Sonic Dimensions

Someone mentioned that so far my blog has been more about audio than music. This is a very valid point, and I would say part of the reason I started this blog was to help myself get out of these loops of obsessing over sound quality, and getting down to what's really important-what the sounds are trying to convey. One of the ways I have been thinking about music lately is in dimensions. Time, frequency (or pitch) and volume seem to be the three dimensions of music as length, width, and height are in geometry. In traditional notation, time is represented in beats per minute, and the beats divided up into a time signature. Pitch is than represented by notes on the staff, tied to the tempo of the piece. Volume (or dynamics) at it's most basic is either piano or forte, but this could be an entire other discussion in itself.

That is in traditional musical notation, made for acoustic instruments. But when it comes to the main topic of this blog, digital audio, it becomes possible to control all of these aspects of sound. This can be thought of as either the greatest freedom, or an unimaginable prison. Time in digital audio is a function of the sample rate of the audio, measured in samples per second. Each sample is a tiny fragment of a waveform, which makes up all the various frequencies and their dynamic levels within a piece of music. This is a fascinating process that I'm still trying to wrap my head around.

A good starting point to conceptualize this process might be white noise, which is produced by generating random numbers at the given sample rate. So 44 100 random numbers between -32,768 to 32,767 for CD quality white noise. Everything is homogeneously random, no discernible pitch, no rhythmic/temporal characteristics, or dynamics. A constant tone such as a dial tone could be thought of as one dimensional, being a constant pitch with no tempo or dynamic change. Or a constant rhythm with no pitch and no dynamic variation. Adding another dimension might come in the form of varying one other aspect of the other two. It starts to get sticky here... but bear with me.

We've all heard someone play mary had a little lamb over a touch tone phone, right? Well compare this rudimentary musical performance to the dialtone, in comparison is has a variation in pitch that is recognizable as a melody, even though the tones do not exactly correspond with musical pitches. There is also a rhythmic component that accompanies the melody, making it recognizable, but there is no dynamic variation between the pitches. To be fully three dimensional music needs to have this dynamic component. A way of achieving this might be to sample the tones and than play them back in your DAW, thus breathing some life into this otherwise flat performance via the magic of MIDI.

What the fourth dimension of sound might be is something that I can only really guess at... Actually I know it, but it's a secret and if I told you your face would melt ala Raiders of the Lost Ark... It's also the secret ingredient in KFC's patented blend of herbs and spices. I'll leave this here as a clue: