The Shape of Sound

Shapes in Sound

Certain songs and riffs out there can convey a strong sense of movement and motion. Whilst classic music is intricate and has room for more progression than many genres, riffs like the chorus in Nirvana's Stay Away, or even the growls of synths in Dubstep can convey movement.

The question that burned in my mind was, can we make this movement a clear 3D path? Could we take somebody on a journey around a corkscrew or along the sides of a box with music and sound?

This was back in 2010, it's 2026 now and I've tinkered at the problem for a while

Previous Experiments & Ideas

• Modulation - Sketch Synth 3D back in 2010 was the first main experiment in this area, drawing music in 3D using the Kinect and/or touch pads and Wiimotes.... It conveyed motion but direction was missing, something was happening but it couldn't reliably communicate what was happening.
• Harmonies - Harmonies can take a different melodic direction to the main melody, some can be quite flat melodically for instance and this creates the sensation of two things in space.
• Key Changes - Key changes alter the melody direction by transposing the pitch of everything and can provide a rapid and drammatic change.
• 3D Audio Spatialisation - Many toolkits were tried during times with Melody VR and using Unity3D, which do give a sensation of movement and space, but it's not pinpoint. On headphones seem to work because when used in computer games there is a visual anchor point and an aha moment. For live music there are other problems with speaker layout at gigs.
• Visual Anchors - It's apparent that reliably communicating 3D motion with sound is too big a problem for now, but communicating motion and using visual anchors to help people understand is the most pragmatic way forwards.
• This Fractured Mind - this fractured mind started with an album of tracks with the goal of producing a fairly familiar rock music base and adding depth and complexitiy of lyrics in there, a ground where harmonies could be explored.

Where things are at now

When I finished the first album for 'This Fractured Mind' it was pretty apparent that the place 3D soundscapes could fit into rock music is in the guitar solo or bridge. I wouldn't limit it to guitar FX though, because vocals worked really nicely in some of the guitar solos as well. If I had my time again, I would blend vocals in with guitar solos more to make soundscapes, I'm not even sure I wouldn't do a whole song like that and treat it more like a dance track with rock sounds.

Before i start on a second album there are a few probelms I need to solve. The album took a long time to create and I didn't have any kind of organic way to reach an audience, I didn't tour and so I was limited to paid routes to advertise the tracks which made it more of a numbers game than anything else. If I were to start another album I would kick off the website first and create it as a crazy psychological experiement between AI agents with different skillsets working together to diagnose and fix the fractured mind.

Another thing that featured heavily in 'This Fractured Mind' was an emphasis on breathy tones in the vocals. Wind Crusher is being developed with improvements in that area in mind, as part of the broader attempt to shape texture and movement without losing the character of the original sound.

Where this blog fits

This is a blog for Shape of Sound, the company name for the entity that produces tooling used for the project.