Meanings, Messages & Signals
LIVING SOUNDS
What is that “live component” which all recordings filter, and which CD recordings effectively eliminate? How can we know what it is we are looking for? We must begin again at the beginning. Find the item which was originally eliminated from the scientific study of sound. What was it? Feelings? Sensations? Is sound therefore much more than a mere succession of pressure waves in air?
Those who have spent any time at all listening to artists have also recognized a continual radiance of moods and images which proceed directly through recordings. Familiarity with records has exposed the listener to a veritable tide of such mysterious para-acoustic signals. The miserable failure of CD’s to reproduce that “live feel” reveals a basic inability in acoustic physics to comprehend the real source of what it is to be “alive”.
Digital recordings are interpretations of sounds, not true recordings of sound. Coded streams are interruptive streams. Assigning numerical values to a tonal stream has no means for encoding the emotive signal. Failure to recognize basic energy transactions which occur during live performance produces a wide gap between the performer and the resultant recording.
The gap is one which is non-acoustic in origin. This being true, the mere improvement of audio technique will never bring us closer to the feeling of “live performance”. The signals which we seek are not acoustic at all. They are a distinct domain of energies which manage to encode themselves along with the recorded vibrations. Somehow, material media can absorb these strange emotive signals. A fortuitous accident of tremendous import.
AURIC PROJECTTVTTY
While not giving listeners the promised “live performance feel”, there do remain certain residual sensations which mysteriously do manage to “leak through” certain kinds of recordings. How may this be comprehended? Consider the manner in which recording sessions are arranged.
Performers project whole and meaningful expressions into their surrounding space. Phonographic recording systems were specifically designed to capture only the acoustic components of otherwise broad expressive projections. Recording systems truly filter away more than audio engineers have ever imagined. Despite this filtration process, the obvious ability of records and tapes in transmitting certain degrees and species of emotive and visual components must be comprehended.
The emotional projections from a performer represent an energy which has never been addressed by acousticians. The human sensorium is sensitive to radiances which have never been addressed by the quantitative researcher. These emotive radiances are powerful. Notes alone, when graced by the heart of a violinist do not make tears flow. Some para-acoustic component entwines the heart-felt notes and reaches our innermost being with their’ emotive message.
PARA-ACOUSTIC STORAGE
Emotive and eidetic components can actually be stored in material media. The process is mysterious, inspiring lofty new technologies which have already been developed in their primitive form. Both visceral impressions and eidetic visions are recorded in media by this strange and wonderful process. Once recorded, emotions themselves are frequently, and powerfully, projected from record media. Such signals project as discharges from the recordings with strength dependent on the medium alone.
Such phenomena evidence interactions which are truly auric in nature. The sunny warmth of a recorded smile exceeds the mere physiological modifications accompanying the elicitation of a smile. Emotive distinctions may not be quantitatively analyzed as a complex shift in “overtones”, the result of modified vocal musculatures. There are more varieties of recording-projected sensations which exceed the acoustic signals, being recorded during “silent moments”.
The predominant mood or transient emotive attitude of performers may be discerned by careful listening to recordings. These signals are found despite the sounds. They are among the sounds which have been recorded, but they do not rely upon the sounds at all. The evidence of “silent” emotive storage on recording media has been studied with repeated affirmations. Artistic emotional states have been recorded in absence of song or speech. In such instances, one senses the emotional expressions of recording artists by some strange “silent” projectivity.
It is possible to “track” a performer’s mood in between vocal expressions; the mood being a residuum, a continuum between long silent intervals. There are more than emotive species among these para-acoustic signals. In some rare manner, the “room space” and “mood” of a place can be recorded on magnetic tape. The recording medium manages the capture of eidetic discharges directly from performers. Playbacks represent an eidetic memory system by which percipients may recall completely forgotten thoughts and prevailing moods of a time long past.
These emotive energies project with strength during silent intervals, showing that they are indeed distinct from the acoustic signals. These incidentals have been noticed by sensitive inspections of older recordings, analog media demonstrating surpassing ability in recording such signals. In what manner are “silent smiles” and “foreign landscapes” recorded on magnetic tape? Or emotions? How are they recorded on magnetic tape? Where are they stored in the medium? Do they permeate the medium in ways which have nothing at all to do with particulate matter? Do they surpass quantum artifacts? Are the fantasies which recorded music inspires mere mental associations, or are they tunnel-like glimpses of ancient scenes?
The responsively, storage, and retrieval of such para-acoustic components by recording systems has never been properly or thoroughly addressed by audio engineers; nor indeed can it be. The components of which we speak have no precedent in the recording arts. Nevertheless, these purely emotional expressions do “record”. And they record best on certain media, most poorly on others.
Recording media never reproduce the emotive projectivity of performers with equivalent amplitude. It is obvious that recording systems vary in their emotive-responsive ability. It is also obvious that recording media display varying ability in storing emotive energies. Emotive energies of performance are therefore largely wasted on most recording media.
ARTICULATE SOUND
There is an unsuspected environment which suffuses utterances and instrumental sounds. Sounds are pulsating volumetric continuities, having incredible information encoded in the spaces through which they spread. When properly examined in volumetric extent, it is found that sound spreads in a vegetative manner. Sound cannot be simply “sampled” from a point-site. While this quantitative treatment succeeds in retrieving mere pressure-wave information, it fails to accurately discern the patternate qualities which flood space whenever utterance is made.