Blog theme of the week: The interaction of reverb and music through the ages

[valhallasound]

Hi all:

I've got an amazingly unpopular blog post* up about the acoustics of concrete stadiums, and how they affect hair metal. This is my softball introduction to this week's theme, which is the interaction of reverb and music through the ages. I will mostly be concerning myself with super huge reverbs, and may get into the transcendental qualities of these.

Anyway, keep checking into http://valhalladsp.wordpress.com. Or your RSS feed, or whatever they are - every time I've clicked on an RSS feed link, Firefox opens up, like, 400 new windows, so I don't know what that's all about.

I'm still coding as I write this stuff, BTW. I'm porting my current algorithm over to Juce in the next few days, where I will do the final tweaks of the sound, and add a nice GUI. After that, copy protection, and out to beta testers. It may take a little bit, though.

Sean

*Seriously, I haven't had this few readers of a new post in a long while.

[valhallasound]

New blog post up about Chavin (in Peru), and the theories about how the reverb there may have been used as part of a sensory overload plan to get people on board with the religion practiced by the priest caste.

It's weird how these Anthro theories are far less provable than the audio DSP theories I come up with nowadays. If I get an idea for an algorithm, or a way of recoding things that can improve performance, I can code things up and test it within a few hours to a few days. These archaeo-acoustic theories need more advanced technology to be proven or dis-proven - like, say, a time machine. Still, it's fun stuff to think about.

Sean

[Cordelia]

I read a book years ago about music in the middle ages, and the part reverb played in creating harmonies that were otherwise forbidden by the church.
Interesting blog topic, Sean.

[valhallasound]

I read a book years ago about music in the middle ages, and the part reverb played in creating harmonies that were otherwise forbidden by the church.
Interesting blog topic, Sean.

I will be covering that next week. I forgot about harmonies being forbidden by the church - I'll be sure to put that in there. Thanks for the reminder.

The idea of reverb creating harmonies has a LOT to do with stuff I have been working on in the non-blog world lately...

[justin3am]

I don't often follow blogs but I have found yours to be fascinating! And it's presented in a way that is entertaining enough to keep my interest which is an incredible feat! Thanks.

[ZenPunkHippy]

That was a great read, thanks. Looking forward to the next instalment

Peace,
Andy.

[hollowsun]

Medieval churches and cathedrals were designed to have long, ethereal reverbs, especially those with domes.

The Rotunda of Mosta has the third largest unsupported dome in the world and has the choir on a balcony in the dome and the long, lush reverb sound created when they sing is beautifully ethereal and simply angelic and seems to go on forever. Interestingly, the reverb qualities in the main body of the church are not so extreme so the choir can provide this ethereal, heavenly sound while the priest can address the congregation with, effectively, a different reverb setting.

There's a cathedral here where I live which, in the middle ages, added (over a build period of several decades and exorbitant cost) the Lady Chapel as an extension to the knave simply to add a few more seconds of reverb to the sound of the choir.

How better to get your congregation to submit to the will of the religion than create a place of worship that sounds like heaven?!


Steve

[valhallasound]

How better to get your congregation to submit to the will of the religion than create a place of worship that sounds like heaven?!

Which raises a few questions:

Why are long reverbs traditionally associated with the sound of heaven or the spiritual world?

And is this a universal cultural trait? Or is it specific to Western culture, and the Christian tradition of cathedrals?

Sean

[ZenPunkHippy]

Which raises a few questions:

Why are long reverbs traditionally associated with the sound of heaven or the spiritual world?

I think that's easy to answer. Listening to the reverb fade out to "infinity" stills the mind, in a meditative kind of way, and a still mind / stillness is where heaven (for want of a better term) exists. In other words, while listening to the reverb fade out, you are not thinking about anything else, just experiencing the eternal beauty of the present moment.

Not terribly different to listening to a nice reverb or delay unit fade out, which might explain why people are so picky about the sound. The best reverbs do not have any unwanted noise, and so the listener is able to achieve peace until the last moment. Otherwise the mind kicks in with "oh that's not right" or some other criticism, which might be translated to "damn, it didn't get me to that special place".

And is this a universal cultural trait? Or is it specific to Western culture, and the Christian tradition of cathedrals?

Not so easy to answer. But I would say yes it's a universal trait, stillness of mind is appreciated / revered by all cultures.

Peace,
Andy.

[ZenPunkHippy]

Another interesting question raised by your post, and the professors research:

Is there any evidence to suggest the structures were used in conjunction with psychedelic substances to induce fear in "the common people" (or anyone else)? For the purpose of control?

If we look at our current culture, some people are prepared to use technology in combination psychedelic drugs in order to be as high as possible, for as long as possible. Week long parties in the middle of nowhere with 100K speaker systems, lasers and lights, music and dancing. Perhaps the shaman were simply using the best technology at their disposal for a similar purpose? To push themselves as far out of their minds as possible?

Peace,
Andy.

[valhallasound]

Is there any evidence to suggest the structures were used in conjunction with psychedelic substances to induce fear in "the common people" (or anyone else)? For the purpose of control?

To me, this is the big question. There is evidence of psychedelic use, and evidence of social stratification (i.e. marked inequalities in cultural artifacts and food waste in different residential structures), but it take a pretty big conceptual leap from this evidence to the idea that the psychedelics were used to induce fear and/or awe in other people.

Elsewhere in Mesoamerica, the evidence points towards the priests themselves using the psychedelics. In Classic Mayan culture, there are depictions of the rulers performing crazy blood letting rituals, and evidence of psychedelic mushroom use. In reasonably current mushroom rituals, the shaman and the other participants in the ritual would take the drugs together.

Professor Rick's theory that the "subjugated" were the ones taking the drugs, and then subjected to sensory overload by the ruling priests, would certainly be a marked break from the current understanding of such rituals in the Americas. Plus, San Pedro is nasty tasting stuff. Subjugated or not, it would be like drinking down a big bowl full of detergent, and this seems like a difficult thing to force a bunch of people to do.

The "vision quest" is a pretty consistent theme in the Americas. In my part of North America, it was usually taken by young adolescent males, where the efforts to obtain visions were strictly drug free, and focused on things like hypothermia, hitting the skin with stinging nettles, that sort of thing. These sort of endurance-based vision quests were usually solo, with the already initiated not participating in the hardships.

Elsewhere (mainly in Central and South America) people would engage in group-oriented drug experiences, where the "initiated" or experienced would lead the neophytes, but would be taking the drugs as well. I don't know of any examples of the "subjugated" taking drugs while the priests/leaders did not, but I haven't spent a lot of time studying this in the last 15 years, so I am admittedly unaware of the most current research on the subject.

I may talk about such stuff next week, but I need to cover the CCRMA angle. Which is tricky, as Professor Rick was my adviser in college, and a really nice guy to boot. Plus, I've taken classes from some of the CCRMA people who went down to Peru, and done business with others (while they were at Universal Audio). So I will probably keep my opinions out of the blog posts, but I will certainly encourage discussion of any issues in the comments sections.

My old friend from college (a fellow Anthro major) and I had an email exchange earlier today. His quote:

"I think you might be describing a good portion of the discovery process to any and all theoretical breakthroughs in the non-observational Liberal Arts-- well, anthropology and philosophy, at least. Where studying a cultural frame-of-reference is really just an excuse to get really f**king high."

Sean

[valhallasound]

I just put up a new blog post, about the work of the team from CCRMA at Chavin:

http://valhalladsp.wordpress.com/2010/0 ... e-huantar/

Sean Costello

[valhallasound]

In the last few blog posts, I have talked about the 45 second reverb in the cistern at Fort Worden, as well as early tape loop work. It's interesting (to me, at least) to look at the overlap between these two, with Pauline Oliveros as both an early pioneer of tape looping, and a current proponent of recording inside of spaces with unusual reverberant qualities.

Not sure what I'm going to write tomorrow. I'm trying to get my next plugin out the door. BTW, pretty much every single one of the posts of the last 3 weeks is tied into the plugin. Hint hint.

Sean

[lynxx]

The "vision quest" is a pretty consistent theme in the Americas. In my part of North America, it was usually taken by young adolescent males, where the efforts to obtain visions were strictly drug free, and focused on things like hypothermia, hitting the skin with stinging nettles, that sort of thing. These sort of endurance-based vision quests were usually solo, with the already initiated not participating in the hardships.

I have heard the same thing, that no substances other than tobacco were used by North American tribes, geographically up to the desert (modern South-West US), where we begin to see some other substances in use.

However, if you think about it, many of the tribes in the Mid-West were actually relocated from the East, so their knowledge of many of the plants growing mainly east of the Mississippi would not have been of much use in the new environment and perhaps lost.

[valhallasound]

]I have heard the same thing, that no substances other than tobacco were used by North American tribes, geographically up to the desert (modern South-West US), where we begin to see some other substances in use.

From my spotty memory of my Anthro studies, the substances used in the modern SouthWest US were kinda harsh. Some beans that were fairly poisonous, maybe jimsonweed, that sort of thing. As far as I know, none of the US or Canadian natives were using plants that would be considered "entheogens" today. There were some stories of Ojibwa (sp? probably not the modern term) using Amanita muscaria, but I don't know if this was conclusively proven, or more of a post-Castaneda rumor.

Once you get into northern Mexico, you had peyote, and then mushrooms further south. By the time you get into South America, it is more a question of what WASN'T used. There are some compounds, such as ayahuasca, where the individual components are relatively inactive, and only work as a combination. This seems like it suggests a stronger cultural tendency for experimentation with the natural world, or maybe it is simply due to the greater biodiversity of the area. I used to have some theories about this, but most of them seem fairly reductionist to my current self. And, quite frankly, kind of offensive. The Anthro professors I studied under were very interested in cultural evolution, memes, and all that, but tended to approach all of the native beliefs as an arbitrary cultural construct, that could be explained away by power relations between people and that sort of thing. Not terribly respectful towards the people being "studied," which is part of why I drifted away from Anthropology.

Not sure what drugs and culture have to do with Valhalla DSP plugins. Probably everything.