Latest / Chaos and Creativity / The Art of Sound, Part 1: It’s Simple – You Just Have to Listen

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The Art of Sound, Part 1: It’s Simple – You Just Have to Listen · Chaos and Creativity

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, Kimmy.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Lou.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: How are you doing?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: I just got back from five days on the lake.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, some of us have all the luck.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: What'd you do for the 4th of July?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, wait, that's right.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have the 4th of July.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that is.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know what that is, do you?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have wiped that from my memory.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, there you go.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Fabulous.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm excited about our next guest.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, especially for you, because he used to design synthesizers, which is your passion.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I did a little bit of a deep dive, and I will say this was definitely a guest that I was a little jealous that I it was not a part of this conversation because he's definitely up my alley.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think you were actually playing a synth on stage when I was doing the conversation with him.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I think you were just on tours.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, we're, you know, we were just embodying the same thing in different ways.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: I completely agree.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: But his name is Stefan Pigeon, and he is a soundmaster.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he runs around and he has a site called my noise.net, which is spectacular.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it is a place where he has a library of sounds that you can create your own sort of mix of white noise, or you can check out one of his pre-made ones.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: But not only is it useful to have white noise when you're working, especially if you're writing or doing something creative and you need to focus, but it's also fun to play with stuff and see how you personally react to it emotionally.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's super.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm I'm totally familiar with um his website, my noise, right?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is what it's called.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: My noise.net, yeah.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really familiar with it and I think it's so cool.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, I'm really excited to like just hear how he got into that and what he what drove him to all this madness.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: What drove him to what drove him to drive himself mad to give us something that we use to chill ourselves or chill ourselves out, right?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: So well, let's drop in.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm looking behind you, uh, Stefan.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and there is so much gear.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a lot of gear.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: There's racks and racks of gear behind you.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: And is this um all the stuff that you use to to uh manage your audio?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's a blue, it's a green screen, and I just appro uh I just projected a fake studio uh invention.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, it's my studio, it's my studio.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's great.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: I've been lucky to to to yeah, start this passion uh when I was a teenager, and and over the time, over more than uh yeah uh 30 years, I've been uh acquiring and and and collecting uh instruments uh related to my what you see there are mostly synthesizers.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, this is uh uh relicas from the my past when I was working as a sound designer, a synthesizer, a sound uh designer for a Japanese uh company, Roland Roland Corporation.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, Kimmy will love that because she's very into classic synthesizers.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so tell me a little bit about that.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: So you were creating sounds that were inside the synthesizers?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Is that how it was?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: How does that how does that work?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like how do you do that?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was very lucky uh to to be in direct uh communication with the engineers uh at Route working for uh Roland Japan.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um I had at that time already uh a different profile that the uh sound designers they were used to work with.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Most of them were uh artists that musicians that would develop skills to program those synthesizers.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: But uh when they met me, they met an engineer who already knew what all those parameters uh uh meant.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so my challenge was to learn more and to become more of a musician, but uh yeah, this was a very interesting uh combination.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: They they used to work with musicians that were uh bad or even no engineers, and and suddenly they discovered an engineer uh to work with that that was capable of producing music.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: That was somebody who somebody had that the crossover between the music and the engineering.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, yes.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: And this is how long ago that you started doing this for one.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that was uh I started when I was a teenager.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was uh when I was uh 18 years old, 19 years old.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're putting sounds, this is fascinating to me.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're putting sounds into a synthesizer, are you collecting the sounds, recording it, and then the synthesizer can access it, or or what is the process?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: It depends on the the technology of the synthesizer.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: When I started, it was the beginning of what we called now the romplers.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: These were instruments where you would put uh actual recordings of real instruments into the memory, like samplers uh do.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh with samplers, you can put your own samples, your own recording in the instruments.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: With the romplers, you are limited to the uh the instruments that the manufacturer has put into the and at that time the memory was very limited, so you could only play very short samples, and uh and the magic uh uh um the skill was to create loops that would loop those samples and create from a very short sample something that could extend uh uh in time uh thanks to a loop.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, the skill to develop those uh sounds was looping, and how you would uh find in the sound a very little, a very short um piece that would be able to play back on itself without audible artifacts, and then the memory got longer, and we could put longer samples, more samples, and things like that, and and the technology evolved.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: But back then, yeah, that that so when you what I'm hearing is that you you take a small sample and then engineer a loop.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, and then when somebody pressed on the key, they could um they could they will trigger that sample, yeah.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: They would trigger that sample like like uh you would trigger a recording, right?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and depending on the key, uh we would uh transpose the sample by changing the playback speed.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but then as the memory increased, they found that putting a sample for each key would increase the quality because uh the transposition made by the synthesizer was not faithful to the sound of the real instrument.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then they would also layer different samples depending on the velocity.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: They will you you would by hitting a key harder, you would play another sample that was a recording of the instrument at a higher um velocity.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: So so did you have to have um almost an infinite number of samples?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, did you have to have thousands of samples in order to do that?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh nowadays, nowadays, yes, that's that's what they do.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: They they use an incredible amount of samples.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they they they they can uh use gigabytes of audio just over one instrument.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah um but back at that time it it it it was not like this.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh once you put the sample uh and all its parameters, the loop in the machine, back then you had still to rely on on um on the processing on the synthesizer, like uh filters and things like that, to try to put some life into that static sample.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because you only had one or a couple of one, you needed some tricks by adding filtering, uh uh and and uh for example uh to mimic the dynamic range of the of the instrument, original instrument.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you had to use only one single sample, right, you would play record the instrument uh playing at a very uh loud level, uh for to have the best signal-to-noise ratio, but also to excite the highest number of harmonics to have the brightest sound possible from the instrument.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then you use the filters, the low pass filter of the synthesizer to cut those bright harmonics.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: You would also use the amplifier built in the synthesizer to reduce the level, and then thanks to the synthesizer engine, the level and the filters, you could somehow replicate the sound of an instrument when he plays quieter notes.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: I see.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the kind of programming that we had to do.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: How do you remain faithful to the instrument?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: To make it short, you cannot be faithful.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can imitate the best you can.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a kind of uh uh until the the 80s, uh uh synthesizers were only producing synthesizer sounds, and it creates frustration among the musicians who who imagined that the synthesizer uh would be even more uh perfect if it was capable of creating the sound of real instruments.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the goal, that was the nirvana to to reach for manufacture was to try to to imitate the best you could uh acoustic instruments.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end, yeah, you will never be able to replace the the real instrument.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: A synthesizer is played by uh a keyboard.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, so you still the the interface is different, it's a keyboard.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you once you hit the key, the the the key is hit.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: A trumpetist can um can with the mouth and the breath control or already control the the attack.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh with the key, the attack is fixed by an envelope, and and you don't have uh much um much control over it.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Or if there is control, it's not the same way as the control of a real trumpet.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's on its own creates a difference.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the and and what happens in my case is that the more you try to imitate real instruments using many subterfuges and and and the more you start to appreciate the sound of a real instrument.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: The real and now nowadays, all the synthesizer you you you see behind me, uh, I got rid of those rumplers and those trying to recreate acoustic instruments.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't enjoy them uh anymore.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh really I enjoy so much the sound of a synthesizer, a sound that is that can only be created by a synthesizer, and don't try to imitate uh uh uh uh that uh a real instrument.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: A sound where you have no reference to compare to you with so much flexibility, and you can be very expressive.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Can you can you create your own sound?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do you are you constantly coming up with your own sounds in order to that's the nirvana of the sound designer is to come with sounds that have never been heard before.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And another thing that I try to recreate is because I'm a poor musician.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I learned the piano for 10 years, but I was never good at.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a reason why I love those sentizers so much because I discovered that you could program sounds that are so complex, evolving in time, evolving harmonics in timber.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would create those complex sounds that would only require one key to be pressed down to start creating uh uh a huge soundscape.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I I found in synthesizer a way to compensate for my poor playing uh by creating so complex, so so complex sounds that yeah, you certainly don't want to play too much notes together because then it would be even it would be too complex.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's the story behind it.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's funny.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: So um now one of the things that you have at mynoise.net, which is which is an incredible site, it's it is magnificent because you're taking essentially what you're doing with synthesizers, providing natural sounds that you've recorded and allowing people to create their own soundscapes, which I think is fascinating.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: And um the website, like I've used this for writing, I've used this for checking out and and being able to sort of go someplace else in my head because you can create a soundscape with rain, with wind, and all these things mesh together, and then adjust how much volume for each one until you find that sort of perfect balance.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: You you can almost go too far.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like I've I've gone to go set up a little something for myself to go check out and do some writing and have it in the background, and I've gotten lost in playing with the controls so much that I completely forgot about writing.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: But that's that's sort of sort of like the downside of the amazing thing that you've created.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: But um, how did you get into recording all the different um nature sounds?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: And and now you're expanding out.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like now you're doing a little bit more music, you're doing your video log, which is fascinating.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's kind of interesting.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: But how did you how did you get into recording all the uh nature sounds?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: So we are leaving the the the topic of synthesizers here because uh uh here with nature sounds uh we are more in in in the field of field recording.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um but um how it started, um it started again with the the the idea of of an that an engineer would have.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was 10 years ago at that time.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: I realized how how so many people rely on the so-called white noise.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm speaking about the static white noise, the synthetic uh uh white noise, the the kind of noise that you hear when the radio station, uh when your so your your radio player is tuned between two stations that thing.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized that people many people rely on it for uh uh healthcare uh purpose, and uh and then I said, okay, there must be something uh uh more enjoyable to listen to than that static um synthetic static white noise.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I tried, I started to look in nature sounds that would closely resemble to white noise.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: So think about the rain, the uh waterfall, the wind.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And as an engineer, my goal was to find in nature those who had the exact same spectrum as the white noise so that you get the same frequencies by and the same amount for each frequency as white noise.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that you you can look very long before just finding the right one.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: So at the end, uh I started to yeah record one that we are close and then uh edit them thanks to my sound designer skills and resynthesize to recreate the perfect spectrum, the spectrum that was as uh that was uh similar as the white noise.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: And this is how I got into um field recording, it was to record those uh noises that I would turn into white noise afterwards.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: But then um the next idea was well, maybe I can recreate a white noise or a kind of nature white noise, not by looking for a single sound that has all those frequencies like white noise, white noise covers the whole hearing range from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hertz in equal uh amount.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my question was: is it possible to find in nature maybe different sounds that would each um take care of a part of the spectrum?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: And when playing them all together, then you would recreate a sort of white noise, but made by different independent sounds.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: For example, the the lower range, the very low frequencies, could be the distant thunder, right?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the higher range could be insects like uh uh um grasshoppers uh in a in a summer uh uh evening in the field or summer, yeah.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: They would be taking care of the high range, and and I would do this for each octave in the hearing range.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, oh, the frogs, nice, they cover the the mid-range, and and I would do that um for every band in the audible range, and there is a jungle sound of minors that is exactly that.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh find uh sounds in nature, and and and the jungle is wonderful for that because it it really the animals there cover a wide range, and you would simply you have those sliders and you can increase some animals or others, but if the sliders are all flat, the spectrum that is created is the same spectrum as white noise, as an average, of course, because if it was exactly the same, then it would sound like white noise here.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: You still hear the animals, it's because uh it's only the long-term average that is uh so let me ask you to to put it in perspective for our listeners.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, when you talk about 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz, what's what's like a low rumble sound?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like what how many hertz is that?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the the lowest you can hear is 16 hertz, 16 hertz, 20 hertz.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: But to hear that, you need um you need headphones.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Headphones can cover the the the range quite uh easily, right?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't wear headphones, you would need a big uh subwoofer to 16 hertz is at the verge of a sound that you cannot hear anymore, but it that you can feel in your chest.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, interesting.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then what about the high end?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the high end, it's up to 20,000 hertz when you have premium ears.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but with age, this limit decreases.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I see.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you care uh about your ears, uh at the age of 50, you you get about uh you you lose your your ability to hear the high frequency, I would say by half.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: My limit is now 10 kilohertz, 10,000.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you would think, oh man, he's a sound designer and uh he he he he lost half of the hearing range.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: The beautiful thing is that like many of our senses, uh the hearing is uh logarithmic.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it means that we we consider the ear is hearing as much information uh in one octave as in another.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And an octave is simply a doubling in frequency.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: So if we start from the low end, 20 hertz, the first octave is 20 hertz to 40 hertz.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I say that's only 20 hertz, it's not much, but for the ear, there is as much spacing, as much audio territory, as much to discover than in the last octave.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: The last octave is 10,000 to 20,000, it's also a double.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: But but in those double, one has only 20 hertz, the other one at has 10,000 hertz.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: But for the ear, that's the same spacing.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's what logarithmic means.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have to count in terms of octaves.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: An octave is something that musicians know very well, and and octaves in the hearing range are easy to to find out.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's 20 to 40, 40 to 80, 80 to 160, 160 to uh you you double each time.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, every time, every time.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and when you do that to reach uh up to 20,000 to You need 10 of those octaves.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: You did double 10 times.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: It means that we have 10 octaves.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say I don't hear, and people around 50 do not hear above 10,000 Hertz anymore, they lost their last octave.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And there are 10 of them.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it means, and to put in a perspective, that uh you only lost 10% of your hearing.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it doesn't look as dramatic as it as it sounds, right?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's why I've decided not to grow old whatsoever.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm just I'm just gonna stay young forever.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um and your initial question was how it feels in the last octaves, and and and and so basically 20,000 Hertz are frequency that uh you only hear when you are young enough and your ears are um in in good health, because the frequency are very fast.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it means that um yeah, the the mechanism, your mechanics should be able to respond very fast to that.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: And is that what happens with aging?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is that uh yes, it becomes stiffer and and or if you are exposed to very low loud sounds, it creates damages, and as the damage repairs, you your uh ear terms becomes stiffer and you lose the ability to hear.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I see, that's interesting.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's not and and and to end it in if you speak after that, and the feeling that you get around 20.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: I remember the feeling around 20 hertz, it's like, oh, I hear it in the chest.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right around 20,000, it feels like I don't hear any much.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh I don't hear anything uh anymore, but it feels like I have a headache.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's something that you feel in the brain, something strange, and that's what you get at the that's that's me every morning when I wake up before my coffee, I feel something strange in the brain.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: So um, so it's very similar to eyesight, whereas the lens of your your eye gets stiffer and it's not able to adjust as quickly.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so that it's so it's it's very similar to then you will be blind much more easily.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And as you speak about the eye, I yeah, I'm jumping uh into another subject that is fascinating as well.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we are speaking about sound frequencies, yes, but the eye is sensitive to light frequencies, right?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right, and and and so we are also in a world of uh frequencies, and right the lowest frequencies that the eye can see is are the reds, right?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and you can and what is the feeling below the red?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's the infrared, and and you can feel you cannot see the infrared, but you can feel it as a warmth.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: So there is kind of yeah, similarity in the sound, yeah.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: And and what what's the frequency on the top of your um uh uh of eyesight of the visual eyesight, it's the violet, violet, right?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and and when it becomes um uh invisible, it's called ultraviolet.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Ultraviolet.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the light that you get in in the clubs that will turn your white t-shirt into uh blue, blue, violet, and and and and yeah, you can imagine when I say 20,000 hertz is is gives you a kind of headache.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's that that kind of light is a bit like the headache for the for the for your interesting.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so um back to your nature sounds.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: So you you you've compiled all these sounds and you you have mynoise.net.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: Did you build my noise.net yourself, or did you have somebody?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: 100% by myself.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the the question I have is you built the site.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: How did people find it?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I found it randomly and became obsessed.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question, yeah.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And a sad question because the world has changed since but I a couple of years ago, I would say I would have told you that the recipe is is simple.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh to to build a website like this and and to have success and to have visitors coming, yes, you just have to be the best.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you say, Well, you're kidding, uh, just just be the best.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's something difficult.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes and no, there is a trick to easily become the best.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you narrow down your field of expertise until you you are the only one left, and then de facto you are the best.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what I did with my noise.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um everyone, noise is something awful.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to listen to to noise.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, who wants to listen to noise?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, my idea was to create noise that you enjoy to listen to, and and and simply that I would make me stand out from the crowd.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: The only website where you you love to listen to noise.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you see, by by looking for some specificity and and by um being the best uh in that niche, a couple of years ago, uh you would have traffic on your website without any problem because the world is so big that even the smallest niche will all will already send you so many people.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that that's that's the the virtue and the advantage of uh uh world of the world becoming, thanks to the internet, as small as a village, everyone comes to a so you can live from a niche if you are the best among that niche, and that's what happened uh with my noise a couple of years ago.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: But what the sad thing is that the internet totally changed in a couple of years, and now um yeah, why why would I would a site like My Noise attract people at back at that time?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because the search engine were interested in promoting uh uh quality stuff and interesting things, and and right what they what matters what was to put the best elements at the top of the the search engines, and that's so that's why big being the best was the best strategy to to to be seen.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: But nowadays search engines are not interested anymore to provide the best searching results on top of the list.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's that's over, that's completely over.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: So um being the best is not a good strategy anymore, and I'm so lucky that I could grow at the time where the internet was uh uh what it was back then, and my nose is still uh doing well because I accumulated accumulated such a big audience before the internet changed, and now you you also engage that audience too, which is good.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: You you constantly are reaching out to your audience to telling them what you're up to, which I think is very yes, but but it doesn't allow you to to grow your audience.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: That that engagement only allows you to keep the existing ones, I see in a way.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you need engagement to to yeah, for the people for the people who know your project to to have good reason to to to come over and over again.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: But uh growing that's that's the difficult part nowadays.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: What is your favorite nature sound?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think it it will be more like a philosophical answer, I would say silence.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so much into sound that yeah, sometimes trying to listen to quiet sounds, and it's so difficult to find nowadays uh to find silence in the world, you have to travel far.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And even with those uh uh uh long distance flights, uh uh flying uh to the Art of the many miles above you, uh you you even if the most remote place you will have um those those kind of sounds that will break the silence.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and the more this the the environment is uh leans to silence, the more you will be disrupted by quiet sound.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, if the my the the sound that I'm looking for is is the absence of sound.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: The absence of sound, that's interesting.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: The um the website is um, I mean, I'm sure you get a lot of people who come to you and say that they are very excited by what they're able to do on your website and create their sounds because you've created a mechanism in which you can save, you know.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: I can I can put my my model together, my sound model together, and then save it, which is extraordinary.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I can call it, you know, writing time day, writing time night, something like that.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: What I find interesting is how the sounds that you put together in um my noise is how it affects you emotionally.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um we Kimmy and I have talked about this, and Kimmy is a musician, my co-host.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: She we talk about how music can lift you emotionally and elevate.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I also find the same thing with your site.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: There are certain sounds that I can be in in a bad mood or or in a grumpy mood and put on some of the mixes of white noise and play around with some of the the water and the wind and the insects and all that type of stuff.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: And and it can just it can shift my mood utterly.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's that's fascinating.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and but I also find that it's not also just the same noise.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like I can't be in a bad mood and go back to the same set of noises that will shift me out of it.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: It just it really is how how wonderful is it that it's it's constantly changing for an individual and how they as they listen to more noises on your site, how they grow up and how they mature, and how certain noises can then you know be nostalgic at some point.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: And did you find the same thing in sort of putting this all together?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, and and and I want to say so many things from what you said.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the first one is that you're right about sounds that can put you in a mood, and nature sounds in particular, and sound is a very good trigger for uh for reminding you with memories that you had forgotten.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and and uh uh you can have that with the taste sometimes, and and but sound is uh is um I think it sound is related to our um um survival instinct.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh interesting.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh for sure, because uh when you sleep everything gets shut down, you your eyes are closed.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you don't have uh lids for your ears, your ears are working 24 hours a day, and they are the ones that will wake you up at the slightest sound if it's associated to a danger.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, uh I think that of course sound is linked to emotions because it's so much linked to your survival.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and and sound is a wonderful trigger to to to if you're writing something.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: I have many writers in my community who are afraid of uh the blank page.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and and when they they have anxiety, they come to my noise, they they they launch uh they start playing a generator, and uh they feel relaxed because simply hearing sounds comes with so many images in your mind and and uh uh or memories, or uh and uh yeah, and each uh sound on my noise, each soundscape, it's so rich.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: There are 10 tracks uh um playing together, so they are so amazing for your for your ears, and also what's important, and that's the specificity of my noise, and that's why people uh listen to these sounds for hours while doing something else, while uh reading a book, writing, working.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: I want these sounds to uh to be able to for your brain to ignore.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: These are background sounds that should not uh disrupt you.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so uh that's also why there are 10 sliders.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's because if there is a sound that you that you don't like, if you if you are afraid of frogs, you will never be able to ignore the soundscape if while there are frogs uh singing.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you need a slider for the frogs to turn them off.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why you said you spend so much time uh with the sliders before actually starting to uh to work, and and that's true.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's when you discover the interface and you discover that you can create your own uh soundscape, you will spend a lot of time, uh, but you will be pleased to spend a lot of time uh with the sliders, but at a point you will start to to have to work, and you will be surprised that because you reach the point of programming your dream, you the the the the the soundscape that you love the most, it's also the one that you will be able to ignore the easiest, because there is nothing that uh friction that that that has affected.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's an interesting balance, isn't it?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: How you you you find the one that can trigger you to put you in a good space and then only to ignore it almost in a weird way, it's it's fascinating.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I find this this whole series on sound has been so interesting because it's so affecting, you know.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, and and so many people use my noise to to find focus.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's right.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: You remember I said sound is a powerful trigger, and many people do not realize that when they are in an open office, uh the sound of their colleagues are so many triggers a minute, and even if they think that they they are immune to that, no, you are not.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: You are not, you are not.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: You just I have the impression that you ignore them, but but there are so many little interrupts going to your brain, and that that that makes your work much slower.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: So if you listen to my noise instead, because these sounds are engineered to have no distractions.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: So when when a frog to talk about the frogs, uh are singing, they've they sing in a very even way.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: There won't be uh uh one frog, one giant frog saying rip at once.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: No, that if if they do, I will cut it out because I want the the sound to be as smooth as possible, and so it's a sound that your brain will ignore because it has been engineered so, but it that sound will still mask all the little interrupts that I was talking about, and that uh your colleagues uh speaking or other things in your room.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you need a background uh masking tone to uh to block to to make those all those little sounds that it would have interrupted you disappear, and then you realize that personally you are more productive.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: Something that took one hour in half hour is done.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: You you you didn't feel exhausted, you everything's sounds uh everything is more easier to achieve once you found your the perfect sound, exactly.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: So that is amazing.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we're gonna send a lot of people to your site, I can already tell.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: So uh uh Steven Pigeon, thank you very much for being on the show.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your uh kind attention and listening.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: So, what do you think?
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, nice, right?
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Really fascinating, super fascinating conversation.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love him because he's like me, um, which is like he can really just like go on about the things that he knows about forever, which is how I'm also I love to I love to ramble about the things.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: But like everything he said, I was like, please keep going.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is fascinating.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, what an interesting life he's had.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_02: And he's he's um he's really nice.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: He he's really passionate about what he's doing and he likes to educate people.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it really comes across in the interview that there's this whole world of sound which is as I'm learning, so complex that it is um and and how we emotionally react to sound and and the way he distills it down into a language that anyone can understand, yet still remaining very mildly, I guess not very but mildly technical about it all, was really kind of engaging for me.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: I really, really enjoyed it and I really enjoy him.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna next time I go to Brussels, he and I are gonna get a beer together.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's so cool.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, a a lot of the things that he was explaining to you, obviously I already knew, but I loved the way he explained it.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I always really appreciate people who are experts at what they do and are able to take their knowledge and still be able to tell someone who's never maybe heard about samplers or synthesizers and explain what it is and how it works because it is, you know, I've I've had people explain things to me where I'm like, I still don't know after that explanation, I actually still don't know what you're talking about.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like the way he was explaining everything was so clear.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but he just also just seems like that kind of person, you know, like he is just absolutely like one of those great nerdy people who is not just trying to like who just really enjoys what they do.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he from that, yeah.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he embodies the original spirit of what the internet is.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: Is it talking about something, put it out there and make a few bucks on it.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what I mean?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he is he is it is it is such a breath of fresh air to go to a site because it was made by him and it's not particularly fancy, but it's incredibly well put together.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: And it's that's exactly what the internet sh used to be and should be forever.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I really loved also the the conversation that he was when he was talking about frequency, because obviously you know I work with frequencies a lot.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when he was talking about hearing loss, um the hearing range, but also like where you can like feel sounds.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that was a really cool thing for him to explain.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, so remember um my friend Shoshana Stern, the deaf actress from Weed, um, she would talk to me often about feeling sounds, like things she couldn't hear.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the her friends that I also met, including her sister Louise, would who were potentially more deaf, like Shoshana's partial hearing.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: And um Louise was her sister was fully deaf.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: And but she would also explain to me that she could feel the sound.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I I just I never get tired of the fact that sound is so all-encompassing in a weird, do you know what I mean?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I still don't have my head around about how all-encompassing it is.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it it is such a this is what I love learning about it because I feel like I'll never learn everything about it.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there's just so many people, because there's so many niches within sound, you know?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but it is really powerful of how it can affect your body, how it can affect your mood.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um even when he was talking about like the what was he saying?
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, like when you're in an office and you have interrupted sound, yeah, and um, which is why it's so nice to have like soundscapes or have white noise or anything like this, because it basically gets rid of the un the interrupted sound, which makes it easier to concentrate.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I never really thought about it that way because obviously I use uh ambient music all the time to time to focus.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I also like get very relaxed with it, but I never even thought about like when we're in the day-to-day life, we're always like hearing interrupted sound and our ear hearing, hearing is and our ears are always just like hyper-vigilant and picking up everything.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, it was a super fascinating conversation.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: It really, I mean, you guys really like ran up and down the the spectrum of topics, and I was in it.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: I loved it.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was good.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: And also, um, this is part of a series.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: So the next one we're gonna do after this is with Tom Myers from Skywalker Sound, who's a sound designer.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Who creates I know?
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, I'm really thrilled for that because he starts from nothing and creates the entire soundscape of life that is conveyed in the movie.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_02: So imagine all the natural sounds that we do with every day.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine starting with nothing and then creating something that's believable for the movie to service the movie.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm ready for that one.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we're gonna drop that next week, um, exactly a week after this.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm very excited for it.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Exciting.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I hope you have a great day and I'll have a great night, since that's where we're at in our life.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to you soon.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: Talk to you soon, bye.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_02: This is our standard boilerplate.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: Chaos and Creativity is produced by Sherman Johnson.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's edited by Alexandra Covey.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: And we'd like to thank our sponsor, our only sponsor, and our fabulous sponsor, BlinkFit Software, Fitting and Producing Software for Creative People.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: And anyone who's cooler than anyone else.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm saying.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Me too.