07-20-2025, 02:48 PM
(Edited 07-20-2025, 02:56 PM by tachy_bunker.)
This might be a dumb idea, but i thought, a lot of people have talked about how "loud" silence can be.
It usually refers to social contexts where information is communicated inverbally, at such an importance that other types of communication stop.
It may also be when senses are acute and observing, but there is nothing to observe.
So here is my question: How can we put loud silence into music? And how can we engineer the loudest silence ever?
Characteristic 1: simple visualization & unexpectedness
→ Music with repetitive patterns and at some point, silence. There should be clear progressive indicators to make an audience believe or imagine elements in their head while the silence is happening.
Characteristic 2: duration
→ Obviously the longer we can keep this phenomenon, the "louder" silence becomes.
Characteristic 3: illusory silence
→ Using almost completely cancelling sounds, if they're used binaurally and on a lower volume it might seem like a literal "weighted" silence.
Example ideas on the former characteristics:
C1.1 - Sudden noise followed by silence: emotional screams, industrial textures, musical cluster. The silence becomes an aftershock and might force the listener to reflect or stay in fear freeze. However this might make the loudness of silence shorter too.
C1.2 - Long unfinished progressions. The trick would be a cyclic progression sequence that modulates always, like ii-V-I (simple example but might be longer or more complex progression) and at some point you remove part of the progression. The listener might be able to "bridge" the cycles in the silences.
Another pattern i'm seeing is that here i'm trying to engineer with a "SOUND, SILENCE" order and not "SILENCE, SOUND" order. Maybe using the latter order you can find other alternatives to this, like resolving a ghost progression.
It usually refers to social contexts where information is communicated inverbally, at such an importance that other types of communication stop.
It may also be when senses are acute and observing, but there is nothing to observe.
So here is my question: How can we put loud silence into music? And how can we engineer the loudest silence ever?
Characteristic 1: simple visualization & unexpectedness
→ Music with repetitive patterns and at some point, silence. There should be clear progressive indicators to make an audience believe or imagine elements in their head while the silence is happening.
Characteristic 2: duration
→ Obviously the longer we can keep this phenomenon, the "louder" silence becomes.
Characteristic 3: illusory silence
→ Using almost completely cancelling sounds, if they're used binaurally and on a lower volume it might seem like a literal "weighted" silence.
Example ideas on the former characteristics:
C1.1 - Sudden noise followed by silence: emotional screams, industrial textures, musical cluster. The silence becomes an aftershock and might force the listener to reflect or stay in fear freeze. However this might make the loudness of silence shorter too.
C1.2 - Long unfinished progressions. The trick would be a cyclic progression sequence that modulates always, like ii-V-I (simple example but might be longer or more complex progression) and at some point you remove part of the progression. The listener might be able to "bridge" the cycles in the silences.
Another pattern i'm seeing is that here i'm trying to engineer with a "SOUND, SILENCE" order and not "SILENCE, SOUND" order. Maybe using the latter order you can find other alternatives to this, like resolving a ghost progression.