Hint: Music Helps to Know the Difference
By Ryan Zambrano
Some people wake to the noise of birds chirping with leaves rustling. While getting ready for their day, we hear the sound of the shower head. During breakfast, the popping sound of the toaster goes off. Driving to work comes with the car engine revving, the scraping of tires on the asphalt, and the honking in heavy traffic contributing to the soundscape of the morning commute’. Unfortunately, others start their day with harmful noises, such as those of war. Fear strikes at the sound of an explosion or shots popping in the distance. Cries of the wounded begging for help. We live in a world of noise, beauty, annoyance, and distress. For centuries, music has been inspired by this world of sound. By taking what seems to be just noises and systematically organizing them. Some musical works may be aesthetically pleasing, while other pieces are not. As music seeks to mimic or transform noise, we have come to know noise—and the world— in a more profound sense.
The Italian composer Luigi Russolo (1885-1947)was an early champion of noise-music whose works mixed different sounds made by special devices or instruments. In a 1913 letter titled The Art of Noise, Russolo writes to a fellow musician, Balilla Pratella, of the need to revolutionize music through “noise-sound”—which “paralleled by the increasing proliferation of machinery sharing in human labor.” Russolo recognized that this new music style reflected how modern society was changed by modernity. Noise-Music is a particular example of how music mimics the noise, but this can also be applied to other forms of music. Later in the letter, Rusollo notes that this is why we receive “infinitely more pleasure imaging combinations of the sounds.” We hear noise daily; it is inescapable, but music brings awareness to sound itself. When a person listens to music, it should be a pleasurable experience, an experience made from a combination of noises. People come to know and appreciate noise more through the music. Music allows people to feel specific emotions or even convey certain ideas. This enables people to realize what real effect noise has on themselves.
There are many examples of how music attempts to engage with the noises of our world. American composer John Cage (1912-1992) became a innovator by opening music toward noise in unprecedented—even radical— ways. In 1959, he performed his work Water Walk, which was made up of objects around an average person’s house, for example, radios, a toaster, and a bathtub. Using these items, he would make noises systematically, telling how long and when to make each sound. This is what noise-music is. Music assembles the noises we hear in our everyday lives, which, by extension, reflects on those lives. Nearly none of our daily activities occur without some kind of noise (even sleep). These noises shape us as people. Noise impacts the way we think and do. Noise is part of our existence, and for Cage, this existence was existentially musical.
If Cage proposed an extreme musical aesthetic with his all-and-everywhere sounds, the question whether noise is good or bad remains valid: noise can be disruptive and destructive. People should be careful with harmful noise and seek noise that is beneficial. Understandably, any distinction between good and bad noise can be difficult, given the inclination to control and curb noises—bad noise—that people hear. In his 1985 book Noise: The Political Economy of Music the French economic and social theorist Jaques Attali writes that noise has the potential to be subversive and that it can bring about change. This is why knowing the differences between bad and good noise can serve as a way of analyzing human behavior and understanding social norms.
Just as noise can come from good places, noise can come from bad ones. Certain noise-music is created to represent the demonic. The band Whitehouse specializes in a type of music called Power Electronics. The group creates disturbing pieces with names such as “Ripper Territory,” named after the serial killer Jack the Ripper. These songs contain very harsh, unsettling noises and very vulgar lyrics. An example of an album is Colour of a Man’s Skin. This album includes many songs that have racial slurs in them and propagate stereotypes. If these songs use extremely grating noises, the intent was to make them sound abhorrent. Included in these songs are sharp, loud, and other unpleasant sounds. In his 2023 book Becoming Noise Music, Stephen Graham wonders whether the “good thoughtful intentions behind such works” actually justifies them. Even though such works create noise to raise awareness of, say, the horrors of crime, he asks, “Are they worth the risk?” Perhaps not. This kind of music might be found enjoyable for people with destructive ideologies, reinforcing their beliefs. Music holds immense power to influence. Even in a legal environment of free expression, individual listeners might want to be cautious with what they listen to.
An interesting example of how music shows us the difference between noise and music are the sounds of cells. Jim Gimzewsk, a professor Chemistry of Biochemistry at UCLA, recorded the frequency of yeast cells and amplified it, claiming that when yeast was in alcohol, the increasing pitch of vibration made it sound as if “it screams. It doesn’t like it.” This raises the question whether such noise is in the ear of the listener or whether yeast can be hear to have emotions and experience distress. Yet we have an eerie feeling when we hear a sound like screaming. Anne Niemetz and Andrew Pelling complied audio samples of yeast “screaming” so we can hear for ourselves. In any case, already with the organization of these samples, one could argue that the resulting sounds are “music” that create a sense eerieness and may even remind some of a horror film. Context helps turn noise into music; with music, we can understand and even appreciate noise.
We live in a world of noise; nearly everything creates a sound. Through music, we can get to know noise in ways that might help us differentiate. The difference between music and noise is not necessarily one of a kind but rather a degree. Music is made to guide us through noise and walk us through time.