Week 10 - Full Body Listening

Week 5 - Rejected Sounds

Ok so first off—just to be frank—this is not going to be quite my usual level of journaling because I’ve honestly just been like waist deep in developing for the final project for the last few weeks. BUT nonetheless here we go…

My initial idea this week was essentially to make a mix of tracks—cut everything above 20hz—and then play them through a speaker sitting on my chest. I was curious to see what levels of energy different types of music seemed to impose vibrationally without any audible (as in processing via my ears) info. Issue was—my lil JBL Charge couldn’t possible generated enough bass to pull this off. So I started thinking about what I’d need to get these vibrations from it, and the answer was basically higher hz cutoffs—but this got me thinking a bit more about an assumption I was making about deafness—given so many deaf folks can hear higher than 20hz. So I got curious what it would be like to experience the same track slowly gaining more and more audible frequencies. This would work as an exercise to really close listen audibly and vibrationally to the experience of music at differing hearing abilities (or at least the closest I could get to it with what I have at home).

I chose to listen to Kendrick Lamar’s DNA as my main track—since I felt (and could spectrally see via Ableton) that it had really good sub-bass vibrations as well as a lot of melodic tone in the lower registers as well. I repeated it a bunch of times, and on each repetition upped the hertz cutoff by a factor of 2. Starting with 20 hertz (upper limit of infrasound), then 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, 1280, 2560, 5120, 10240, and finally 20000 hertz (lower limit of ultrasound, even tho interestingly Ableton goes up to 22k in it’s EQ) with a limiter on to not destroy my ears from bass distortion, and adjusted my gain on the first two passes (+12 and +6db to emulate being in front of larger speakers rather than headphones or a tiny speaker like I have). I then tried listened to the whole thing alternating my headphones and my speaker sitting on my chest laying—the whole time really wishing I had one of those bass vests for this. Overall I found it to be an extremely engaging experience that really made me appreciate all the incredibly different ways the song could be experienced based on cutoff—there’s so many interesting aspects that become highlighted depending on the cutoff—and it kind of also made me wonder, not knowing what Kendrick’s hearing abilities are, what it sounds like to him. What’s the experiential focal point for him when he hears it—now considering how different it can be for different people. I’d personally like to go listen to more of my favorite tracks in this stepped up mix—it felt like hearing new songs all over again. Hopefully one day I can experience the pure vibrational force of it on some speakers, or with a vest.

The following are my notes throughout listening:

It’s near impossible to hear without some massive sound system anywhere below 40hz which is where a beat starts to materialize with those 808s—I’d describe a cranked 20 or 40 as sounding almost like some sort of internal ear feeling of being underwater and ears popping or a general jus pushing of muscles and the drum in your ear.

At 80 it’s a little more possible hear a beat just slightly

You get a real sense of the beat and melody, even with no lyrics (although you could read them to get the vibe) around 160hz.

In the 320 range you start to hear kendrick’s voice slightly and it’s got such a cool quality, almost like a downsampled track and its got really rhythm to it almost like a synth—and that is super cool. When it moves around and pans you really experience that nicely

640 is where you can just make out what Kendrick’s saying if your read along. “DNA” is clear especially. You can also really hear those synths in the mids.

1280 clearer again and then at 2560 it sounds like a song sampled at 64kpbs—that’s the best I can describe it. You can hear it like it’s a bass playback on an old flip phone ringtone—but you can really hear things and the processing on the synths sounds great since you’re really only “missing” hi hats, Kendricks higher frequencies, and a couple little pings on synths.

5120 is significantly clearer now, this is what I imagine my hearing will be at in like 40 years of hearing loss frankly—I have slight tinitis from drumming and music at this point but its really mild but eventually I expect ill lose a lot more.

10240 this is close enough for most headphones where you wouldn’t notice, that little bit of high end is there, the claps and hats are here clearly and the upper end of the guitar lines

20000 is where the full “sparkle” people talk about in a mix appears, that juuuuust highest sort of tickle on the end of a sound your ear might catch—more of a hiss on things more of a sense of real intricate mouth sounds etc. The bass itself also takes on a more full character for some mixed in high end click on those kicks you dont get from just low end as much. Distortion overall becomes more noticeable in the track as well used for effect.