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Binaural Sound

Woody Norris, the extraordinary inventor, has developed a system to play true binaural or hypersonic sound. To explain this, Woody uses the analogy between light and light bulbs. Light bulbs emit omni-directional and uncontrollable light, the same is true for loud speakers – the sound goes wherever it wants to.

In the case of light, we now have lasers and projectors, which controls the direction of light, in the case of the laser making the light waves coherent. While we have had sound systems for 80 years, no such mechanisms have been available for sound – until now.

Woody has made a system that can put sound anywhere and in any range you want it, whether that be different sounds for different sides of your head (true stereo), or noise cancelling for traffic and snoring bedfellows.

Using low level ultrasound, which makes sound at a billion independent points in a column of sound, sound is made right where you want it, without sound levels dropping off once they leave the emitting source.

Currently Sony and the American Military are the key customers of this technology.

ED09

Saturday April 11th 09 saw the the third installment Duane Pitre’s Artist in Residency performances at ISSUE Project Room. This show involved a 17-piece string/woodwind ensemble performing the long-tone composition, ED09 (Ensemble Drone 2009). Duane simultaneously conducted and played bowed guitar at times, while he also “mixed” the performers in real-time.
I describe Duane’s drone compositions as minimalist symphonies. They are incredibly melodic with a strong narrative. For me, the most compelling part of the ED09 piece is the second movement – the quarter tone cluster.
Duane conducts his performers in a unique score approach of classical notation and hand gestures. The quarter tone cluster begins when Duane’s interlocked hands are above his head. What follows is a delightfully unsettling period in which every performer plays a different pitch, each exactly one quarter tone apart. Inspired by Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, the sound scape is remisinscent of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick sound tracks. This comes as no surprise, considering Penderecki wrote the score for ‘The Shining’.
For a teaser of the show check out the ED09 performance at Roulette, SOHO.