New MyNoise Soundscape: Piano Escape

As a composer in recent years, I’ve been approached to do some very non-conventional projects: writing and recording video game piano arrangements (digital album and sheet music here and here), a four-piano piece commissioned by Piano 4te (Cosmosis)… and now…

… a new MyNoise soundscape! Before I give my readers a link to follow, allow me to give some background about what MyNoise is all about.

Imagine making 10 simple recordings, called “stems” on MyNoise, that are each around 3 minutes, but no two stems are exactly the same length – one is 2:55, another is 3:22, etc. A couple stems might be synth effects, a couple others might be melody weaving in and out… and so on. Or perhaps one recording is of a bird chirping, another recording is of water flowing in a stream, another is wind… you get the picture.

Now imagine what results when all 10 stems are played continuously, each looping with itself seamlessly: you get a tapestry of non-musical noise, or musical noise, or sometimes even music, that repeats endlessly with infinite variety, never repeating the same thing since all of the stems are repeating independently of each other.

The purpose of MyNoise is to provide background that people need to work, study, relax, or sleep. Whether the goal is to simulate work environment, block out distracting frequencies, provide white noise for sleeping, or even transport yourself and your nerdy friends to the bridge of the Starship Enterprise before you watch some episodes of Star Trek, there is a soundscape for you. In fact, as of today, I count three-hundred and four soundscapes on the index page!

The man who runs the website, Stéphane Pigeon, is a research engineer and sound designer, although I prefer the term audio wizard. His audio mastery is exceeded only by his kind heart, as he gives his website freely to the world, only making money through donations of any amount that give people access to additional soundscapes.

During the course of conversation with him, Stéphane asked if I’d be interested in doing a soundscape. I agreed because I was both fascinated by the concept of the soundscape as well as interested in the challenge of producing one. It’s tempting to hear the simplicity of any soundscape and conclude that really good soundscapes are easy to produce, but they most definitely aren’t!

The challenge in producing any soundscape is very similar to the challenge of writing ostinatos: keeping the listener interested and stimulated even in the midst of constant repetition. What is even more challenging about producing a soundscape is that everything recorded in any given stem must sound good / compatible with any other part of all the other nine stems. This is easier to do when one isn’t seeking to produce music (i.e. non-musical noises like clanking chains and creaking doors)… but creating a soundscape that produces interesting music while still conforming to this limitation is not easy.

The already infinite variety of each soundscape is multiplied by the fact that a soundscape’s seeding is random: each stem begins in a different place each time you load the page. And if that isn’t enough, you can activate “slider animation” mode (2nd button), which makes randomized miniscule volume adjustments to each slider every few seconds.

The collaboration with Stéphane was not only enjoyable, but absolutely critical. There are very few soundscapes on MyNoise that produce what aren’t just musical noise, but actual music, and that’s what I wanted to make. But with the piano being a percussion instrument, incapable of fading sounds in and only able to fade sounds out at the natural rate of piano tone decay, I wanted the help of Stéphane’s masterful audio engineering skills to give the soundscape an additional dimension beyond the sound of an acoustic piano.

I recorded 9 stems and left the 10th stem for him to do whatever he wished. I also invited him to alter any of my stems however he wanted. I knew from listening to every soundscape on his website that I could trust his ears to produce something we both loved. I was right – aside from minor inconsequential tweaks here and there that we did before releasing it, I loved everything Stéphane did. Ironically, he didn’t actually create anything himself – for the 10th stem, he manipulated what I did in other stems, such as using reversing effects. There are no synths in this soundscape; just acoustic piano (although manipulated to add some extra “dimension” to the recording), and I’m proud to have contributed a new soundscape to MyNoise: Piano Escape. This may or may not work on your phone (I was only able to hear a preview on mine), so desktop/laptop computers are recommended. Also make sure you can listen to this through good speakers or headphones!

(c) 2021 Cerebroom

Leave a Reply