how does sawII work?

[Guest DrHat]

this album zonks me out like nothing's business. something very nutso psychlogical about it.

 

what gives? what is it about this album that has such an effect on some people?

 

i mean, i notice my heart rate (and possibly breathing) tend to fall in time with music, think that's it?

 

i suspect it's more something like that, rather than what he made it on (hardware or psychedelics).

[Guest mushroom]

repetition.

[Guest DrHat]

good point - definitely a part, but that alone doesn't do it, i don't think

 

also - proportion? in melody and timing?

[spptrl alt del]

warm and welcoming sound. seductive melody tendrils

[Guest AlexPallas]

first of all this belongs to the drone genre. when you're listening to drone (as well as noise) you have to treat it like an atmosphere, as if you were hearing the sounds in a natural landscape. this is the best technique i have found, and it is very effective.

[chim]

first of all this belongs to the drone genre. when you're listening to drone (as well as noise) you have to treat it like an atmosphere, as if you were hearing the sounds in a natural landscape. this is the best technique i have found, and it is very effective.

 

those are some wise words.

[Guest DrHat]

it's tough for me, it really is. alex is right, i feel, but what he said doesn't help me understand it.

 

i come from a science/technology background. i am totally bent on understanding how things work. while i sense he is right, and can readily think of examples, his explanation still does not really explain it to me - why the music has such an effect on people, and why he is right.

 

it's like understanding music theory, and knowing emotional music when you hear it, but being unable to join the two and meet in the middle... i'm getting better at that, but still not happy with where i am...

[chim]

i'd guess it has to do with nostalgia/association. what do you think of and picture when you hear saw II?

 

there's repetition and mathematics behind it all, but i seriously think association is the main part of music. the kind of feel you've had when you first listened to it (movie soundtracks tend to grow on you), what you picture, what you associate it with. it's mostly nostalgia that's the heaviest thing in music.

 

learning music theory and generally getting technically "better" or a more refined taste kind of spoils some music, but it greatly enhances other. some tracks lose their appeal but you can appreciate what someone has done with a track more if you have an idea of how he/she did it.

 

it also opens your eyes to some types of music. i used to hate music that modulated in the middle of a track, i automatically thought like "damnit why do you ruin the feel right now", but nowadays i apprecaite it if it's well delivered and can often be a needed element to a staling repetitive concept.

 

what i like about saw2 is that the associations are there, but they are in a eerie sense at the same time "not there". it's hard to pinpoint and it's like being blind to the associative images.

 

for instance, my favourite tracks are rhubarb, curtains, lichen + a few more on the 2nd cd, and the stone in focus track from the LP.

 

I've found that SAW2 evokes the most of my somewhat limited synaesthesia which apparently aphex also has, though he probably "suffers" from it more intensively. I get it from alot of music but aphex and particularly the saw2 album is like a 10 times more higher dose of it.

 

rhubarb is a very green track, curtains shifts between red and purple (alot of aphex's music is purple for me, the words aphex twin and richard d james, afx etc are completely purple), lichen shifts between purple and brown, but a very pleasant brown, like an acre that's waiting to grow.

stone in focus starts grey but goes blue as it becomes slower

 

that kind of sums up how it is. there arent any particular heavy "images " or scenarios other than acres and wild landscapes at most (the album is very "free" in a sense, has a strong sense of freedom, flying over the hills type of thing)

 

that's about the most imagery i can get out of the album, the colors are so intense during the tracks. while with most other music i get these "scenarios" and shit, SAW2 is a very very primal kind of album, just the colors

 

in comparison with the analord albums which almost completely consist of definite images and scenarios, all late 80's - early 90's, like snowstorm in cities and the design of machinery in the 80's, offices, hospitals

 

anyway, that's enough of my weird psychobabble. can you believe i havent done any drugs as of this date?

 

anyway, one thing man, music tends to be more enjoyable if you leave a little bit to "magic", like, extradimensional qualities and stuff like that. its hard for me to look at it in a purely scientifical sense because it has the tendency to completely kill it

[Guest αnalogue ψings]

No treble. Mysterious bassy sounds. Like what everything sounds like when you're in the womb.

[Guest AlexPallas]

drone is mostly for the subconscious, if you focus on it consciously you hear the samples. if you put it out of your conscious, you hear the song.

[Guest Death and Taxes]

timbre and melody mate

 

and the fackin aliens he captured

[Joyrex]

From the soon-to-be-online Aphex Twin Archives:

 

Paul Nicholson on Selected Ambient Works Volume 2.

11.11.1994

Prototype 21 faxatak: 11:11:94

f.a..o. Matthew james.

Newport school of art.

Re. Can you help me prototype 21?

 

The basic concept behind the ambient 2 design was to create a non-written track-listing where categorisation of the tracks was based on their time signatures. Firstly i had to establish a system that would work across all 3 formats (l.p. c.d. m.c.) to this end the 25 tracks of the collection divided into 6 groups these being 5 groups of 4 and 1 group of 5. From this point on all designwork was entirely structured on mathematics. Each track playing time, the overall length of each group and the total playing time of the collection was worked out. Once all the various times were established (as in 60 seconds per minute) they were converted into decimal. With the times in decimal it was then possible to convert each of the track times into a percentage of its respective group. The reason for the conversion of time into decimal percentages was so that a graphic representation of time could be created. In the case of ambient 2 this was achieved through the use of pie charts .As well as the pie chart each track's time is represented also by the dimensions of the photograph they appear in. To establish the dimensions of each photograph the total usable surface area dedicated to them had to be worked out and then divided by 6 for each group of tracks. The area allocated to each group was further divided by the percentages given to each track. From the area allocation of each track its dimensions were worked out. For example: each of the six groups on the l.p. format was allocated 130cm2. Group a being 25 minutes 58 seconds became 25.96 (once converted to decimal.) Track a1 being 7 minutes 32 seconds became 7.53. Track a1 became 29% of group a.. 29% of 130cm2 is 38 cm2 which ended up with a photograph of dimensions 5 x 7.6cm. this method was used to determine the area of the photographs across all three formats with the area allocation obviously differing due to the size differential between the formats.Each pie chart within the photograph has 1 segment that is filled in which refers to the track it represents with the segments being arranged from 0-360 degrees clockwise. to help distinguish each of the 6 groups of tracks colour coding was adopted. For example: track a1 pie chart segment was located between 0-104 degrees and is coloured olive.Once all the above was completed the layout of the photographs was based on aesthetic judgement following a loose grid system. The work for this collection was started december 1993 with 1 month given to its completion. With hindsight more time would have meant a closer realisation to what i had hoped to achieve as i feel there is not enough visual clues as to what i was getting at. As far as ambient 2 is concerned i have had no other opportunity to follow this line of thought, and probably wont through music related graphic work, but have continued to experiment generally with aspects of visual communication.

 

Article reprinted with kind permission of Paul Nicholson.

Paul's amazing work can be found at http://www.p21.co.uk. Tell him Joyrex sent you!

 

I thought you meant how the images 'worked' with the tracks...

[Guest DrHat]

i'd guess it has to do with nostalgia/association. what do you think of and picture when you hear saw II?

 

there's repetition and mathematics behind it all, but i seriously think association is the main part of music. the kind of feel you've had when you first listened to it (movie soundtracks tend to grow on you), what you picture, what you associate it with. it's mostly nostalgia that's the heaviest thing in music.

 

learning music theory and generally getting technically "better" or a more refined taste kind of spoils some music, but it greatly enhances other. some tracks lose their appeal but you can appreciate what someone has done with a track more if you have an idea of how he/she did it.

 

it also opens your eyes to some types of music. i used to hate music that modulated in the middle of a track, i automatically thought like "damnit why do you ruin the feel right now", but nowadays i apprecaite it if it's well delivered and can often be a needed element to a staling repetitive concept.

 

what i like about saw2 is that the associations are there, but they are in a eerie sense at the same time "not there". it's hard to pinpoint and it's like being blind to the associative images.

 

for instance, my favourite tracks are rhubarb, curtains, lichen + a few more on the 2nd cd, and the stone in focus track from the LP.

 

I've found that SAW2 evokes the most of my somewhat limited synaesthesia which apparently aphex also has, though he probably "suffers" from it more intensively. I get it from alot of music but aphex and particularly the saw2 album is like a 10 times more higher dose of it.

 

rhubarb is a very green track, curtains shifts between red and purple (alot of aphex's music is purple for me, the words aphex twin and richard d james, afx etc are completely purple), lichen shifts between purple and brown, but a very pleasant brown, like an acre that's waiting to grow.

stone in focus starts grey but goes blue as it becomes slower

 

that kind of sums up how it is. there arent any particular heavy "images " or scenarios other than acres and wild landscapes at most (the album is very "free" in a sense, has a strong sense of freedom, flying over the hills type of thing)

 

that's about the most imagery i can get out of the album, the colors are so intense during the tracks. while with most other music i get these "scenarios" and shit, SAW2 is a very very primal kind of album, just the colors

 

in comparison with the analord albums which almost completely consist of definite images and scenarios, all late 80's - early 90's, like snowstorm in cities and the design of machinery in the 80's, offices, hospitals

 

anyway, that's enough of my weird psychobabble. can you believe i havent done any drugs as of this date?

 

anyway, one thing man, music tends to be more enjoyable if you leave a little bit to "magic", like, extradimensional qualities and stuff like that. its hard for me to look at it in a purely scientifical sense because it has the tendency to completely kill it

 

How do you know what color it is? Do you see the color at the edge of your vision, speckled all around, or a general hue? I've read about synaesthesia a bit, but I never got a satisfying picture of what synaestheats experience. Perhaps that's because it's supposed to be a personal thing, and varies from person to person. Even though I don't see it, the color thing makes sense to me, in the sense of SAWII being something really raw and primal. Thanks for sharing. If you can convey more of your subjective experience, I'd appreciate it. I guess I don't really care if it is scientific (we'll leave that to the neurologists :), I just want to get a better handle on what it makes you experience.

 

I totally understand not wanting to analyze stuff. When I started writing music, I worried deep knowledge wound ruin the enjoyment of listening to it. Turns out... it only ruins bad stuff, and good stuff is all the more delightful in exchange. Kind of like how most anyone gets something out of a Van Gogh painting, but a painter can find a lot of little things they love about it, in addition to getting what everyone does. The same artist could also find a lot of pain-inducing flaws in a "pop art" work most non-painters like. Part of it seems to be personality... I've always gotten primal joy from managing to figure something out or getting my head around a tough concept.

 

I guess I feel comfortable asking all this because - SAWII seems good enough that analysis won't ruin it.

[chim]

i don't "see" the color per se, but it's there. it's kind of difficult to explain, but basically, imagine the color purple strongly taking up your entire "imaginary sight", that spot where everything you imagine is pictured. that's what happens, involuntary. it's quite unobtrusive and subtle,i dont have to focus on it, it took a while before i noticed that aphex and most of his music was purple, it's just the way i've always associated his music. i think i first realised that it was so strong when i once thought something along the lines of "how do i make music as purple as his?"

 

it's involuntary and always the first color i'd think of. it's started to surface more lately as i've gotten more into music, and i think it has to do with me painting and drawing before i started doing music, so i have a very visual sense of thinking, and have a heavy sense of colors as emotive aspects. i listened to music all the time when painting on the computer so in a way sound and color/imagery is strongly related for me.

 

i think most people have it, only it's very very subtle in the majority, as it was for me until i learnt about synaesthesia and realised that i associated with alot of their way of thinking, particular abstract things "having" a predetermined color, sound in particular. even though i'd like to think i'm openminded in most areas of life, i have a really hard time thinking that other people dont see music etc the same way i do, because it's so natural for me

 

i can also taste some music, it's kind of weird. generally it's more abstract than physical, and the tastes arent completely tangible. i love the taste of saw tooth waves, especially the supersaw, much like the sound itself it's sharp, but rich. it's like the sound stimuli translates into a typical taste and color. by the way, rich detuned sawtooth waves are light red/magenta, like plasma!

 

now that i come to think of it, SAW2 has very particular tastes. rhubarb smells like wild grass, curtains tastes very very very odd, i can't think of anything physical that tastes remotely like it, but if you know the feel of the song (basically if youve heard it) you should sort of know hwat i mean. like odd, but pleasant at the same time. i dont always enjoy listening to it for this reason, i really have to be in the mood to get into the experience

 

the taste thing is much too subtle in most music but is the strongest with very dissonant music, like, quartertones (50 cents between semitones) and stuff like that, it makes me physically taste copper or acid to the point of being nauseated. dissonant orchestral music tastes like sea water, probably because it often makes me picture a very stormy ocean

 

here's a quartertone-track i made which i almost vomited after because of the really fucking heavy taste i had after i was done with it

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.c...&songID=3849347

it was like having acid and metal and rust on my tounge at the same time

 

it obviously has relation with early childhood and that whole 5 senses thing being fucked up somehow, though some synaesthetes who see letters in particular colors assume that it has to do with playing around alot with those colored letters you put on the fridge!

 

I'd guess some synaesthetes, like, really heavy synaesthetes, probably in a sense infuse the color in their visual spectrum, especially like letters, but it's not that way for me.

There is a guy who suffers from something much like synaesthesia, he has never been able to read because the letters keep "dancing" in his point of view.

 

anyway, it's kinda hard to explain it, partly because it's hard for me to imagine how someone not having it would be like. especially people who dont see any images at all when listening to music, i'm always like, what the fuck , it's part of what makes music so great! I think the "ability" is part of a prerequisite to enjoy ambient and instrumental music in general, because the music speaks the images. music with lyrical content tend to be too obtrusive, shoving the images down your throat. but i guess people who don't listen to music with associative images find it much easier to extract the meaning of the music when someone is singing about his love troubles or how he'd want to kick everyone's ass.

[Guest thisket]

SAWII is my favorite album, no doubt. It puts me to sleep too, but more of a crazy deep-relaxation just above sleep.

 

I have some synæsthesia too. Not very strong. It's the same for me - the colors are there, but it's more like they're behind my eyes. I can see the colors, but not in my physical field of vision. Most of the album has a brown color for me. Some dark purple and brown fields, some yellow, some red. That track made entirely out of sharp rhythms is a brown background with light blue bubbles swinging side to side with the rhythm. Rhubarb is a brown background with red and yellow lights fading in and out of focus. Lots of brown, anyway.

[Guest DrHat]

*snip post*

 

That actually did explain it to me, somewhat. I do a lot of engineering stuff, and so I am very familiar with "imaginary sight." If I were designing, say, a gear box, I'd visualize it in my head, and ignore all other senses. I'd turn one gear, and see the others move, etc. I'm not a mechanical engineer, I do electronics/computers, but ME provides the easiest analogy. I was actually delighted to discover you have to do this for chemistry too - my sister (bio/science gal) was explaining to me how she doesn't like the molecule models (they're fiddly and break), and prefers to manipulate them in her head...

 

One interesting thing I noticed, is that I may have a touch of synaesthesia, but... with words. When I listen to music, it seems very natural to me to translate the noises into nonsense phrases. When I go to write a drum loop, I'll pick a phrase that has the cadence of the drums, like "digital bolivia."

 

Here's "digital boliva, liva bodivia":

 

Digital Boliva

 

I find it convenient, because then I can think about the drum line in chunks (syllables and phonemes) and only notice the individual notes if they matter.

 

However, if things in your daily life other than music have colors/tastes, that blows my paltry ability away... I generally don't use that kind of thing anywhere other than drums, and it sounds like that could allow you to translate things into music very neatly. I can always make up random words, but currently, I can't really put emotions into verbiage as fluently (I have a vague notion, but it's... vague).

 

When I try to explain the phenomenon of synaesthesia to myself, I find myself thinking of those clever chaps that released some software allowing you to use your 3D graphics accelerator card to do math. The things are basicly giant banks of matrix multipliers, and you can get some useful things done on them other than 3D rendering. The brain matter that makes sense of vision, and that that makes sense of sound - cortex - it's all the same stuff, just specialized different ways early in childhood. You can probably see where I'm going with this - you're basicly using your visual processing circuits to process sound, like one would use a 3D card to do math instead of graphics. If that's the case, I could easily see that developing during childhood, before everything is specialized.

 

It's said a large number of brain "irregularities" (autism, dyslexia, etc.) come from having too much "grey" matter (thinking, processing tissue) and not enough "white" matter (stuff that connects the grey matter to more distant grey matter, like the ethernet cable connecting computers on a LAN). Basicly, too much of this condition, and people get this hyper-intense focus... they can focus very well on just about anything, but have trouble switching gears quickly. Dyslexic people are said to be very good at visualizing machines like the ME example I gave above... perhaps, due to the limited networking, functions get mashed together instead of being fully seperate.

 

Next thought: think it's possible to learn synaestheisa? From reading zen/buddism stuff, I get the impression some monks do eventually - those rock gardens (with the neat lines in sand) are said to be a "koan" (a saying that is a lesson, like, "Who is the magnificent God that makes the grass green?") without words - a visual one. The sand is supposed to represent water. I never experienced it, but I could easily see how one would visualize the sound of water as lines like that. Monks spend time meditating on the rock gardens...

 

It's a chaotic mass of fascinating stuff... I can't pull myself away from it. :laughing:

[chim]

very interesting post, it does seem like various types of this "disease" (i'd rather not cal it that because it's pretty damn cool) are more common than one might think!

 

your analogy with 3d cards doing math is very accurate i think.

 

i think it's possible to learn or develop it, probably the best way is to do it in some type of combining two senses, like drawing and listening to music at the same time or something similar. zen meditation, hm.. I was even into buddhism a short while but never heard that the sand gardens are supposed to be koans, but it makes a lot of sense! i agree with you completely, this is very very fascinating stuff.

[Guest DrHat]

Funny you mention that - I often like to draw to music, and I'll move my hand in time. Afterwards, I've found the drawing reminds me of what I was listening to, but I couldn't tell you why... and I have no idea how to make music look like a drawing (at least, not consciously).

 

However, I almost always draw using black pen, and so I think the association comes from shapes (I've had a gut feeling for a long time that curves are important - they're the one thing I'm obsessive about drawing right) and line length/thickness... I think I should start using color! I have a tablet, computer's probably a good idea.

 

Meditation in general strikes me as helpful to developing the ability, simply because it makes you a lot more aware of what's going on in your head. That's probably where drugs help, too - psychedelics are well known for inducing chemical synaesthesia, and might help you figure out what to pay attention to in the vast arena inside your skull. The proper interrupt vector, to use a CS term.

 

If I were you, man, I'd use the shit out of that ability - try to establish what colors mean, and how you build colors/tastes. It'd be like music theory on a whole crazy new level...

[chim]

hah, yeah, maybe even incorporate a new form of sheet music. "so here the music is red with speckles of blue, slowly shifting to this bar where they're completely yellow and ending with a massive block of grey"

[Guest Promo]

timbre and melody mate

 

and the fackin aliens he captured

I swear listening to SAWII was one of the most incredible journeys ever. I still rate it as Aphex's crowning work. Listening to it from start to finish is just so much like a journey. Its like packing up all of your stuff and saying 'guys I'm going on a trip ... I'll be back in a 3 hours'. Listening to SAWII to me is literally total escapism. I can't think of anything more escapist for the mind that SAWII. Aphex should definitely do SAWIII its yearning to be done.

[Guest Promo]

Rhubarb is a brown background with red and yellow lights fading in and out of focus. Lots of brown, anyway.

Yeah you get lots of brown when you've had way too much to drink and you wake up in the morning and are like 'wtf is that stink?!?!'. He he (just joking by the way).

[chim]

i don't "see" the color per se, but it's there. it's kind of difficult to explain, but basically, imagine the color purple strongly taking up your entire "imaginary sight", that spot where everything you imagine is pictured. that's what happens, involuntary. it's quite unobtrusive and subtle,i dont have to focus on it, it took a while before i noticed that aphex and most of his music was purple, it's just the way i've always associated his music. i think i first realised that it was so strong when i once thought something along the lines of "how do i make music as purple as his?"

 

iit obviously has relation with early childhood and that whole 5 senses thing being fucked up somehow, though some synaesthetes who see letters in particular colors assume that it has to do with playing around alot with those colored letters you put on the fridge!

 

I'd guess some synaesthetes, like, really heavy synaesthetes, probably in a sense infuse the color in their visual spectrum, especially like letters, but it's not that way for me.

There is a guy who suffers from something much like synaesthesia, he has never been able to read because the letters keep "dancing" in his point of view.

 

anyway, it's kinda hard to explain it, partly because it's hard for me to imagine how someone not having it would be like. especially people who dont see any images at all when listening to music, i'm always like, what the fuck , it's part of what makes music so great! I think the "ability" is part of a prerequisite to enjoy ambient and instrumental music in general, because the music speaks the images. music with lyrical content tend to be too obtrusive, shoving the images down your throat. but i guess people who don't listen to music with associative images find it much easier to extract the meaning of the music when someone is singing about his love troubles or how he'd want to kick everyone's ass.

hmm you seem pretty simlilar to me in this regard... i remember started to write a topic about it ages ago (synaesthesia) but i wrote something like 2 pages and still couldn't really put it into words... also with music, i can't help but associate songs with places (often i don't even realise i'm doing it)... it's really weird; if i suddenly stopped during a song and thought i would be able to think of the place i'm subconsciously thinking of... it's like synaesthesia in that it's not like i SEE the place. it's more like a smell or an atmosphere... almost like i'm listening to the song in that place (not literally).

 

what's more they're all places i don't really go to anymore... old schools, parks i used to go to as a child, my old neighbourhood and the weirdest one (and it's always coming up!) my old golf course. and it doesn't matter whether it's a song i've just heard this week, or some thing i used to like when i was 11 or whatever... there's always a sort of associated feeling with these places... i can have another, different sort of 'minds-eye' thing while listening to the song - that is, the more active 'view' of the song... but somehow those old places seem to get associated for music for some bizarre reason. i can't really put it into words...

 

with letters and numbers i can't help but think of colours... i used to think that it was from an alphabet frieze i used to have had in my room as a child, but i actually found that frieze and they weren't the same colours at all :laughing:

 

do you find that words are sort of like literal mixtures of colours too? if i see the word 'derek' the strongest colours are D (dark brown) and K (foresty green) -the 'e' and 'r' aren't as strong in that particular word - and so 'derek' seems like a dark moody word to me. whereas the word 'frieze' for example is mainly lighter blue-y colours (F - aquablue I - very light purple E - blue) so it's got a whole different feel. the letters i like often correspond with the colours i like too:

 

K - dark green

L - soft yellow

J - light blue

V - dark green

 

same with numbers:

 

7 - dark green

9 - soft blue

 

it's almost a bit chicken and the egg as to whether i liked the word because of the colour association other other way around

 

here's those colours... it's interesting to see them laid out like that. you should try it!

 

 

 

Damn that's some cool shit. and with the "derek" and "frieze" example (which i completely agree with you about by the way), i guess that i do have it to an extent. I usually ignore it because i dont like the brown or very intense saturated colors that most words have, and I dunno, it's always felt like it's so natural, everyone should have it.

 

Some letters, strong ones have colors. I think K is brown, it's strong, like a tree. I agree that derek is a very dark and moody/foresty word, i dont like that name at all. I think words as a whole have stronger color associations because their nature is more direct, and it's usually cooler because they're not so saturated and can have a sort of glowing nature to them at times.

 

let's see..

 

K - brown

L - soft yellow indeed!

J - red

V - very desaturated blue

 

D is green but in the combination "Derelict" however, the entire word is dark blue and laser-y.

 

"Promo" is sleek light grey/beige, in a very futuristic fashion, this color http://images.google.se/images?q=tbn:nRSgf...beige-hires.jpg

 

"ieafs" is a mixture between green and dark grey. it feels like a forest surrounded with gripping mechanical claws.

[Guest DrHat]

warm and welcoming sound. seductive melody tendrils

 

in retrospect, this was one of the best answers in the thread.

[xy_politics]

Many good points already mentioned, sparse use of treble, virtually no drum patterns, everything is driven by the melody.

 

It's the least analogue-sounding album he's done - it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't a single analogue synthesizer used in the whole album.

 

I think the thing that most makes it unique though, are the alternative and microtonic tuning scales that pop up throughout the album - he mentioned this in interviews at the time.

 

Also, it really showcases his mastery of reverb, I mean, no-one on earth can do reverb like RDJ. It's one thing that computers are still crap at, to this day.

 

One of the tracks on my Space (lnk below, "Novembernine") was really influenced by SAW2, I listened to virtually nothing else for a year after it was released.

 

Best Aphex album? Yeah, I think so, by a million miles.

[Celatid]

It's the least analogue-sounding album he's done - it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't a single analogue synthesizer used in the whole album.

Also, it really showcases his mastery of reverb, I mean, no-one on earth can do reverb like RDJ. It's one thing that computers are still crap at, to this day.

 

ummm...