There's no such thing as noise, only sound

August 7, 2005 7:41 PM

Making music entirely from non-musical things: McDonalds Happy Meals, Henry Kissinger, Bread, Salad Tosser, Fluorescent Lamps, the Bible, Hearts, Dot Matrix Printers, Photocopiers, Volkswagen [possibly nsfw], The Postal Service, Blank Tapes, Eiffel Tower, Deportation Orders [scroll down], Cakes, Cucumbers, Furniture [scroll down to #12], Skin, Roads, Underpasses, Frogs, Vinyl Run-Out Grooves, Radios, Natural Geophysical Phenomena, Carly Simon and other stuff.
posted by nylon (16 comments total)

totally interesting--what makes something music tho? I can hear music in the Xerox stuff, but not the McDonalds or Kissinger. Is any found sound music?
posted by amberglow at 8:38 PM on August 7, 2005

Cool post! Honestly, I don't know how you guys find the time to put these complicated posts together. Don't you have jobs? (Meant in an awestruck way, not as an insult.)
posted by fungible at 8:38 PM on August 7, 2005

Is any found sound music?

Ear of the beholder and all that.... AWESOME post.
posted by moonbird at 9:53 PM on August 7, 2005

Thank you.
posted by VanRoosta at 10:05 PM on August 7, 2005

Excellent, thanks nylon. (And I know some of those people. Well, one of them.)
posted by carter at 11:11 PM on August 7, 2005

Trying to download tracks at the plunderphonics site, but the links don't work. Anyone have any alternate locations, a torrent, etc?
posted by papakwanz at 11:31 PM on August 7, 2005

I love found sounds. Tank ewe, nylon.

papakwanz: Try searching soulseek. It's chock full of this kind of stuff. And most of these artists encourage sharing, as it's often the only distribution and marketing they can get besides word of mouth.

Well, John Cage's estate would probably have a hissy fit, but then they tried to have a hissy fit over the rights to 4'33", invoking it somewhere entirely unappropriate.
posted by loquacious at 2:19 AM on August 8, 2005

excellent post! lots of stuff i haven't heard before.

you were encouraged by matthew herbert's new 'plat du jour', right? excellent excellent stuff.

some other music from non-musical things:
boats, toys, and commercial radio.
posted by stokast at 5:47 AM on August 8, 2005

Carly Simon

Damn, that's harsh.
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:47 AM on August 8, 2005

I remember using candy boxes from "ferrara pan" candy as whistles. (Lemon heads, jawbreaks, etc.) The little boxes would vibrate and make a loud buzzing whistle if you blew into them just right. I bought a box the other day, and they've changed the way the boxes are made, so now they don't make any noise. Another piece of my childhood, stripped away...
posted by cosmicbandito at 6:37 AM on August 8, 2005

papakwantz, try detritus: they have an archive of Plunderphonics material. I didn't link them from the front page out of consideration for their bandwidth.

stokast, the Harbour Symphony is amazing - that's a new one to me. Good find! And I should also have mentioned Alan Lamb, who puts contact mics on telegraph pole systems in the Australian outback to create the world's biggest aeolian harp. His stuff really is astonishing, especially because there's no post-production or manipulation of raw material.

Amberglow, yes, it's all in the ear of the beholder. But to me, it's all music. As I write this, a police helicopter is circling overhead, the laptop cooling fan is whirring and bees are buzzing around the room, trying to find their way back outside. It sounds fantastic.
posted by nylon at 8:10 AM on August 8, 2005

Tom Waits to play the Cliffs of Dover.
posted by kenko at 10:16 AM on August 8, 2005

And to think you could have made a fortune with your fake diamond creating machine...
posted by ciderwoman at 1:33 PM on August 8, 2005

... and I can't find a streaming copy anywhere, but if you can, hunt down Music for an apartment and six drummers which does exactly what it says on the tin. Well, film can.
posted by ciderwoman at 1:47 PM on August 8, 2005

And to think you could have made a fortune with your fake diamond creating machine...

Nah, I'd rather just sit at home and listen to bees.
posted by nylon at 2:04 PM on August 8, 2005

"Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame."
-G.K. Chesterton

I consider the act of selecting the noise what makes it music. It's nature otherwise.
posted by too many notes at 1:13 AM on August 9, 2005