Atomic noise

Abstract

Stochastic, unvoiced sounds are abundant in music and musical sounds. Without irregularities, the music and sounds become dull and lifeless. This paper presents work on unvoiced sounds that is believed to be useful in noise music. Several methods for obtaining a gradual change towards static white noise are presented. The random values (Dice), random events (Geiger) and random frequencies (Cymbal) noise types are shown to produce many useful sounds. Atomic noise encompasses all three noise types, while adding much more subtle variations and more life to the noise. Methods for obtaining a harmonic sound from the noise are introduced. These methods take advantage of the stochastic nature of the model, facilitating a gradual change from the stochastic sound to the noisy harmonic sound. In addition, the frozen noise repetitions are shown to produce unexpected pitch jumps with a potentially useful musical structure.