Conversation on psychoactoustics?

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Is this something people are up for here or is it too brainy and overcooked? I do get an interest often enough, regarding people who are really deep into other genres or hate genres I'm into, what it is they see or don't see, what it is that I see or don't see, etc.. I guess its kind of like looking into notions of dream analysis and psychology to an extent just because, I think it goes into a larger more subconscious or perhaps structural realm. Not so much what you see but perhaps why you see it or how we all make associations via different mechanisms?

I have some ideas I'm up for presenting but I've gotta go pretty soon - just thought I'd drop the offer to see if anyone here is up for a thread. Any takers?

perhaps. DOn't have the time as of right now though.

Sounds interesting, I'm in.

Sounds interesting!

i'll try to keep up with ya.

Sounds interesting I've never heard of it before. It seems to be that antisocials like rock or rap, whereas paranoids like dance or classical. Traditionalists like classical, hystrionics like pop or everything to some degree, the younger generation often like pop or mainstream music maybe because they haven't decided what they like yet. Few seem to like jazz or is it the older generation mainly? It seems to be entirely personality based though.

But what about aspies? I'm concerned only with trance, chillout, classical and whatever sounds good or is relaxing, I base things on direct sensory input.

Psycho acoustics!! ! Love it!! !

Let's start with Charles Manson--wannabe mass murderer, had a mental stranglehold on his followers, MASTER manipulator. Also played acoustic guitar, sang, and wrote his own songs.

I wouldn't classify myself as a psycho acoustic since lately I spend more of my time with electronic music. But I could play a mean clarinet back in the day and got really good at multiphonics, timbre variations, quarter-tones/microtonality, absurd pitch bends, circular breathing, and similar kinds of downright strange sound effects on clarinet, some of which sounded more "electronic" than acoustic.

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Ok, just kidding, I know about psychoacoustics. One thing that totally unnerves me is the tendency of piano technicians to tune the highest notes on the piano WAY sharp. The reasoning is that it "sounds" better in tune with notes in the middle of the keyboard. I do understand the concept, but that doesn't mean they have to be tuned 7/8 of a semitone sharp!

Other things I enjoy with electronic music have to do with taking an instrument and repurposing it for other things. I have a Roland aJuno1 that I press into service from time to time. For my most recent big project, I created a sample bank of percussion sounds that I made on the Roland. It's fascinating to me how you can take filtered noise and suddenly have hi-hats, snare drums, and kick drums that really are convincing.

And then there's oversampling in audio reproduction. The synth workstation I use when composing and producing demos does not use any kind of anti-aliasing when it plays back samples, and the FM synthesis is 8-bit. And yet it's a great-sounding instrument. So oversampling vs. aliasing--all these issues on how we perceive sound and differences between analog and digital.

Look forward to seeing more on the topic.

I guess here's a good entry-level question I can put out there for you guys. What surprises you about how other people seem to receive music - ie. what they seem to hear or not hear, what you think is responsible in terms of what they can or can't tack it down to in their own internal realm? I'm sure a lot of you have genres that you may see yourselves perhaps feeling more than most people around you, you may have described how it is you see it or not, or you may have a sense of what the difference is between yourself vs someone who hates your genre?

gosh, that's a toughie. i see no similarities between myself and all the other people i have encountered in my decades taking up space. for this reason, i can only say what affects me, i have not a clue what makes anybody else tick. or tock. music can literally entrance me and make me get up and move in various weird ways. music can make me cry despite a total lack of any specific conscious emotions. basically, i like what i like and i can't properly explain why i like things other than to point out very superficial things such as:

*i like the harmonies, the more ethereal the better;
*the melodies are melodious, i.e., catchy or evocative;
*the backbeat [gotta have a backbeat] makes me move despite my self-conscious self;
*there is a certain primal je'n sais quoi that just sends me.

there are many deep mechanics going on beneath my conscious awareness that are the real drivers of what particular music draws me in and keeps me captive to its song.

conversely, when it comes to music which turns me off, i can only offer surface reasons for the displeasure i feel when somebody blasts away with the rap and hiphop and the lion's share of the rest of post-80s music, such as:

*it strikes me as discordant and violent;
*the rhythm is anapestic and harsh;
*the melody line is absent or harsh or hackneyed;
*the whole tamale is jejune, or at the very least, alien and unresonant.
but there is a bunch of iceburg beneath the surface which are the fundamental reasons this particular music turns me off.

i hope this was something along the lines of what the OP was interested in hearing about. correct me if i am mistaken.

no aunt, that was definitely on point.

I think I'll probably get into my thoughts and feelings on it over several posts. Being into the type of electronic that I am, what seems to surprise me a lot is that there are, or least have been for much of my life, been so many people I've met who literally can't tack it down to to anything. It seems like they get stuck at Night At The Rocksbury or The Matrix and have some stilted view that its either all funky cheese disco, emo, or something too alien/ Matrix-like to relate to unless your a geek.

I tend toward stuff that is ultra-electronic but then cooked down to have much more accoustic properties, I tend to like darker sounds (not headbanging per say but deeper/darker) mainly because they become so much more fascinating - its like something accoustically possible, perhaps sounds similar to accoustic instruments but doing impossible things from that end or bass lines that are something between speedbumps on the highway and ship horns (ie. yes - I like my hoover/reese when its done right). Adding that to very mood driven almost classical or religious motifed music delivers a lot of punch for me.

Also, with that type of organic/gritty electronic, I can be driving on a highway through the country side (case in point - occasional work in Pennsylvania and driving along I76 or I60), have a seamless mix of blacktop, concrete, hills, nature, open sky, and the moods therein seem to fit that atmosphere well, city, suburbs, I also feel 'real life' emotion in most of it and I think its delivered in ways that some acoustic artists can achieve but for whatever reason acoustic artists won't take the right routes as often. This is also why I've never understood the complaint lots of people have of "Can we turn this off? It would be great if I'm high but - I'm not". I don't know what they think they need to see or if its just beating on their conscious state in ways they don't like? I just feel something that's like any other genre in expressing human emotional realities rather than Martian, Alpha Centauri, Umpa Lumpa, or whatever odd place that their minds force them to posit electronic.

As for genres I don't like - there's not a lot that blocks me out. If I hear ska or Flogging Molly's/Dropkick Murphy's type stuff - I can visualize the culture, the place the atmosphere, I get it. Hip hop - it can wax epic some times and I can understand where a lot of its coming from, a good beat can give me chills and even if the words might seem a little heavy on doves and spinners - no trouble, for some reason the lyrical ideas don't crush it down for me as much as rock when the vocals are in poor taste. Same with folk, blues, punk, almost anything, its musical texture first and how well the vocalist matches up. I think the only thing I can say I dislike a majority of or just put up with is country - and I don't even think its that I hate the accoustics, its more like I'd describe it as something of a Mennonite music culture - ie. its a closed community with a big chip on its shoulder to other genres and other types of people, that and pop seem to have that the most and its why I tend to tune it out or say that its music better left for when I'm drunk.


I'll stop right there for a minute. I may give some supporting examples of things I'm thinking off of Youtube or thinks I liken one way or another, I already wrote a book here which I hate doing in one post anymore.

i wonder if i'm the only one who has a pronounced dislike of monophonic sound? listening to it over headphones makes my ears feel like there's something wrong with them, like the sound is being sucked into the middle of my brain.

I think it might be because of human physiology. Naturally, we hear all sounds in stereo, because of the (relatively small) time delay between sounds arriving at one ear then the other. Having headphones over our ears, and having both ears receiving the same signal at the same time, is therefore very unnatural indeed.

The effect could be replicated by having both ears in exactly the same position on the body.

Woo, looks like my sound engineering course wasn't entirely a waste.

wow. impressive.
does anybody else's ears get the feeling of going deaf after listening to bandwidth-restricted audio, as from an antique recording? mine do.
digressing a bit into the field of psychovisual phenonena, i also have a hard time with monochrome [black and white or shades of gray] photography or video. it makes my eyes feel like something is wrong with them, like i've suddenly become totally colorblind.
i guess i just have a hard time with any reductive representation of reality.