Goodwin, a late professor of

communication, describes sampling as a critical part of pop music. One of the main results

of the use of sampling in the late 1980s was the "removal of any immanent criteria for

distinguishing between human and automated performance."14 Speech samples used in

many minimalist compositions, such as Steve Reich's Different Trains and John Cage's

“William's Mix,” help demonstrate this inability to distinguish between the two.

Furthermore, Maarten Beirens, analyzing the use of speech samples by David Byrne, Brian

Eno, and Steve Reich, asserts that the manipulation of speech in music is an act of violence

because it destroys the speech's original form. However, Beirens concludes this violence

transcends being a negative force and instead becomes a way of "facilitating sonic

11. Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Sony, 2020.

12. Zelda Hallman, “Allow Fiona Apple to Reintroduce Herself,” Vulture, April 17,
2020, https://www.vulture.com/2020/04/fiona-apple-fetch-the-bolt-cutters.html.

13. Andrew Goodwin, “Sample and hold: pop music in the digital age of
reproduction,” Critical Quarterly 30, no. 3 (1988): 34.

14. Andrew Goodwin, “Sample and hold,” 39.

 7

dimension, of enabling more direct access to the expressive content, transmitted by the

voice."15

Sampling has also been used as a form of resistance. One notable example lies in

house music, used in Ballroom at events called Balls, which serve as cultural gatherings of

Black and Latine LGBTQ+ people. “The Ha Dance,” released in 1991 by Masters at Work,16

has become the quintessential ballroom piece, featuring a sample from the movie Trading

Places. The "ha" sound on every fourth beat, known as the "Ha Crash," comes from a scene

featuring a character in blackface.17 The Ha Crash, first established in “The Ha Dance” has

since been used in countless pieces of music, many of which have been created by MikeQ.18

The continual reclamation of that sample for cultural celebration of Black LGBTQ+ people is

a direct form of resistance against the systemic oppression Black LGBTQ+ people

experience in the United States.

Music and samples have been used as a form of resistance for Indigenous peoples as

well. In his doctoral dissertation, Ryan Shuvera writes about the Indigenous music group A

Tribe Called Red, currently known as The Halluci Nation, who blend genres such as hip-hop

15. Maarten Beirens, “Voices, Violence and Meaning: Transformations of Speech

Samples in Works by David Byrne, Brian Eno and Steve Reich,” Contemporary Music Review
33, no. 2 (April 2014): 221, https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2014.959277.

16. Masters At Work, “The Ha Dance,” Cutting Records, 1991,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_URFoqkwWLY.

17. Sound Field, “The Sound of NYC’s Underground Vogue Scene (Feat. Qween
Beat),” YouTube Video, 13:55, August 5, 2019,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULzamIl1Ehw.

18. Sound Field, “The Sound of NYC’s.”

 8

and dance with First Nations music. The group has thrown monthly Electric Pow Wow

parties to create a space for Indigenous youth, and Shuvera describes their importance:

These gatherings allowed an urban Indigenous population to navigate, articulate,

and determine what it means to be an Indigenous person living in an urban area in
settler colonial Canada in the twenty-first century. As people from other cultures
took notice, the parties became a space of cross-cultural recognition despite always
remaining a space of Indigenous self-determination and “embodied sovereignty.”19

The Halluci Nation has mixed traditional and modern music to redefine what it means to

be Indigenous in urban environments. Through their music and performances, they have

created space for Indigenous youth, inspired education, and carried knowledge. These are

all active forms of resistance against settler colonialism, a system of structural genocide

where white settlers have taken Indigenous land to settle permanently, forcibly destroying

Indigenous communities both physically and culturally.20

In one of their most famous songs, “Electric Pow Wow Drum,”21 the group uses

multiple samples from music within their environment. One sample of note comes from a

recording of the Grass Dance,22 a significant cultural dance stemming from “the northern

19. Ryan Shuvera, “Sounding Unsettlement: Rethinking Settler States of Mind and
Re(-)cognition through Scenes of Cross-Cultural Listening” (PhD diss.,The University of
Western Ontario, 2020), 142, Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/7208.

20. Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the elimination of the native,” Journal of
Genocide Research 8, No. 4 (2006): 387-409.

21. The Halluci Nation, “Electric Pow Wow Drum,” Track one on A Tribe Called Red,
A Tribe Called Red, 2012.

22. CBC Music, “The Creation of ‘Electric Pow Wow Drum’ | A Tribe Called Red,”
YouTube video, 1:52, November 16, 2016,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8YQFjpgTBk.
 9

plains tribes—particularly Omaha-Ponca and Dakota-Sioux.”23 Wanbli Charging Eagle

(Lakota Sioux and Ojibwe) says, “when I dance, I feel like I’m representing my family and

my tribe. When I travel, when I go all over with this dance, I take them with me and

represent them the best way I can. I’m dancing more for my people than for myself.”24 In

sampling a moment of the Grass Dance, The Halluci Nation moved this dance into a sonic

space mixed with electronic music, and a physical one created explicitly for Indigenous

youth. This again, serves as an active form of resistance against the systems of settler

colonialism which have stripped Indigenous peoples from their culture and land, and that

white settlers created and continue to uphold.

According to Jonathan Gilmuary, "listening to sound is key to the way in which we

experience and understand the world we live in."25 Including sounds from our natural

environment in music can allow for connection at a broader level. My work takes

inspiration from all forms of noise inclusion in music. Each artist discussed has used

sounds from their environments to represent their thoughts and experiences. Their work

has influenced both my techniques and expressions. Using sounds from my digital and

physical worlds provides me with three levels of analysis: 1) examination of my own

identities and relationships, 2) a reflection of music and its structures, and 3) how sound

shifts between environments over time and space. Through composition using field

23. ICT Staff, “Origins of the Grass Dance,” Indian Country Today, Spetember 13,
2018, https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/origins-of-the-grass-dance.

24. ICT Staff, “Origins.”

25. Jonathan Gilmurray, “Sounding the Alarm: An Introduction to Ecological Sound

Art,” Musicological Annual 52, no. 2 (September 2016): 77,
https://doi.org/10.4312/mz.52.2.71-84.
 10

recordings taken during my time as an undergraduate student in Portland, in my home

state of Colorado, and of my digital world, I have found that sound shapes the perception of

one’s environment uniquely and allows us to critically examine structures in music. Sound

can help one process change and provides insight into how we can navigate the constant

transitions of life. The latter half of this paper will detail the techniques I used and

additional literature and compositions I took inspiration from as I created each piece.

Process

In the summer of 2020, I collected approximately two hundred field recordings from

Portland, Colorado, and my digital spaces. In the fall of 2020, I began sifting through the

hours of field recordings and began composition. As I started this process it became clear I

would have five pieces exploring different topics, techniques, and environments. They each

draw upon various works and methods and help me answer my question with the three

levels of analysis I presented previously. They also serve as records of my sonic experience

during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sections below detail what techniques I used and

answers I was led to in each piece.

In Search of Comfort

This piece was initially inspired by a radio segment on the show 99% Invisible

hosted by Roman Mars. The episode “Sound and Health: Cities” discusses the effect that

sounds, or noise, as it has been referred to in this paper, impacts people’s health.26 Mathias

26. Roman Mars, "Sound and Health: Cities," 99% Invisible, May 16, 2019, Podcast,
website, 19:09, http://www.99percentinvisible.org/episode/sound-and-health-cities/.
 11

Basner, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies how noise affects sleep

states:

The World Health Organization published a report on the burden of disease by

environmental noise. And they basically showed that in the Western European
member states alone, 1.6 million healthy life years are lost every year due to the
exposure to environmental noise.27

Unwanted noise that people do not have control over has the most significant impact on

people’s health. Earlier in the episode, Basner states that “noise is stress, especially if we

have little or no control over it.”28 Because of this, bodies will release stress hormones

which have been shown to stiffen arteries after just one night of noise exposure. Basner

states, “people who are irrelevantly exposed for a prolonged period have an increased risk

for cardiovascular disease including high blood pressure and myocardial infarction, but

also in some studies a higher risk of stroke.”29 Kate Wagner, an architecture and design

critic, who focuses on sound, explains later that communities of color and low-income

communities are more likely to be pushed towards environments with a lot of

underregulated mechanical noise.30 Many laws centered around noise in cities have been

created. However, they are inequitable because the laws have been created by wealthier

people who have tried to create a “bourgeois idea of what the ideal soundscape would be

for the city.”31 This fact has shaped different communities’ thoughts around what sounds

27. Mars, “Sound and Health,” 07:37

28. Mars, 06:43.

29. Mars, 07:00.

30. Mars, 09:26.

31. Mars, 10:46.

 12

are good and bad in any given environment. Noise is extremely subjective. It plays a

significant role in individual and community health, and wealthier white community

members in cities have created a system in which they have more control over

environmental noise compared to communities of color and low-income residents.

Coupled with this information, I began thinking about access in music. In

Christopher Small's book Musicking, he describes how the way western music is studied,

performed, and centered, "suggests that it is a sacred object, which is not to be tampered

with, whose authority over the actions of all the musicians playing here tonight is absolute,

which commands absolute stillness and silence from those devotees who have assembled

to hear it performed"32 This is one particular way of experiencing music, and one that does

not welcome participants who have different ideas, do not study western musical tradition,

or are not classically trained within it. These exclusionary practices make a considerable

majority of western music inaccessible. Most of it is shared through scores using western

musical notation, and cultural ideas suggest that only those who have had instruction on

how to read it can begin to “properly” understand how to play and perform it. However,

artists such as Pauline Oliveros and Yoko Ono have opened music and performance

through the use text scores.

In the forward to her collection of text scores published in the book Anthology of

Text Scores, Oliveros writes about her work in the medium stating that the “use of text is a

way to move from traditional note-bound composition to a freer area of music making that

32. Christopher Small, Musicking (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press,

1998), 118.
 13

is reliant on ways of listening and responding.”33 She later comments on how scores in the

collection allowed her to mix trained and non-trained musicians together in performance,

and non-trained students could sometimes outperform their peers.34 Oliveros viewed text

scores as a way for people to practice listening attention rather than trained performance.

One of her pieces, “David Tudor,” written for singers and instrumentalists, asks performers

to do two things, “‘Find a sound that you like.’ ‘Find a way to express it.’”35 The score does

not look for proficiency on an instrument. The concept of proficiency or correctness is

bypassed completely. Instead, it demands excellent listening skills and an honest effort of

open-ended sonic expression.

Yoko Ono also explored text scores in her book Grapefruit. In her score “Voice Piece

for Soprano,” she asks performers to:

Scream
1. against the wind
2. against the wall
3. against the sky.36

In this score, less is demanded in terms of listening, but a great degree of thought and

imagination are required. It, like Oliveros’ work, pushes sonic expression into a space

outside of music. It asks people to utilize different skills and ones that are not reliant on

traditional western music training.

33. Pauline Oliveros, Anthology of Text Scores, ed. Samuel Golter and Lawton Hall
(Kingston, NY: Deep Listening Publication, 2013), v.

34. Oliveros, Anthology, v-vi.

35. Oliveros, 55.

36. Yoko Ono, Grapefruit (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 20.
 14

Thinking about both the impact of one’s sonic environment and wanting to make a

piece accessible outside of western music, I created a text score titled “In Search of

Comfort.”37 In a series of three steps, I asked people to record their name, think about and

record a sound that brought them comfort, and then state and record a few words about

how the sound makes them feel. The bottom of the text score features a graphic element

contextualizing the piece in western music notation. Self moves to Sounds. Sounds are

repeated, but at some point, there is a return to a new Self. There is no double bar line, and

the phrase D.C. al fine is written above the second Self. This phrase means from the

beginning. Usually, a double bar line or the words fine would end this command, but these

gestures are not written. Instead, the cycle repeats forever, signaling how our sonic

experiences are influenced by who we are, and also shape who we are. The two are

interconnected.

Once completed, I gave the score to Portland State's Advanced Laptop Ensemble,

which I am a part of. Members of the ensemble recorded their performance of the text

score, and then I manipulated their recordings within a DAW using the graphic element of

my text score as a guide. I began by rhythmically layering the names of the performers,

representing self. Then slowly, I introduced their sounds. Cats are purring, rain falling,

piano melodies, and the sound of book pages. I did not process these sounds beyond using

equalization (EQ) to clean them up to make them more audible to listeners. I wanted the

sounds to exist in the piece as they had in the environment they were recorded in. These

sounds of comfort are layered, along with some of the sounds I recorded that brought me

comfort over the past year. Then, the piece’s ending features everyone’s names coming

37. See Appendix A.

 15

back into focus and their sounds returning—a return from sounds to self, but with a new

understanding. The cycle repeats.

My overall intention was for people to critically listen to their environments and

think about the enjoyable sonic elements. Unwanted sonic elements exist, and we

collectively need to direct attention towards them and create new systems that provide all

communities with equitable sonic experiences and autonomy of sonic choices. It is also

powerful to consider the sounds you do love in your environment. Sounds shape us

repeatedly. They are with us through growth. A sound you find comfort in now may be

neutral or uncomfortable in other places and times. Taking a moment to recognize a

sound’s comforting presence allowed me and other performers of the score to consider our

environments. This piece can be performed by anyone, any number of times, allowing

people to track personal growth through the sounds they recognize. In personal reflection

and performance, I was able to find a greater appreciation for the sounds in Colorado I

would not have experienced if the start of the COVID- 19 pandemic in March 2020 had not

forced an unexpected move back home. The piece allows all performers to track their

relationships and environments through noise, music, and other sounds.

Portland, Granular Transition, and Colorado

The main body of my work falls into these three pieces, “Portland”, “Granular

Transition,” and “Colorado.” They explore two distinct physical locations, joined by a

segment of granular transition. They explore the relationship between the two physical

environments I had in college, Portland, OR where I moved to for school in September of

2018, and the state of Colorado, where I grew up and returned to in March of 2020 due to
 16

the start of COVID-19 pandemic. The three pieces together can be thought of as a sonic

collage.

I rely heavily on Hildegard Westerkamp’s writing “Soundwalking”38 but expand

upon it to create a collage as I explore the differences and transition between spaces. Below

is a reflection and analysis of the three pieces.

Portland

This piece is built from field recordings taken in June of 2020, when I returned to

the city of Portland for a week to move out of the apartment I had abruptly left in March

2020. Returning was a sudden change. I took a variety of recordings, knowing I would not

be returning to the city any other time during composition. I wanted to record sounds in a

way that would allow me to create a sonic scrapbook of the city in a pre-pandemic state.

One specific recording to highlight is the sounds of my boots clicking across the pavement. I

had purchased a pair of boots in 2019 and worn them everywhere until my sudden move in

March. Upon reflection, I realized they provided a steady rhythm to my existence in the city

and on campus. It is the central component of the piece, providing a meter, almost like a

metronome but taken from my environment. The sound of walking helped me track time

and movement in my life and the piece.

The piece in its entirety details what one day of sounds could look like. I narrowed

down the field recordings I took over four days and crafted them into what an average pre-

38. Hildegard Westerkamp, “Soundwalking,” Hildegard Westerkamp Inside the

Soundscape, January 1, 2001, https://www.hildegardwesterkamp.ca/writings/
writingsby/?post_id=13&title=soundwalking.
 17

pandemic day would have sounded like. It starts with the sound of opening my blinds,

followed by the horn of the Max Light Rail train. I grab my keys, open the door, and

experience the city through the noise. People speaking, busses stopping, my boots clicking,

and accessible crosswalks are all layered over each other. Then finally, I make my way back

to the apartment, where it becomes noticeably quieter and more insular. It shows a stark

sonic difference between inside and outside space. There is less reverberance, and a feeling

of control. The sound of the boots remains. It exists in both the inside and outside space—a

sound that keeps time in both environments.

An important thing to note about the technique in this piece is that I did not edit the

recordings destructively. They are kept relatively unprocessed, like the sounds in the

following pieces and “In Search of Comfort.” In her writing, Westerkamp defines a

soundwalk as “any excursion whose main purpose is listening to the environment. It is

exposing our ears to every sound around us no matter where we are.”39 When speaking

about soundwalk composition, she asks people to “create a dialogue and thereby lift the

environmental sounds out of their context into the context of your composition, and in turn

make your sounds a natural part of the music around you.”40 In the compositions “In Search

of Comfort,” “Portland,” “Granular Transition,” and “Colorado,” I was exploring concepts of

emotion and transition. Because of this, I felt the destruction of sounds would not represent

the sounds as a natural part of the music around me. If they were made unrecognizable

through intense processing, they would not tell the story of my environment or allow

listeners to relate the sounds to their environments. By leaving the sounds in their original

39. Westerkamp, “Soundwalking.”

40. Westerkamp, “Soundwalking.”

 18

state, I hoped to create an ongoing dialogue of sonic transition, storytelling, documentation,

and exploration.

Granular Transition

“Granular Transition” features two elements. One is a segment of talking I recorded

as I was moving out of my Portland apartment discussing how I was struggling with the

transition, the unknowing nature of the pandemic, and the way I had experienced a change

in both of my physical environments. It is raw, emotional and provides critical insight into

how I experience Portland and Colorado differently. The other component is a stereo

recording of granular synthesis. Granular synthesis is the process of taking and rearranging

tiny samples of sound, called grains. In his book Microsound, Curtis Roads describes a grain

of sound as a “brief micro acoustic event, with a duration near the threshold of human

auditory perception, typically between one-thousandth of a second and one-tenth of a

second (from 1 to 100 ms). Each grain contains a waveform shaped by an amplitude

envelope.”41 Grains capture two dimensions, one being time information, and the other

being frequency information.42

Most of Roads’ other commentary on the work investigates the math-centered,

acoustics, and computer science-based aspects of the technique. However, the statement

Roads makes which is most central to my work is:

The granulation of sampled sounds is a powerful means of sound transformation. To

granulate means to segment (or window) a sound signal into grains, to possibly

41. Curtis Roads, Microsound (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001), 86.

42. Roads, 87.

 19

modify them in some way, and then to reassemble the grains in a new time order
and microrhythm. 43

Granular synthesis allows you to take any sound and reassemble it into something familiar

but new. New frequencies and patterns can be brought out when sounds are processed and

created in this way. Most of my inspiration with granular synthesis came from working

with it under the direction of Christ Denton in the Sonic Arts and Music Production Laptop

Ensemble (SAMPLE) at Portland State University. Additionally, I took inspiration from

recordings of Paul Lansky’s “Notjustmoreidlechatter,”44 and “Small sand stream on Beach”

by Toshiya Tsunado,45 both of which use granular synthesis as a compositional technique.

The stereo track, which featured my work with granular synthesis, was recorded

using Max, a visual programming language by Cycling ‘74. The specific patch I used is called

“Grainfields,” created by Kasper Fangel Skox, a sound designer and Ph.D. student in

Denmark, in 2016. This patch turns a monome 128 grid, created by the company monome,

into an eight-voice granular synthesizer. You can control things such as grain density, base

pitch, deviation, duration, loop rate, amplitude envelope slope, and stereo spread through

the patch. Users can cycle through different sections of the recordings they upload to the

patch using the monome grid. They can also change the mentioned parameters to explore

sections of grains, timbers, and textures. In my piece, I recorded one stereo track from the

patch and focused on the modifying parameters of base pitch, grain density, and stereo

43. Roads, 98.

44. Paul Lansky, “Notjustmoreidlechatter,” Track 5 on More Than Idle Chatter,

Bridge Records, 2005.

45. Toshiya Tsunoda, “Small Sand-stream on Beach,” Track six on Audible

Geography, ROOM40, 2004.
 20

spread. Going through the open-source audio driver, BlackHole, by existential audio, I was

able to record data from “Grainfields” directly into my DAW as I manipulated sounds I had

selected live.

I selected three sounds from Portland and five from Colorado to fill the eight voices.

More than half these field recordings contained sounds of the movement of water. While

going through my recordings, this was a similarity between the two places. The other

sounds included electric fans, chickens, improvised singing, and typing. I placed the

Portland sounds in the first three voices and the Colorado ones in the final five. In the live

recording, I start with the first voice and then sequentially bring in the others, always

allowing the new recording to make its presence known and settle into the mix. By the time

I reach the introduction of the fourth voice and transition into the Colorado sounds, I have

faded out the first voice. As I add in voices, I sequentially take out earlier ones. This process

continues until the eighth voice, the sound of me typing, is the only sound remaining, which

then cues the transition into the piece “Colorado.”

This section of granular synthesis represents how sonic transitions between two

environments are not smooth. You may find similarities in the two sonic environments, but

the former environment does not remain as time progresses. However, as one environment

fades to the next, it allows you to pick out elements of sound in your new sonic

environment that have been colored by the former environment. This is exemplified by the

overlapping grains in the Portland and Colorado recordings, which color each other and

create unique microrhythms. It allows you to listen to colors and timbres that would not

have been possible without the sonic transition. Additionally, it brings up an idea of sonic

individuality. Everyone experiences sound differently. In this piece, the only thing that can
 21

connect the two environments is me, the performer. No one else has experienced the

transition or its context in the way that I have. Everyone experiences their sonic transitions

in unique ways. Knowing this, you can go out, listen, and ponder how your sonic

environments, past and present, have influenced your sonic perceptions.

Colorado

The final piece in this series, “Colorado,” is based on recordings I took from July

2020 to March of 2021. It is dedicated to the four children I nannied throughout my time in

Colorado. I spent around 10 hours a week with the children for a year. I watched the

youngest grow from a baby to a toddler. She learned how to walk, celebrated her first

birthday, started to speak, and explored her sonic environment. The next oldest turned

four, contemplated dropping out of preschool, and engaged in sweet conversation on our

weekly walks where we would read house numbers aloud, discuss our favorite foods and

speak about other pressing matters. In the summer, with the help of the two oldest

children, we recorded the sounds they loved in their house, including their chickens, the

trampoline, pans banging together in the kitchen. I allowed the children to take the

recorder, put on the headphones and explore. Their words and the special moments we

shared make up a significant portion of the piece.

This piece does not take the structure of a day in the life like “Portland” did. Instead,

there is the consistent sound of typing, which fades in and out. Then, a selection of sweet

moments and thoughts fills the rest of the space. There are chickens clucking, a toddler

asking what headphones are, the baby laughing on a trampoline, sounds of hiking with my

family, and my dog speaking on command. I collected these sounds over eight months
 22

rather than the recordings from “Portland,” which were recorded in a few days. The piece

represents my entire experience moving back to Colorado during the pandemic.

Typing, a central aspect of the piece, is faded into from “Granular Transition,” which

ends on granular synthesis of the same sound. During the pandemic, like many people, I

went from being on my computer three to four hours a day to ten or twelve hours on most

days. The typing represents this aspect of my life and helps the listener keep track of time.

Sometimes it becomes disorienting, or unnoticeable, like it did in my life. It also represents

how I felt as though I lived in two different worlds during my time in Colorado. I shared one

world physically with the children and my own family, and then I had another in Portland,

where I virtually worked and went to school. They existed at the same time, despite being

in two vastly different physical locations.

The final section of “Colorado” features a recording I took on my iPhone. It was my

last day with the children. After dropping the four-year-old off at school, I had a few hours

to hang out with the youngest. I took a video as we sat down at the piano together, where

she and I began playing. She loves the sound that smashing the keys together makes. It is

one of her methods to make sense of the world and understand it sonically. In the video,

she is aware that I am playing and begins doing it too. At that moment, we, as two

individuals existing in the same sonic space, complete the same task with two different

understandings. This then fades into an improvised piece of songwriting I recorded

moments later. The lyrics are:

I’m gonna miss this place.

I’m gonna miss your faces.
I’m gonna miss your smiles.
I’m gonna miss your sounds.
I’m gonna miss the words that you’re learning every day.
I’m gonna miss this place.
 23

I bring in sounds relating to the words after every phrase as a nod to those moments.

Finally, you can hear me stop singing. It seems to be quiet, but you can faintly hear the baby

in the background. She is singing too, mimicking my sonic expression.

“Colorado” answers my question in a way the other pieces do not. Relationships are

built upon sounds—especially ones in which you may serve as a guiding figure to a child.

Through my sonic explorations, whether that be singing, playing piano, or recording with

the children, the children were learning how to interpret their sonic world too. The

children’s sounds were just as big a part of my sonic environment as mine were to theirs.

By existing together in sonic spaces, we all learned from each other. Sound was something

we could connect through. It enhanced our friendships. Dropping bottles, expansive

storytelling, daily trips to the park, and learning to speak were sounds I would not have

experienced without their presence in my life. Additionally, the children would not have

heard certain words, music, and other sounds if I were not around them. When we share

sonic environments with others, it allows for an exchange, a fusing of experiences, that

pushes us into a deeper understanding of the sounds that happen in the world. These

exchanges are vital to expanding one's sonic environment.

Social Media Escape

This piece differs drastically from all the others. I did not collect field recordings for

this piece. Instead, I randomly selected various social media posts and recorded myself

reading them out loud. While I included some of my own social media posts, most were

other people’s words. The usernames and platform from which each post came from were
 24

noted.46 In the piece, I do not focus on the words themselves but rather their sonic quality

as they begin to overlap and distort. This piece is effectively a digital soundwalk that relies

on Maarten Beirens idea that the destruction of speech can facilitate sonic dimension.47

I recorded the words of 20 tweets randomly from Twitter. I scrolled through three

places to select tweets: my timeline, my bookmarked tweets, and my own tweets. I selected

20 tweets of interest that I felt represented my timeline on the application on any given

day. There were funny tweets, emotional tweets, advertisements, and news. Then, I

collected twenty recordings of Instagram captions. I do not use Instagram as much as

Twitter because I have become increasingly resistant to the platform’s push into

advertising and shopping. To represent this, I selected Instagram captions to record by

selecting the first twenty Instagram advertisements I saw. These recordings were then

edited for clarity. After this, I created a map for the piece on a sheet of paper, which laid the

foundational structure.48

The piece starts with a clear focus. Entire sections of content can be heard before

the next recording starts, and it is easy to grasp the ideas they are conveying. Reflecting on

my social media use, I often feel this way when opening any social media application. I can

read or watch complete sections of content; my focus is not yet thrown into multiple

directions. Then as the piece progresses, more recordings of content begin. They appear in

different spaces in the stereo field and begin to overlap. The recordings of tweets enter in

every three bars, while the recordings of the Instagram advertisements come in every four

46. See Appendix B.

47. Beirens, “Voices, Violence and Meaning,” 221.

48. See Appendix C.

 25

bars. If the sounds were shorter, this would create a recognizable four against three

polyrhythm. Because the recordings extend and overlap, it is not identifiable, but still plays

an essential role in the piece. The Instagram advertisements coming in against the tweets

demonstrate the tension between social media and corporations’ desires to make money.

Many people use social media to share their stories, organize, learn, connect with friends

and family, and for entertainment. However, social media applications are corporations,

and the way the applications continue to run is through advertisements. Their goal is

money, not connection, creating a distinct tension between the two sides. Neither one has

the other’s interest at heart.

As the piece moves forward, the growing overlap of my voice creates unique sonic

textures. Specific phrases of the content are heard, but it is almost impossible to follow a

recording from start to finish as other sounds come in seconds later, shifting the focus in

the stereo field. At a certain point, the sound begins to wash over the listener. It becomes

exhausting trying to search for a moment of focus. This is another parallel to my experience

on social media. After the initial clarity of opening the application, it progressively gets

more overwhelming. There are so many people talking about vastly different things. There

are puppy pictures right below a post honoring a deceased loved one’s life. It is a

disorienting shift between topics every few seconds.

Finally, at the end of the piece, the disorientation begins to swell. The recordings

repeat, but this time they are stretched. The speech has been destroyed from its original

state. It feels robotic and different frequencies and sonic textures begin to form. The

listener can understand nothing. This feeling represents that social media can become so

disorienting that one may not recognize what is going on within it over time. What is an
 26

advertisement? What is a genuine connection? How do these topics appear in people’s local

environments? From March 2020 to March 2021, and before that time, I often found myself

turning to social media to escape. There is clarity and moments of connections, but there

are also moments of extreme disorientation. It can be challenging to take in a mass amount

of information on new topics every second. If you use social media, you must find ways to

process the information and take your experiences on digital platforms with you into

productive action in your physical environment. With this piece, I am not suggesting that

people abandon social media. Instead, I am commenting on the need for people to think

about how disorienting social media may or may not be for them. How can we each make

changes within our personal lives to create a digital environment that benefits us and our

physical environments?

Conclusion

Sound is a critical element, offering a window into how each of us understands the

world. We each hear different sounds, exist in different sonic environments, and have

created unique emotional responses to noise. Coming back to the three levels of analysis

previously mentioned, the compositional process has directed me towards multiple

answers to my original research question.

Personal Identities and Relationships

My sonic environments have shaped who I am. Just as I wrote in the “In Search of

Comfort'' score,49 at any given moment, we exist as ourselves. Sound then shapes us,

49. See Appendix A.

 27

creating a deeper understanding of who we are. This cycle repeats infinitely. In “Colorado,”

I explored how sharing a sonic environment can deepen your relationships through shared

experience. The children I nannied have a different understanding of the world than I do.

We all brought sounds into each other’s environments that were not previously there. We

created a sonic environment that only we shared, deepening our relationship through

sound. In “Granular Synthesis” and “Portland'' I explored how sound serves as a point of

transition between physical spaces, influencing the relationship of time and place within

my life. Finally, in “Social Media Escape,” the relationship between what is genuine or not

was explored. Digital noise is not always noise in the physical sense. The constant reading

of words can be just as abrasive as unwanted mechanical noise. The “noise” on social media

can also be beneficial. It has also created unique ways in which we transition between

topics and relate to each other. We must continue to address how noise positively and

negatively impacts all our spaces. We should seek to build more equitable, positively

associated sonic environments to better understand ourselves and foster genuine

relationships in our communities through them.

The Structure of Music

Because of its scope, this paper was not able to cover in depth how noise in music

has been used as a form of resistance, mainly in communities of color against systems of

white supremacy. Additionally, it could not cover the full scale of how noise in music has

been used in many cultures before Russolo’s manifesto, which brought it to the attention of

the white western world. Other scholarship, such as Music and Modernity Among First
 28

Peoples of North America,50 and organizations such as Decolonizing the Music Room,51

provide more information on music outside of the dominant and limiting structure of

western music.

As discussed previously in the paper, western music theory is one way of learning

music and is exclusive. Through my compositions, I have joined other electronic music

composers in challenging the traditional structures of western music. My pieces do not rely

on a strict time base. They do not rely on music theory. They do not rely on orchestral or

even contemporary instruments. They are built almost entirely from the sounds of my

environment. This project has broadened my view of what music and sonic art can be and

what purpose it can serve.

We must continue to challenge the ruling power of western music, which does not

center Black, Indigenous, Latine, Asian, Pacific Islander, Disabled, and LGBTQ+

communities, as well as women. We must highlight and make space for existing music that

challenges and exists outside of this structure, and welcome new music and composers.

Music and sonic expressions should be something that everyone can explore to express

their own experiences. The current structure does not allow this to happen equitably and

must change. Additionally, sonic exploration does not and should not exist in a solely

academic space.

50. Victoria Levine and Dylan Robinson, ed., Music and Modernity Among First
Peoples of North America (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2019).

51. “Decolonizing the Music Room,” Accessed May 2021,

https://decolonizingthemusicroom.com.
 29

Transitions Over Time and Space

Just like every sonic environment is different, our understandings of them are also

unique. I have determined this unique understanding exists because previous

environments impact how we will transition into new ones. When I moved from an outside

to an inside space in “Portland,'' the outside sounds, particularly the sounds of the boots,

impacted how I listened in the indoor space. Certain sounds exist in multiple environments

but are colored differently in each one. In “Granular Transition,” I explored how

environments fade into each other through sound. As we transition to new environments,

we remember sounds from our previous ones, and it shapes our listening in the new space.

However, over time we begin to create an entirely different understanding of our new

environment. This cycle can repeat throughout any number of transitions one may have in

their life.

Knowing this, if we listen carefully, we can seek to understand our spaces and

environments better, allowing us to become more aware of what sounds we love and which

ones we would like to experience less—sound impacts our health, relationships, and

understandings. As communities, we must work to create sonic environments that benefit

the entire community, not just white and wealthier people who have influence over noise

laws and, with access to wealth, can choose how to create wide-reaching sonic spaces.

Large sonic environments, like neighborhoods, should not be individually shaped in this

way.

Through this composition process, I have gained greater insight into how noise,

sound, and music have touched every corner of my life. They impact my relationships,

health, understanding of transition, and who I am as a person. I do not believe I am alone in

 30

these feelings as evidenced by the other compositions and composers I have referenced.

Everybody’s life is impacted by sound. As we continue to make our transitions between

sonic environments, we should all seek to think about how they have affected our lives.

Critically thinking about sound will lead us to a better understanding of ourselves and

others.
 31

Appendix A

“In Search of Comfort” Score.

Image Description: Dark, black text sits on a pink background. On the pink background
there are many different shades of pink forming unique geometric shapes. The text on the
score reads as follows:

In search of comfort

1. Take a deep breath and ground yourself. State your first name.
2. Play/perform a sound that brings you comfort. Ideas include:
a. A drawer closing.
b. Your favorite chord progression.
c. The sound of your feet on the pavement.
d. Your favorite guitar.
e. The sound of your dishwasher.
 32

f. Anything else you think of.

Repeat that sound, or hold it until it feels appropriate to stop.

3. Speak the first two to five words that come to your mind about the sound. Why does
this sound bring you comfort?

On the bottom of the score there is a graphic element. The word “self” is written followed
by a repeat sign, taken from western music notation. The word “sound” is next, followed by
another repeat sign, meaning that “sound” is repeated. Then the word “self” is written
again. Above the second “self” in smaller font reads the words “D.C. al fine.” This phrase
means repeat from the beginning. Normally you would then stop this command once you
reached the word “fine” or a double bar line. In this score both of those are absent, meaning
this cycle repeats infinitely.
 33

Appendix B

Lists of the usernames and platforms I recorded content from for the piece “Social Media
Escape.”

Twitter

@ryandouglassw
@ItsKrich
@cnkerr
@DellSmallBiz
@nhannahjones
@_Al3x4ndr4
@minjinlee11
@moneycaa
@DocumentingMN
@amazonmusic
@Kristen_Arnett
@crocfanpage
@womensaudio
@glittersnot
@MereSophistry
@crucifiedfurby
@EleanorMargolis
@remiwolf
@CBCAlerts

Instagram

@parade
@everlane
@underarmourwomen
@wearewildfang
@outdoorvoices
@tomboyx
@tentree
@byteoffficial
@starface
 34

@nalgene
@teva
@heyharpershop
@theraggedpriest
@rvca
@smap.skateparks
@threadup
@adika
@bamboova
 35

Appendix C

“Social Media Escape” Map.

Image Description: Text written in blue marker fills a large white sheet of paper. There
are three sections headings with multiple bullets underneath each heading.
 36

The first heading reads “Social Media Piece.” The bullets underneath it are as follows:
● Slow and steady at start.
● One post at a time.
● Less overlap.
● Don’t break into “Polyrhythm” yet.
● Maybe leave ads out.

The next heading reads “As time continues.” The bullet points underneath it are as follows:
● Everything overlaps.
● Things are in polyrhythm.
● Certain things jump out but can never finish a statement.

The final heading reads “Finally.” The bullet points underneath it are as follows:
● Things become distorted.
● Some slow, some fast.
● Shape with EQ and time stretch.
 37

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