ReSynthesizin' Pings | Make Noise

[@kilo_llama]

When I was first encountering synthesis, I was delighted by the way that synthesizers presented themselves as fictional recreations of other instruments and entities-strings, flutes, little singing cats, chittering bugs, the ocean. In reflecting on those experiences first approaching synthesis, I've come to appreciate the idea of synthesis as a form of fiction writing or invention. Since then, I've also come to appreciate non-fiction synthesis, and I deeply enjoy encounters with abstract or non-representational electronic sounds. I don't believe it's possible or productive to generate a definitive answer to the question, but I think that adopting the lens-to ask what it means to _see_ synthesis (or music) as fiction-can be a deep well of inspiration and thoughtfulness for the appreciation of both these concepts.

[@TheScreamingFrog916]

@@kilo_llama love your comment. I’m thinking abstract music and art, are beyond the concept of truth/fiction, and exist in a world of their own :-)

[@ZenKoala]

If music is physical movement of elements in space, then from a physics standpoint it is a part of reality and should be considered nonfiction. If "perception is reality" though, there's an argument to be made for it all being somewhat fictitious by being a sensory experience. Very thought provoking!

[@nilc]

I like this thought. It makes me wonder if also the arrangement of letters on a page is not fiction, though when read they are perceived as a fictional story

[@CinematicLaboratory]

I learned that perception and reality are two completely different things.

[@codysmith2845]

Music is not fiction. Basquiat said that music is how we decorate time, and I know what he means, but I think about it differently. Music is how we decorate the air that fills our space. Since we bend the air to make it sound like we want it to, there can't be more fundamentally close to us than the experience of music. It gestates in imagination before being born through the mediums we fabricate. What could me more true than that?

[@mimikova390]

I fully agree that even music based on fictional subjects turns into nonfiction during moments of creation. There is truth in the decoration of time.

[@theproblembelief7549]

Basquiat? I thought Zappa said that..

[@codysmith2845]

@@theproblembelief7549 “Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.”- Zappa. good looking out

[@theplasticlens]

@@theproblembelief7549 Basquiat did say “Music decorates time.” Frank Zappa said “Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.”

[@kilo_llama]

Is all music decorative?

[@VirtualModular]

To answer the question with another question, is fiction music? Most of the answers to this are kind of word soup, I think you just get straight into semantics with this sort of question. As someone once said, "a bad analogy is like a cucumber". Anyway, filter pings are super cool! I'm not entirely sure what Spectrephon is doing, but it sounds a lot like a resonator, and sticking a ping into a resonator is basically DIY physical modelling. I've been making a load of strange sounds with this in VCV recently and it's an amazing technique. This sounds great by the way.

[@thommysaraceno2862]

I purposely didn't read comments yet, avoiding bias. But music certainly cannot be fiction. It moves air physically. That experience is real and not imagined. It can be reproduced and shared because of its physicality.

[@blackmateriaofficial2383]

When letters on a page move photons, the experience of reading is real. It can be reproduced and shared as well. Not trying to be contrary, but the absoluteness of the statement kinda triggered me.

[@blackmateriaofficial2383]

Just to exacerbate the quandary, Is the experience of an emotion triggered by reading a fictional novel, or hearing a song or piece of music, true? Is it more, less or as valid as an emotion experienced in another way? :)

[@robriki2]

What about the music in your head? Is that music less real than the one that comes out of a speaker or an instrument?

[@blackmateriaofficial2383]

@@robriki2 oh boy what a rabbithole, lol

[@Fluidstructure]

Music is Magic

[@TRaddcliff]

music is reality. poor Tempi and Morph didn't get to join in the fun. almost had everyone involved.

[@seanmahanart]

Dan Dennett writes that natural selection arrives at “competence without comprehension” and “reasons without reasoners”. In that sense a modular synthesizer could arrive at fiction without an author.

[@CinematicLaboratory]

I don't think music in general equals fiction. It can tell a story, but it can also express someone's inner life, a concept, a dream or something abstract with no meaning. Perception however, is a variable. It will be fictional for all but the composer. Then, perception triggers new stories, new concepts, emotions and abstracts. It will create new realities.

[@andyseaver8292]

Music is truth!

[@wishbonebrewery]

the act of creating music is not fiction, though telling a story through music is / can be fiction.

[@DJ_Merkury66]

My first impulse to your question is that music is not fiction, simply because through my creation of it, I see it as an extension of myself. However, that is only the way I initially see my own music. As I think about certain songs I have created in the past, I realize that some were indeed fiction (in the storytelling sense) and others were very much embedded in the truth of a situation I was going through at the time.

[@philippendletonmusic]

The best music tells a story and (like music) the best stories evoke an emotional response. These stories (and/or pieces of music) can be both fiction and non-fiction of course. A musical piece could be, for example, based on a childhood memory (non-fiction) or perhaps it started out as a fictional "What if?" exercise. Interesting question!

[@Starthief]

Hmm... I would have argued that some music doesn't tell a story so much as paint a scene with sound. But even though there isn't necessarily anything happening in that scene right now, it often hints at the things that happened there before... so I guess in a way that's still telling a story.

[@DJ_Merkury66]

A musical piece could be based on the composer's 'current' emotional state, which would also be non-fiction and this might elicit the listener to feel the same emotion. To the listener, that may seem like fiction. Thus, music can be fiction and non-fiction simultaneously. It is quantum, like Schrodinger's cat.

[@hoverpillow6106]

High quality presentation of what art at its core is. Thank you.

[@estebanpiedra-oi5lb]

I think it's the same problem that happens with the idea of ​​representation in the visual arts. It depends on the context in which it was produced and the process of interpretation that the viewer gives it.

[@CinematicLaboratory]

I totally agree.

[@CinematicLaboratory]

When I woke up this morning, the answer 'music is a language' popped in. And the more I think of it, the more I like the answer.

[@VocalChainsStudio]

❤ As a writer of fiction, I enjoy the question but immediately overthink it. I enjoy reading about other peoples’ experiences and thoughts on music, more-so than expounding in my own. To me, music is an experience, I tend to think of it less concretely than writing, which has a more traceable origin imo. Music exists before the first musician. But as a means for story and experience it is unlimited in its reach.

[@nilc]

Do stories exist before the first author / teller? I feel that they do, that stories are discovered in a manner that feels similar to discovering music

[@PeterDjordjevich]

"fiction is a creative and imaginative form of storytelling " = Music

[@galenbaby]

Yeah! I’d add world-building to this; music has a singular ability to conjure and create a world, which is also true of some of my favorite fiction (like George Saunders)

[@deadsealiner]

I'm generally in this camp, but I'm wondering where music concrete and field recordings fit. They may be artistically sequenced, but ultimately I think of them as documentaries. Although admittedly, in some cases, far-out, abstract experimental documentaries.

[@johnmcneil2431]

Music is good fiction in that it can hold a mirror to reality by stepping beyond it

[@Vergarecords]

Music, like mathematics, existed before we came. We don't think about it, but math is far more than symbols on a page in the same way music is more than notes in a sequence. We can make graphs of functions to decorate and we can make sequences of sounds to entertain but I believe they can be far deeper than the two dimensional data we represent them as. Nature is made up of mathematics and also sound. I enjoyed learning the physics of sound and even mathematics even though it could get difficult. The great thing is that you don't have to think about either to enjoy the results.

[@rockstar-technology]

"Fiction" implies some sort of concrete, real-world subject being evoked, which is not something that belongs to music as such. It's a fun exercise though.

[@billcosgrave6232]

Groovy! Although at one point I was afraid you would create a sonic singularity and we would truly be lost in a musical fiction forever.

[@WiredSpaceWizard]

I’ve always believed music exists in a quantum state that is neither fiction nor nonfiction.

[@nilc]

Music is both fiction and not fiction. There are a finite number of songs, and they may be enumerated (presuming you accept that digital representations of songs are accurate). This implies that music already exists, before it has been written, discovered, performed, etc. (this is also true of words and stories, images, etc.) (also this definitely finite number is large enough that it can sort of be assumed as infinite, for most purposes) In the process of exploring, creating, and listening to music, we find that it is a complex fiction, that it may represent or reference any aspect of our imagination or our emotions. We can craft or select music to evoke particular thoughts or emotions, as we craft words into stories. It doesn't matter that a particular form exists with or without being discovered or crafted by people Another question: is listening to a music an act of effort? Is that an exercise of free will?

[@DrJ3RK8]

I don't know, are friends electric?

[@gnolus]

You are in my vision!

[@nsjx]

What an incredibly malleable set of chain of events you've painted in this patch. To me, music is fiction because of it never being same exact story for every ear. A non-fiction relays objective events and details. Fiction makes use (must make use?) of imagination. For example, I listen to artists' music and in the artwork of titles They have decided upon a thread (perhaps), but when I remove these from the experience I am having of just Listening then I find myself once again in my Own world of that same music. The feeling generated within my mind aren't the same for everyone else. To me that is the same kind of (re-)interpretation that goes on while absorbing (other) works of fiction. Anyway, it is interesting to ponder....Anything. ✨

[@MatthewSternberg]

Definition of Fiction: 1. literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people. 2. something that is invented or untrue. Can music represent a form of prose that describes imaginary events and people? Can music tap into deep truths about the world or ourselves? Like poetry, is always inventive and seems like a piece can be any of these things and so the label depends on the work and often the answer will be subjective. 1:38

[@caseyrocksohard]

I love you guys 😂

[@NcuriousBOX]

Fiction and Music? Infinite\finite and bound/unbound? .... question\|/questions of imagination and limit and if a line divides them? I sometimes suffer from the act of willing my hand to move by thought alone.

[@TheScreamingFrog916]

Just learned that there are multiple definitions of the word fiction. One of them, describes it as an entertaining story. And that can certainly be true. Another, describes it as a lie, or untruth. And that can be true, or not, depending on the lyrical content. Not sure if fiction, is a word that can describe purely instrumental music, as it makes no falsifiable claims. As always, love these videos, with audience participation. Brilliant!

[@nilc]

Music can be a lie, even without lyrics, a simple example maybe be a western classical traditional melody that ends on a note of tension, rather than resolving on the tonic will piss a lot of people off, or make others amused. Or perhaps not care at all :D

[@tru7hhimself]

that's an interesting take. imho music - even without lyrics - can descibe things that are either fictional or real. if it's real then it's certainly no lie; if it's something fictional, then it's describing something that doesn't really exist, but that's not really a lie either. but then again some "forcedly happy" music can definitely feel like a lie. then what decides if it's an honest or dishonest representation of the concept?

[@TheScreamingFrog916]

@@tru7hhimself I think it depends on, who gets to decide what the concept is. Love this discussion. Thanks for engaging :-)

[@wylatron]

Where do you get your weed?! 😂 I love your modules, but your videos always leave me wondering wtf just happened.

[@mimikova390]

Is music fiction? Certainly not. Music can convey stories, which may be fictional. As the story is told, it becomes the truth in that moment. Even if the truth is distorted. So while music isn't inherently fiction, it can incorporate fictional and nonfictional elements depending on the artist's intent. That intent is always nonfiction.

[@b0d0p33t3rs]

Is the intent going from the composer/creator nonfiction, or does it become fictional as soon as she/he releases it to the world? For the listener to turn it back into a fictional context? And in turn makes it 'real' aka nonfictional as a personal experience? Does sound need human experience(s) to turn it into music?

[@mimikova390]

@@b0d0p33t3rs IMO it remains nonfiction if it elicits a response. The response can be good, bad, or even apathetic.

[@stephpearlskozlowski1949]

Nada brahman ( i will add a question to this (i think it's from one passage of La Voce Della Luna , from the Great Federico Fellini ) : where does the music go when the musicians stop playing ?

[@gnolus]

It's still right there. By stopping playing, the musicians have removed the listener, but they haven't touched the music.

[@stephpearlskozlowski1949]

@@gnolus I love this idea

[@CinematicLaboratory]

Sometimes, it will get stuck in your head. My head is like a jukebox.

[@stephpearlskozlowski1949]

@@CinematicLaboratory : Same for me, and iit's litteraly in random mode ;) .

[@tru7hhimself]

when the musicians stop playing, they're playing cage's 4'33. music never stops.

[@Kev-Adams]

Music is one of many languages of mathematics. Is mathematics invented or discovered? If it’s the latter (as I largely suspect) then we use it to discover the sonic world in realtime as it unfolds as we create, definitely real, but sometimes we recreate a world invented beforehand in our heads, which could also be fiction 😄

[@gnolus]

Music is fiction that differs from other fiction in that it is more vague, and also in that it can be made true by the listener.

[@jthek2000]

Fiction no, but historical fiction yes. Modular music remains revisionist history as patches are hard to duplicate.

[@TheRealAndyR]

A live performance, or a recording of one, is factual. Sequenced, remixed or other music not created in real-time is fictional - which is not to say that one is preferable to the other.

[@stephenspackman5573]

_For me_ music is not fiction, because I never perceive it as representational. I don't even get emotions unless there are lyrics. I can sometimes correlate it with surrealist poetry, in that it reaches into my brain and does something directly, bypassing all all the usual reflective checks. At others, it simply _entrains_ me and I end up synchronised or (better) desynchronised and thinking hard to stay above water. Or of course, it might fall flat. Sorry, Mozart. But I'm aware that others have different, and far more concrete experiences. To me, though, that's just synæsthesia, and I don't do synæsthesia (unless possibly Canadian and capitalised).

[@rockstar-technology]

It didn't really occur to me that there was a real question about whether or not music (without lyrics etc) could be considered representational, but poking around on Google it looks like there have been some academic attempts to make a case for it.

[@stephenspackman5573]

@@rockstar-technology I really do think different people experience it differently. My spouse reports really detailed mental imagery when I want to draw diagrams of rhythmic structure.

[@rockstar-technology]

@@stephenspackman5573 personally I do have musical synesthesia sometimes but I don’t really think that qualifies it as being representational

[@MikeFilemaker]

The only music that isn't fiction is particularly inspired improvisation.

[@roqeja]

Here’s my rambling take: fiction and nonfiction are dependent on the context and/or intent of whatever the thing is. Music is a subjective arrangement/perception of sound, all music can fit under the umbrella of sound/sensation but not all sound has to be music. Fiction and nonfiction are inherently floppy constructs, footage from a nonfiction film can still reflect whatever the lens captured but the edit/context in which the footage is seen construes whether its seen as fiction versus reality. Music is similar…?

[@JustinAshworthMusic]

Yes, and no, and yes. I guess insofar as you could ask, Is fiction fiction? The old saying that "fiction is a lie that tells the truth", music, indeed art in general, is that. So if music is fiction it is also not fiction. I don't think music has to tell/be a story, but it can, and often does, even without meaning. But the ways in which music "communicates" to us is not the way of images or words, its language is rooted in emotion not meaning (I am actually of the opinion music is not a language at all, but it has a language, or in fact it has several), and meaning is derived from how it makes us feel, thus contextual, like fiction. So if fiction is truth, and music is, can it be both fiction and truth at once? Whose truth?

[@seanmahanart]

I commented“art(fiction) is the lie that tells the truth” (from neitzsche) before I read yours:) I agree, and would also ask along with you- who’s truth?

[@TheProgManTimSTR]

Music is not fiction but phenomena. Yet all of our conceptualizations about it are fiction. Including the term "music" itself.

[@jebben8558]

"Three chords and the truth" requires that at least some music is qualifiably non-fiction. Woody Guthrie is non-fiction. If we follow that reasoning, works like Joe Meek's I Hear a New World could qualify as science fiction. - But that feels somehow cheap or incomplete. Is "Music" the moment of creation/discovery, or is it the documentation and encapsulation in physical formats? Is music alive or is it best kept as taxidermy? If we take Varese's word for it, music is sound organized across time. Then does music belong to humans? Surely there are shapes and ratios and relationships we have not yet learned to notice or appreciate in a universe made of vibrating matter. If music is "discovered" rather than "invented," then recordings of music are a form of peer review research, and rather than being true or untrue, music is a science. If music is "invented" then it must be artifice. However buildings can be a form of artifice as well, and that does not make architecture into a fiction.

[@b.c.slumber3694]

A question, that I am searching with my PhD research. Do you believe that patching on a modular synthesizer can carry the identity of the artist? More specifically, if the artist is queer, do you believe that queer identity can be expressed through the patching of a modular synthesizer?

[@AndrewGordonBellPerc]

Music is not fiction, but it is in the same category as fiction. Music is something that is not a telling of objective truths which we still find meaning in, as is fiction, but the means by which these pleasant lies teach us useful truth is quite different. Music can only work through allegory, only ever pointing toward the real, even a sampled sound of a trash bin can never "be" a trash bin, whereas in fiction the trash bin is a trash bin, it just happens to be a real trash bin in a world which is not real.

[@geoffknot]

music is not fiction. fiction is a type of story about people and things going on that never actually happened. music, on the contrary, is its own phyiscal thing that actually happens in the world. thus, music is a real physical thing in the world. music tells its own story. i think you could say that sheet music is fiction, if you wanted to.

[@lying-dalai]

I think you’re onto something with sheet music. As writing music is still music, could written music be fictional, as purely made up, not real? I do believe. Then the act of playing such music would be the same as an actor playing in a movie, which doesn’t render the fiction more real… I see a path here.

[@TRaddcliff]

very nice 👍🏾

[@paulmitchum8658]

Jack Sprat could play no fact, his wife could play no fiction. So between the two of them they pose no contradiction.

[@seanmahanart]

Nietzsche said “Art is the only lie that tells the truth” or something like that:)

[@fosferus]

no, even if the intention of the artist wasn't genuine. the art of sound evokes emotion, and i don't think our immediate experience in the moment can ever be fiction. perhaps in retrospect we might feel mislead, but the primacy of first hand experience is always irrefutable subjectivity.

[@hallospceboy]

While both music and fiction are created, music becomes a definition of what is happening in space, ie concrete. Where fiction is still not real. Are sci-fi movies that are adapted from written works still fiction? The telling of a story (that was made up) but now, takes up physical space in the form of words on paper!

[@speedingbluevan]

music is fiction. recorded music especially. as soon as you record something you're creating an imagined world or environment to be used as a vessel for transportation (getting 'lost in music') or as enhancement of another environment. even live music is fictional, because of the subjectivity of human experience. there is an absence of truth. the best music needs imagination to both create and enjoy, like the best written fiction

[@nilc]

I like to combine this thought with the idea of finding music is random sounds from the environment. I often listen to sounds, maybe traffic, maybe a machine such as the electric motor of a drill, maybe rocks being clonked together by waves on the beach, and find music and enjoyment from that

[@Nanotopia]

science fiction. if time is an illusion, which I believe it to be. Music can alter people's perception .. I have to think about this some more...

[@Starthief]

To answer the question with two questions, is poetry fiction? Is music poetry?

[@MarshMakesComics]

Music is not fiction because it’s not a story. Or maybe it is story. In that case it is fiction because it’s not non fiction. But wait what if it’s true? Ok nevermind I don’t know. Guess music is music. And a lot more.

[@paulmakl6282]

I would say No, music is not fiction. Music as a medium of expression can be used to make fiction but it is not fiction itself.

[@samanthajanesmith9591]

Music is fiction. It is something made up in our mind based on our world experience, we bring it into existence. In the same way an author brings a work of their imagination into the world. This of course does not mean that the music doesn't exist, it is real, it exists in space and time but it is still created by the mind. We dream it into reality.

[@gnolus]

Honsest question (with no right answer): Can music be true? I say yes, but I'm just some guy on the internet...

[@nilc]

@@gnolus Good question. What does it mean to be true? There are many concepts of "true", even within music. Some people believe that there is a sort of mathematical truth to music, the music of the spheres, and many other classical and non-classical patterns. Another sort of truth can be the pure emotional significance; listening to music is sometimes like a religious experience, where the "truth" is just experienced and known

[@TheScreamingFrog916]

Is it your contention that discomfort/confusion, is analogous to a lie? I’m not able to follow that logic.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

This comment may be intended to be a reply to a different thread?

[@TheScreamingFrog916]

@@MAKEN0ISEMUSICyes, it seems my reply is disconnected from the comment it was intended for. The original premise was, that if the music makes you uncomfortable or confused, it is fiction (a lie).

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

I wasn't able to find that comment (there are a lot of comments!) but I have to say I think I agree with you on this one!

[@tarasopanasiuk6164]

Yes and no, based on your perspective. It is a fiction as a way of storytelling and producing imaginative narratives. Good example are "cinema for the ears" and anecdotal pieces by Luc Ferrari that provide an opportunity for wandering through fictional worlds even if they are based on field recordings of real places. But it is as real as any other product of our perception, our senses reacting to intricate mechanism of receptors of our ear produce complex processes in our mind and body which felt pretty real. In the end, perhaps music is just breaking the line between real and imaginary...being a kind of transportive vehicle...and in the end, I don't have and answer, just thinking out loud

[@ChainsawCoffee]

I concur. Is music fiction? Yes, and no. Music is a story. Are stories fact or fiction? Depends on the story. A fictional story may be true. And it is a story. The story has to resonate through our personal filters. Perhaps the story just pings our filters, and the oscillation of that idea remains in our minds. Are pings oscillations? Yes! The resonance is a tuned feedback circuit, and the feedback is high enough to cause oscillation. Without the oscillation, there would be no ping. The only "problem" is changing the pitch of the ping according to western 12TET. Or maybe that's just not a problem at all...

[@jonesthestone]

That's techno krell.

[@temporoboto]

why stop pinging?