{"id":330,"date":"2009-02-16T12:31:27","date_gmt":"2009-02-16T12:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp\/2009\/02\/flatline\/"},"modified":"2012-01-18T20:19:32","modified_gmt":"2012-01-19T01:19:32","slug":"flatline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/2009\/02\/flatline.html","title":{"rendered":"Flatline"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"flatline.jpg\"<\/span>For about ten hours in Bob Katz’s studio in Florida, I listened with him. We were adjusting the final mastering of my new CD. I like the sound on our previous discs, but I hope that this is going to be better. A piano sound not as edgy as pop, and not as distant as some classical piano recordings.\n<\/p>\n

\nApparently, during part of one of the recording sessions, there was a taxi radio or some other kind of transmitter outside. Traces of those signals became part of the recording. I noticed scratches or crackles, and it turned out Bob’s twentysomething intern could hear these high-frequency noises better. There was a symphony goin’ on up there!\n<\/p>\n

\nSome teenagers have high-pitched cell phone ringtones that their older-eared teachers cannot hear<\/a>. Such sounds were previously used in a security device, developed in the U.K., intended to drive youngsters out of shops where the high-pitched sounds were broadcast — a rodent-control noisemaker for kids!\n<\/p>\n

\nCertainly, recordings are heard specifically and differently by every listener. And it’s not only a matter of physical differences in the receptiveness of our auricles. Hearing is interpretation. Psychoacoustics is not acoustics. Still, I now imagine a piece of music that could be designed to be heard differently by hearers of different ages — or again and again by an aging listener. A kind of sound hologram through time.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn If on a Winter Night a Traveler<\/em>, Italo Calvino writes: “I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read, but at every reading I seem to be reading a new book for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware?”\n<\/p>\n

\nThe noises in our project can be removed through spectral editing. On a computer screen, the sound material appears \"renovatorAJ2.jpg\"<\/span>in bright colors, top to bottom through the frequency range. Individual bits of the picture can be modified or removed. It’s finicky work. The “normal” musical sounds show up as organic-looking overlapping curved shapes. In one very brief section of the music where I still heard some of the taxi, Bob displayed the spectral image and we saw the telltale, regular vertical lines — each one making the speakers emit a tiny crackle. The absolutely straight lines are like the clich\u00e9 of every emergency room TV drama — flatline. Not the jaunty, nuanced vital signals of a living human, but the totally flat signal on a monitor hooked up to someone who is dead.\n<\/p>\n

\nWith a few clicks of Bob’s mouse, our bright red sonic flatlines were removed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For about ten hours in Bob Katz’s studio in Florida, I listened with him. We were adjusting the final mastering of my new CD. I like the sound on our previous discs, but I hope that this is going to be better. A piano sound not as edgy as pop, and not as distant as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}