Musicbox

A three dimensional environment must consist of several properties to convince the brain on it’s reality. First being depth and the stereo parallax that goes along with having two eyes to see a stereoscopic image. The second being shading and how light strikes an object to create a wide range of tones throughout it’s structure to further enhance it’s contour and shape. These two properties may fool the brain to the many visible aspects of our 3d world but the third sense that often goes unnoticed is sound. Just as our eyes may see two different images to create one stereo view, our ears work to create a soundscape that provides our brains with a 3 dimensional acoustic array.

The basic action of observing depth through sound is by listening to the natural reverb that is created by the setting your in. Reverb is the effect of sound waves bouncing back from its source to the wall or surrounding object to your ear. Close your eyes for a minute. You may not hear a reverb as saturated as the kind you would hear in most contemporary vocal music or the delay provided from the Yankee stadium announcements but it’s still there. Your ears can not only tell you much about the size of the room your in but also about how close you are to a wall in that room.

Taking this property it makes sense that an algorithm of sound bounce back and reverb should be implemented in any 3D environment. Imagine constructing a virtual cathedral, complete with the tallest ceilings and most detailed stained glass windows. But when adding a choir’s chant or Bach organ fugue leaving out the sound it would create in a structure that cavernous. When we are closer to a sound source in a larger room obviously the sound is louder then the reverb. As we move away from it the mix between the sound source and the reverb it generates becomes more even until eventually we hear the reverb louder then the actual source. As this happens the clarity and pitch of the source also changes. A perfect b flat after bouncing around some walls would loose its perfection and go flat or lower pitched.

Having a dynamic soundscape, to me, is more important then a perfection of texture or visual accuracy. Many composers from Baroque throughout contemporary eras have tried to exploit the multidimensional aspect of sound and space. Starting from the 1600s with Italian and French choral masters as Palestrina, Leonin and Perotin. During their high masses, that took place in gigantic cathedrals, these composers would place choirs in different sections and levels of the church. The effect of which created distension and chaos between the fighting choirs. This technique added a new aspect to the counterpoint of the time. Often there would be masses for 2-4 different opposing chiors in the church.

To later days before the onset of heavy electronic music composer Charles Ives capitalized on this idea. His music, although never publicly heard for much of his life utilized ideas of chance and randomness, much like John Cage. Ives had an affection for parades and the Sousa/brass bands that marched down the road one after the other. He especially enjoyed the sound that was created while one band’s march would interfere with the next band a little ways down the road. The two pieces of music played together provided a cacophony of chance and rhythm that Ives loved. Much of his music encompassed tonal and rhythmic elements that would sound much like the two marching bands clashing into one another.

My music box seeks to create more dynamic soundscapes using random movement along with different clips of music. I want to create a virtual parade of marching bands like Charles Ives would have wanted to hear. Although the music coming out of the band doesn’t have to be a march or any other tonal piece, the real music is created in how the objects are oriented. They don’t have to follow one another in a straight line but can float, fly, move slowly and fastly around the musical field. I hope to in some way add the perception of space due to reverb and make that reverb change with the space. I want to explore a whole new idea of random music in a virtual 3D world.