Passionate Balance: sound effects

Monday, October 30, 2006

May the Foley be with You

Still liking this book on sound design by Joseph Cancellero. So much to Clavin out on! Here's a list of interesting facts that should be in every Clavinesque repertoire: the sound effects designs for Star Wars!

R2D2
50/50 electronic sounds combined with vocalizations, waterpipes and whistles, all processed and orchestrated together.

IMPERIAL WALKERS
A machinist's puch press along with the sounds of bicycle chains dropping on cement.

LIGHT SABERS
An old TV set turning on and off (and running) mixed with the hum of a 35-mm film projector.

LASER BLASTS
A hammer hitting the high-tension wires of a radio tower.

TIEFIGHTERS
An elephant's bellow, mulched and mixed in various ways.

SPEEDER BIKE
Sounds from a P-5 Mustang airplane and a P-38 Lockheed Interceptor, combined and mixed.

LUKE'S LANDSPEEDER
The sound of the Los Angeles Harbor Freeway recorded through a vacuum cleaner pipe.

CHEWBACCA
Animal sounds combined together, with a focus on walruses.

EWOK LANGUAGE
combination of Tibetan, Mongolian and Nepali.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Harmonic intervals and emotional characteristics

Okay, I almost gave up on this whole blogging concept, but this is just way too cool! It's a list of different harmonic intervals and the emotional responses we have to them. This is taken from _Exploring Sound Design for Interactive Media_ by Joseph Cancellaro (Thompson 2006). Here it is:

INTERVAL-------- EMOTIONAL QUALITY
Perfect octave----- Completeness, Openness, unity
Major seventh -----Spooky, eerie, off-centre, strange
Minor seventh----- Expectant, suspenseful, full but unbalanced
Major sixth---------Peaceful, balanced
Minor sixth---------A bit sad, soothing
Perfect fifth---------Power, centering, strength, victory
Tritone-------------Horror, terrifying, scary
Perfect fourth-------Ethereal, lightness, transparent, clarity
Major third---------Neutral, hopeful, resolved, nonabrasive
Minor third---------Uplifting, relaxed, positive feelings
Major second-------Unresolved, unsettled, unpredictability
Minor second-------Unclear, tense, anxious, uneasiness
Perfect unison------Peace, strength, calmness, security

There you go! You always knew different intervals had different emotional qualities. It just took someone to actually list them! Thanks Joseph!

Because Blogger's Backups beat my own

This is my scrapbook of facts, studies, observations, poems, flotsam, jetsam and excess carbs. Topics include philosophy, writing, media design, and anything to do with human subjectivity, plus a bunch of sciencey stuff, and culture too. It's a backup of cool ideas, in case my house burns down and I lose my digital and paper files. I also operate on the assumption that what I find cool will be found cool by at least a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the English-reading web world.

The "Passionate Balance" refers to what I consider to be the king of cool ideas: the notion of negative capability - the ability to tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity. John Keats introduced the concept in a letter:

...several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

Passions may be stirred, but balance remains. That's what passionate balance is, and I believe the world needs this balance, with a passion. I think it's an important virtue. The concept has been used by others since Keats, of course.

British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion used negative capability to describe the role of the analyst in a session. As the session unfolds, anxiety is released that the analysand does not have the negative capability to contain. By 'standing alongside' them calmly, the analyst supplies the negative capability needed for the work to proceed.

Robert French has been applying this concept to the study of managerial effectiveness, focusing on change management. Negative capability is a key element of executive success, he argues.

If the virtue of negative capability was widely recognized and valued, I think it would improve the governance of our collectivities. If leaders had to at least emulate this virtue to appear 'leaderly' it would still result in better decisions. Freedom exists in the moment between action and reaction. I dedicate this blog to that moment.

- Neil LaChapelle